Hyena (10 page)

I place my penis back inside my trousers, pull her dress back down, and excuse myself. There’s a gerbil in this home that needs finding, I better leave her to it.

We make our way out and she stays in the kitchen looking for her pet in the dark. Jinx is clowning. I’m just shaking my head, speechless. And when TLC’s “Creep” comes on the radio Jinx turns it all the way up and we’re laughing.

I MET THIS CHICK ONLINE
a few years back. We’d talk every now and then. I told her if I ever got to Vegas, I’d holler. I ended up out there for work around Valentine’s Day. I hit her; we met at a bar in the Bellagio. She showed up with two gay guys; we had drinks and chatted.

They wanted to go to some bar off the Strip and rage.

I told ’em, “Go ahead.” I didn’t come out for that.

I pulled her aside. I told her I liked her friends, they’re cool, but I didn’t call to see them, and I didn’t call her to run around Vegas and get drunk. I said that we could run around Vegas, but time is precious and soon my time here would be done and maybe we should focus on our wants instead.

She shook the dudes and came back to my room with me.

We turned the lights off and fucked in the dark. She was Rubenesque and moved well in bed. I liked the way her ass felt in my hands and I liked the way she kissed me. She
came, and then I came. I got out of bed, threw out the condom, and washed my dick in the sink. Her homeboys were already on their way to get her by the time I came out the bathroom. We kissed and said our goodbyes and I never saw her again.

The Strip is a soulless place. Every time I go there I feel alone. The worst kind of isolation is when the city’s buzzing around you and you’re totally disconnected. But what am I gonna do? Put on a shiny shirt and hit Tao, drink Coronas, and try and meet people? I usually end up high on some shit roaming the hotel lobby at 5
A.M.
, looking for something to fuck. I spent a week in Vegas once, shooting some black exploitation movie where I get ate by vampires.

My last night there started off with my homegirl Tina drinking Grand Marnier, and ended up in the backseat of a Malibu with some strippers, driving to a titty bar on the city’s outskirts. It’s eight in the morning and these chicks are doing bumps of coke off house keys listening to Nelly, while the people in the cars around us drive to work.

The strip club was dead, just a pimp posted at the bar with his two girls working the poles. He’s trying to sell me pussy and crank. I took a cab back to the hotel. Picked up a meth head playing video slots in the lobby, took her up to my room, hid my money in my sock, and fucked her with my shoes on. Then put her out when I was done. Later that afternoon, when I finally flew out, I looked over that desert city and it felt like I was leaving ’Nam.

Fuck Vegas. Soulless shopping mall of a city.

So when Sirius told me I had to hit Vegas on Valentine’s Day for work, I wasn’t that stoked.

Valentine’s usually sucks for me anyway. I’ve had friends killed on that day and dates ruined.

One year I even got fucking VD. Neither one of us was cheating, we were just having dirty sex. Apparently you need to rock a condom for anal and pee afterward or things can get infected.

Who knew?

Every year, being the hopeless romantic I am, I put stock into Valentine’s Day and use it as a benchmark to measure where I’m at in my love life. This is bad, cuz I’m usually single or on the rebound. The last place I wanted to be on that day, rebounding, was fucking Vegas.

But that’s where I was, so I figured I’d just fuck a girl and make the best of it.

I woke up from fucking the Rubenesque chick, V-day, at noon. Feeling like shit. All the pussy in the world can’t mend a broken heart. I dreamt of Julie the night before. I could go all day and not think of her, but she lives in my dreams.

I got up to take a leak; there was blood on the toilet. There was blood on the towel next to it. I looked at the bed and there was blood there, too—the sheets, the pillows, blood. Crime scene. I guess she started her period and didn’t know. My bloody Valentine. Here I am in Vegas, trying to fuck the pain away, and I’m covered in blood.

I turn on the TV and
Say Anything
is on. John Cusack and Ione Sky. I love that movie. Julie never saw it. I had always wanted to show it to her. I thought she’d appreciate it, but we never got around to it. I never showed her. I lay in my bloody bed and watched John Cusack chase his girl to the very end and thought about everything I didn’t do for mine.

