Fucking Daphne (11 page)

Then it was up to the Nitebreak, which was remarkably empty for a Friday night. The band was a black metal band from Memphis. They sang in that growly voice, but with a Southern twang. Daphne was getting a little freaked out, so we were touching as much as possible. Again,
it was the acid making us a little feely.

We were pounding vodkas, but it wasn't enough. We left and went across the street to Cala Foods. We needed something stronger. Robitussin. Well, it made sense at the time, okay? We bought our Robo and some more booze while the tweakers were buying their tinfoil behind us and the crackheads stuffed TV dinners down their pants. I just wanted to get out of there.

I'm getting away from the point, but I want to illustrate that we were
totally fucked up.
We did go back to Daphne's place to chill out, but
nothing happened.

We tried to play some board games, but we couldn't figure out how to get the dice to roll. We tried singing to them and yelling at them, even sneaking up on them and scaring them, but they wouldn't roll. We didn't try actually rolling them. That's my point: How the hell would we have been able to fuck all night, like the story goes? We did stuff like listen to records at the wrong speed to make Sinéad O'Connor sound like James Earl Jones singing for Black Sabbath. Then we got this idea that maybe James really had sung for Black Sabbath, but they just sped it up and sold it to us as Sinéad O'Connor. I bet they totally do that: They take all these unused tracks from the '70s and put them through the computer to make them sound new, and presto! A Lenny Kravitz record.

I left Daphne's house at 8:00 AM, went home, and tried to sleep, but of course I just lay in bed with the TV on. I was coming down but I couldn't sleep, and I was so burnt I couldn't move. Which reminds me, the guy at the corner store says he can sell us a black box to get free cable for $200. Cable is like forty bucks a month, so the box pays for itself in, like, six months or something. The way we're stealing it now, we don't get HBO, which we should totally have. Anyway, I didn't leave the house again until Sunday morning. That's when the rumor shit had spread faster than butter on a bald monkey.

Nothing happened. But I heard the rumor, too, and it goes like this: Daphne and I fucked in the bathroom of the Horseshoe and 69ed each other in the limo; I got her off fingering her at the I-Beam; she lap-danced me at the Nitebreak until I came in my pants. None of that happened, that or anything else Daphne says.

Daphne told everyone that she and I spent the whole day Saturday fucking. She really thinks that, but it wasn't me. It had to be someone else who looked like me or smelled like me or something. She swears it was me, and that's where my trouble really started.

I didn't know any of this shit until Sunday morning. I went to the Spaghetti Western for breakfast and Linda Perry refused to serve me. You know, the girl with the Uncle Sam hat who's in the band that always plays the Paradise Lounge. So I say, “I need some service down here,” and Dave the cook says, “Come in tomorrow. It's on me, bro.” I'm like, “What?” and he's all, “She's mad at you because you're a dykefucker.” At first I'm thinking,
Is this still some fallout over that A. J. shit from last year?
And then he says, “Daphne told us about last night, and personally, dude, you're my hero, but you gotta go, 'cuz Linda's got her dick hard over it and she's swinging it like
she's Jose Canseco.” So I'm like, “Fine, I'll go,” and I leave to figure it out later.

So of course I went to the Horseshoe, and it's Dave there behind the counter. He's making that porno bassline
bowchickabowbow
noise as I walk up. And I'm like, “What?” He's all, “Dude, Friday night in the bathroom was one thing, but you are a stud.” I'm like, “What?” and he's all, “Dude, everyone knows. Those guys in Heavy into Jeff are her roommates. They heard the whole thing through the walls. In fact, they recorded it on a four-track, and you two getting off is going to be the background noise of their next record. They're naming it
Excelsior!”
And then he started laughing.

And I'm like, “What does that mean?” and he's all, “Dude, that's what you kept shouting during sex.” I got my iced coffee to go and I split. So that's why all the guys keep yelling “Excelsior!” at me from bikes, skateboards, and cabs.

So I split for home, but when I got there, Daphne was in the living room, waiting for me. This is why the mezuzah with the hidden key compartment is a bad idea. She had two cigarettes burning, and was alternating which one she was smoking. I'm all, “Daphne, we have to talk about what happened.” And she's all, “Talking wasn't what I had in mind,” and she busts out the Band-Aid box. That little box held a lot. So she dumped some of Huey Lewis's coke out on your Primus CD case and crushed it up. I swear I could smell that shit, so I thought,
I have to get some of that; then we'll work this out. I'll be able to talk better once my hangover is gone, right?
'Cause you know I don't talk too well in the morning anyway. So we snorted a couple of lines, and I'm all, “Daphne, we have to talk about this shit. Why did you tell everyone at the Spag West and the Horseshoe . . . ” when she pulled
off her panties right there on the couch. I got totally distracted by her pussy. I was staring at it because it was all perfect and trimmed up—not bald, you know, just trimmed—and you used to do that for me but you don't anymore. It would really help me with the oral, you know. I keep the hair off the boys myself, with the idea that you'll take my balls in your mouth like you did when we were first going out. I really liked that.

Anyway, I totally lost track of what I was saying, and she says, “I trimmed it up like you like it,” and I'm all, “I didn't ask you to do that,” and she says, “But you did tell me yesterday that that's how you like it.”

I'm telling you all this so you know how the coke got in the scratches of the coffee table and your CD, and how Daphne's panties got in the couch. She must've stuffed them down there when I wasn't looking. But I meant what I said about the oral, you know. After we make up for all this, we need a long 69er, okay?

So I tried to convince Daphne that it wasn't me, that if she did fuck someone all day, it wasn't me, right? But she's like, “If it wasn't you, who was it?” And I'm all, “I don't know.”