I’VE BEEN DOWN OFF THAT
2C-E for like twenty minutes, had to turn off the trance. I can tell when I’m sobering up cuz trance goes back to sounding like shit again.

I take Ashly to the couch to smoke weed and listen to records. She’s twenty-two. I call her the Midlife Crisis. Fucking her is like buying a Corvette and a gold chain. She’s closer to my kid’s age than mine. She’s straight out the Inland Empire. It’s nothing but cholos, tweekers, and dirt bikes out there.

The other day she told me I was flitty for ordering a Jamba Juice.

I’m like, “What the fuck is a flitty? I don’t speak I.E.”

She sighs. “
Flitty
is ‘gay,’ it means you’re fucking gay for drinking a smoothie. We eat our fruit whole. We don’t blend it and put it in cups, fool.”

I say, “It’s a smoothie, it’s sposed to be blended. Girl, we gotta get you some culture.”

That’s what I’m doing on the couch, giving her some
culture. I got her looking at a book of R. Crumb drawings. I’m telling her about him, telling her how he likes fat asses and big legs, how he liked to get piggyback rides from women.

I tell her, “He woulda loved you.”

He would’ve; her ass is fucking nice. I just had my face buried in it, tripping my balls off. The only time she really lets me eat the pussy is when she’s high, and even then she puts the blanket over my head so she won’t see me.

I got a head cold. I’m blowing my nose then snorting K up my good nostril before it clogs up again. I can’t breathe anyway, so colds really mess me up. When I was down there, I was mouth breathing, damn near passing out.

I’m thinking about getting the surgery done. I was talking about it with Z the other day at the Fred Segal Cafe, where the rich and beautiful come to eat organic greens overlooking the parking lot. And then they go buy overpriced bullshit from the boutique.

Right now the fad for guys is to spend a thousand bucks to look like a romanticized version of the working class. I fucking hate rich people.

I’m having my tea talking to him about my nose. I’m telling him how I’m damn near passing out when I’m doing my exercises and how hard it is to go down on chicks.

I tell him, “My septum’s deviant and it’s fucking with me. I think I’ma get that surgery.”

This Afghani motherfucker, been here twenty years and still sounds fresh off the boat, says, “You should, cocksucker,
and while you’re knocked out have the doctor take a chisel and chip off that big hump on your nose.”

“Fuck you, Z, I ain’t making my nose smaller. This a motherfuckin’ Roman nose!”

He says, “It’s not Roman, it’s just fucking big.”

I point at my nose, I say, “Look, bruh, I’m half Italian. Back in the day, this is the first thing you saw when you was about to get fucked-up, this big-ass Roman nose bending the corner. If you saw this shit come around the corner, you knew two things: one, you was about to get fucked-up, and two, you were about to get some aqueducts!”

We laugh about it. Deep down inside, like most of my nonwhite friends, Z has a special hatred for the White People’s conquests, so I try to bring ’em up as much as possible. He’s telling me the Romans were a bunch of fags who fucked each other.

“And? So? Y’all got fucked up by a bunch of queers.”

This waitress walks by and chimes in: “Your nose isn’t Roman. My nose is Roman.”

He says, “See, cocksucker, I told you it’s not a Roman nose.”

“You think you’re right because the waitress agrees with you? She’s a fuckin’ waitress, she brings me ketchup. What the fuck she know about noses?”

I go to my computer phone to look up Roman noses, which I hate doing. You start talking about anything and some dipshit goes straight to Wikipedia on his iPhone before you can even figure it out for yourself. Well, now I’m that dipshit.

I read off the following: “ ‘A Roman nose is a human nose with a prominent bridge giving it the appearance of being curved or slightly bent.’ Now what, motherfucker? My nose is bent as hell. I told you it was fucking Roman.”

He just rolls his eyes and shakes his head and says, “It’s not Roman, it’s just big.”

“Fuck you, Z.”

Now I’m on the couch putting a rolled-up dollar to my Roman nose wishing this cold would go, and Ashly and I are talking about her liberal use of the word
nigga
. When we met, she was dropping
nigga
all over me. I’m about to introduce her to Ross, and I tell her don’t be dropping no
niggas
when we’re around him.

We’re over at Ross’s, she’s on her best behavior, and there’s some drunk Mormon chick who’s all, “Gimme some more Jack Daniel’s, nigga!”

Ross doesn’t hear it, he’s too drunk, but MLC from the I.E. does and she looks at me and rolls her eyes. Then the Mormon goes into the bathroom and makes out with Ross’s wife.

Back in the car, Ashly’s talking shit. “See, fool, you thought I was gonna say nigga and that dumb blond girl said it instead! All the time you were worried about me!”

“Yeah, I was worried about you; I’m fucking you, I’m not fucking the Mormon.”

“Dude, you’re crazy. I wouldn’t say nigga in front of a black person!”

Her mom was the same way. When I first met her, I walked into the garage. She’s in there holding court with her sixteen-year-old
daughter’s little friends. They’re smoking weed and cigarellos, drinking Cold Duck. The neighbor’s sitting in a lawn chair; she’s got a bloodied bandage on her shoulder.

This little white girl with braces lights up a Black & Mild and says, “Oh, you’re Rude Jude. I heard you got jokes, let’s have a snapping session.”

I tell her I’m off the clock. I look at the bloody Mexican. “What happened to you?”

The mom jumps in, “Aw, fucking Booshie attacked her!” Booshie’s their giant dog. “Yeah, we’re all sittin’ here, drinking and shit and fucking Booshie just loses her shit and hops on Marisol, starts biting her. I fuckin’ throw my drink down and jump on her. I’m punching her in the face, yelling, ‘Booshie, stop!’ Shit, for a minute there, I thought she was gonna attack me! Didn’t she look like it?! Didn’t she?! We thought Marisol was done for the night but here she is, drinking with us, tough little bitch.”

And they all nod in agreement and the neighbor don’t say shit, she just takes another drink of champagne out her Dixie cup. Then the mom’s like, “Aw shit, I don’t wanna do this, but lemme just say, Rude Jude, I fuckin’ love you!! I used to watch you all the time on
Jenny Jones
and I’d be thinking he’s a funny nigga! This nigga is funny! Lemme get a hug!”

I go over there and hug her and she pushes her fake boobs into my chest and I’m smiling. I’m on my I.E. shit.

GROWING UP, I DIDN’T GO
out to eat much. Early on in the divorce, on the weekends, my dad would take us to McDonald’s for chicken nuggets, then we’d hit a movie or something, but we never went to sit-down restaurants.

I remember when I was fifteen, Mo took us to T.G.I. Friday’s, me and Loc didn’t know how to act. We ordered water with lemons and made lemonade at the table using sugar packets. I ordered a chicken-fried steak and sat there, pissed-off when it didn’t come out fast enough.

Mo was Loc’s big cousin; he got in some trouble in the city and came out to Auburn Hills to lay low. He’d take us all around, buy us dinner, and order the most expensive shit on the menu.

He put us up on game, like how to pull a bitch by tellin’ her bullshit, how to give her the danglin’ eye, and how you shouldn’t fuck the chick super-good till the second time you smash, things like that. Mo was the shit. I loved the fuck out
of Mo. He’d do some crazy shit, like if his car broke down, he’d leave that bitch on the side of the road and just go buy a new one.

Mo moved back to Detroit and got shot. Me and Loc kept going out to eat. We’d get our little checks from McDonald’s on payday and hit up Murdock’s for jazz night, eat fried cheese sticks, smoke Black & Milds, and undertip the waitress because we didn’t know better.

When we got a little older, we’d hit Friday’s on the regular. I ended up pulling this waitress from out of there.

She was this cute little corn-fed white girl from somewhere in the middle of Michigan. She had just moved to the big city and was living on her own, waiting tables and fuckin’ black dudes. She had a thing for black guys, but she fucked with me anyway because I looked good in the face.

We kept it light. I’d see her at her job, we’d smash here and there, but that was it. She hit me up one day and was like, “I need a favor.”

A few months earlier, she was fucking with this CBA ball-playing cat. He got her pregnant and bailed. She’d been hounding him for some help and he finally sent her some money for an abortion, but she needed me to take her.