You keep bringing up the fact that I once told you that I thought Daphne was hot. But if you'll remember, that was the day last year when we went to see
Blue Velvet
at the Kabuki. Dave said that thing about your ass being big, and you asked me if I thought your ass was big and I said yes, but I meant it the good way, like big good, that it isn't about size, it's about shape; that an ass that's round in the right way is awesome, like an upside-down heart shape. And that's when Daphne and Trigger walked into the theater in front of us, and Daphne was wearing that skirt that made her ass look perfect, like
the bubble in the middle of the Trouble board game, and you said no, it was Headache, and we got in a fight over which game had the die stuck in the bubble in the center that you had to pop to get it to roll, and I said, “You try to pop Daphne's ass and see if that doesn't start some Trouble.” I'm sure you remember, because that's the time Trigger got arrested for beating up that dude in the Farm Aid shirt. Anyway, I knew you liked her ass, and I told you that you guys have the same ass; yours is smaller because you're smaller, but proportionally, you guys have the same ass. And that's when
you
said,
“Daphne's hot, don't you think so?”
And I was all, “Hell yeah,” but my point is that you brought it up and I was just agreeing with you, so if you're mad that I said Daphne is hot, you're just mad that I'm agreeing with you and I'm only trying to be supportive of you and your ass esteem.

But I'm getting off the subject again. I was trying to find out from Daphne why she told everyone we fucked, and she said that she and Trigger have an open relationship when one or the other is on the road, and she thought you and I had the same thing. Maybe it was all the coke making me paranoid or whatever, but it made me think she knows something I don't know. Why would she think that, unless you're getting some on the road and the girls are talking about it?

And I'm like, “No, Daphne, why did you tell them all that we fucked all day
when we didn't?”
And that's when she's all, “Who was it, then?” Like I was playing a game with her. She didn't believe me. She didn't even believe that I was serious.

We talked about it. I thought she knew what was up and everything was going to be resolved. I talked to her about relationships and everything. But she had a different take on the situation than I did.

The next time Trigger called in, Daphne broke up with her. That's when the shit really started. Trigger must've told all the Gretels. I know you don't think too much about the Gretels, but that's because you don't have balls that they could cut off with their switchblades. To you, they're just butches with matching denim jackets and stripper girlfriends, but to me, they're a gang with an itchy castration finger. I tell you, every time I hear a rattling dirtbike or a skateboard coming up behind me, I'm scared out of my mind. I don't know what to do with them. If I fight one, I'm queer-bashing a woman. If I don't, I'm a eunuch.

So I hid the only place I knew I could without them or Daphne finding me: Mikey and Xenon's D&D game. They've had a D&D game running continuously for the last three or four years, with people rotating in and out to make runs to buy speed and Mountain Dew, with constant Slayer, Anthrax, and Iron Maiden blasting on the stereo that's powered by electricity stolen from the neighbors. It's not that girls aren't allowed over there; it's that it's, well, a fucking D&D game.

While I was gone, hiding from the world, things got worse, not better. I thought everyone would forget about it, but the stories spun out of control, to the point that Huey Lewis was still in the limo and Daphne and I were putting on a show for him. The Gretels got more and more pissed at me. Dave the painter told me that Trigger put out a fucking contract on me. I don't think it went that far, but I don't doubt that she asked the Gretels to kick my ass.

I hid out at the D&D game for a week. If I had a job right now, I wouldn't have been able to hide out like that, and the Gretels would've totally kicked my ass by now. So you see, it's a good thing I
didn't get a job like you said I should. Your parents have tons of money anyway. I don't see why it's such a big deal to ask them for money. It's like they're paying you back for your fucked-up childhood. And it's cheaper than sending you to grad school, which they thought was better. Sure, I could cut my hair and bathe every day and wear some Gap shit down in the financial district and all that bullshit, but what would that really accomplish in the long run? When am I supposed to do my
art?

When you and the others got back from tour, I thought that you would be able to sort all this out, but that was when you totally lost your shit about this whole thing. So you see it's not so “simple,” like you said, as that I “fucked Daphne” while you were gone. It's not a yes-or-no question. Actually, it is. It's a no, but you wouldn't take no for an answer without asking me about all this shit I've written here.

I can't go to the Lower Haight, the Upper Haight, or the Mission anymore. I can't go to Jones Street or within a block of any of the strip clubs. The Gretels have all those spots staked out.

By the time you read this, I will be in Seattle. I caught a ride up there being a roadie for Dave's band. There's a lot of cool music stuff going on up there with this record label called Sub Pop, and K Records and shit. Don't come up for a while because I will be crashing at my ex-girlfriend Tura's place, and that would be awkward. You remember her. I probably told you about her: She was the performance artist who fucked herself onstage with the twelve-inch GI Joes. She's doing really good now; she's on methadone and she's about to graduate from massage school. She's totally not psycho like she used to be, especially now that she has three months clean, all in a row, which is more than I have, and her boyfriend went back
to prison after he violated his parole. Did you know selling one of those fetus-in-a-jar things at a yard sale is a felony? Serves him right for stealing it out of the Butthole Surfers' tour van. She's got extra space here now, so I'm going to chill here until everything blows over, and then I'll be back. So let me know when all this shit calms down. Don't worry about me and Tura. Nothing will happen, I swear. We're totally just friends now.

I'm sorry it all ended like this, but like I said, none of this was my fault. If anyone says anything different, they're fucking full of shit. I can't believe I let that crazy cokehead ruin everything. Fucking Daphne.