I Drink for a Reason (25 page)

We got in the Belush-Mobile (the same one from
K-9
!) and sped off. But first things first. I waited in the car while Belulu took a dump behind the parking lot of SaveTown.
He borrowed my shirt to wipe his ass, and off we went to see Cheyenne. We got to the club, which, I have to say, gave off
some strange vibes immediately. Right away they see Jim coming, and they make all nice with “Hello, Mr. Belushi” and “How’s
your current suite” and “We must insist that you leave a credit card this time” etc. etc. Enough with the ass kissing!! It’s
the Belush! He’s just doing his thing. Which at this point was seeing one of his girlfriends. Jim lit up a beautiful Coco
Havana Tanacana #6 and sucked away. I joined in the spirit by lighting up my own Rhapsody in Cigar (one of my faves!) and
ordered a shrimp cocktail. After about a minute, “Cheyenne” came over and sat down.

Now, I don’t consider myself the smartest chip in the cookie, but I ain’t the dumbest, either. I figured out pretty quickly
that this “girl” at our table had a bit of a secret, if you know what I mean; and what I mean is, that secret is that she’s
a he! In other words, a DUDE!!! I started trying to figure out a way to tell Jimbo without getting him upset or embarrassed.
I needed to head this thing off at the pass before Jim got his horndog on.

I turned my head for maybe five seconds when they announced the latest dancer, “Big Man Tate,” and when I looked back, Jim
and Cheyenne were walking off to the VIP room hand in hand. Oh, man, I wish I could’ve seen the look on Jim’s face when he
felt around “down there” and instead of “tuna valley” he grabbed a hold of a dude’s cock!!

I grinned like the Devil’s nephew as I thought about that and lit up a Dunkirk Frightener.

After what seemed like an hour Jim and Cheyenne came strolling back looking like they were in love or something. I guess they
just talked, because…

Oh, well. Leave it to the Belush!!!!

More later, kiddos,

David

H
EY
,
EVERYBODY
. I
T’S ME
, D
AVID
,
WITH MORE
“
SMOKIN
’
TALES
” in the world of cigar smoking and smokers and also plain, old cigars that haven’t been smoked yet, too, also.

Not much to report about this month. I’m heading out to Providence, Rhode Island, tomorrow for the fourth annual “Clowns,
Cupcakes, and Cigars” bash, a family-friendly event benefiting “Cigar Smart,” a worthwhile organization that raises money
for impoverished children in poor, Third World, cigar-producing countries. All the money goes toward new shoes and finger
skin for the little ones who work so hard rolling cigars so that we can unwind with a much-needed smoke at the end of our
difficult days. Hats off to those kids down there; they work their tushies off!

Hold the phone! You’re never going to believe it! It’s tomorrow, and I’ve had a helluva day. I decided to rent a car and drive
down to Providence. Driving allows me to catch up on my reading with my Books on Tape. Right now I’m in the middle of reading/listening
to
The Pritikin Diet
, read by Gavin MacLeod. Anyway, I left at night so that I would have less Mexicans to deal with on the way. About an hour
into the drive I thought, “I could use some more Arctic Chill POWERade and Focus Nuggets.” And, folks, let me tell you, those
things
really
do work, by the by. It’s definitely worth the extra dough for the fortified water. Treat yourself—it’s your body, after all!
Seriously, imagine that your body was a Christian temple. A temple that you’d want Jesus to get up into when he comes back.
Well, you wouldn’t build your temple out of simple bricks and wood and other junk like that, would you? Of course not. Not
if you wanted Jesus to get up into it! He doesn’t care to be insulted like that. You need gold and colorglass and precious
marble. ’Cause when Jesus comes back he’s gonna have a
lot
of temples (churches) to visit. And I’m sure the brick ones are gonna be way down on his list! Look, what I’m saying is,
you should eat the food versions of gold and colorglass for
your
temple (church stomach).

Anyway, so I pulled over at the Lazy Cook truck stop just outside of Huntswallow. I got out of my car, stretched my legs,
and pulled out a Dominican “Whistleblower.” I had just started sucking on that baby when I heard a commotion over by the men’s
bathroom. I was a little apprehensive because I had a suitcase full of not-so-legal Cubano “Lil’ Dictators” that I was intending
to sell for the aforementioned charity. I stubbed out my cigar and fed it to a stray dog wandering around. As I quietly opened
my car door, a truck-driverish man came bursting out of the bathroom in a panic. He was bleeding from his mouth and nose,
and his “My wife’s a fat pig, but I fuck her anyway” hat was askew. He ran right past me just as a lady came out of the same
men’s bathroom! Woah! I don’t know what was going on in there, but this lady was pissed! She yelled out in this deep, guttural,
manly voice: “Give me my money, asshole!” She lurched past me, but she didn’t get two steps before her heel broke. She fell
to her knees and skidded forward. She stayed there for a minute on all fours, staring at the ground. It was really awkward,
and I wasn’t sure what to do. Then it seemed like she was laughing. “Heh, heh. I guess he didn’t know that it was occupied,
huh?” That’s what I said. She just kept looking at the ground. Then she grabbed the bumper of my car and started to lift herself
up, but then she just collapsed. I went to help her up but realized that she wasn’t laughing; she was crying. Her crying was
soft at first but then became big, hot, gulping sobs. Shit. I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am? Are you
all right? Did that hillbilly steal your money?”

She stopped herself from crying and looked up at me for the first time. She did that thing that dogs do when they don’t understand
what you’re saying. Where the dog will tilt its head to one side and look at you quizzically. That’s when I noticed, through
the tear-streaked eyeliner and the cheap, green-apple-scented lip gloss, just how much this lady looked like my good friend
Jim Belushi!! It was uncanny! It was as if Jim himself had dressed up in a lady’s dress and put makeup on. I sat staring at
this odd lady, when she said, again in a deep voice, “What?!” She sounded like the Belush in that scene with the monkey robot
from Mars in
Blues Brothers 2002.
I snapped out of it and helped her up.

“You look kinda like a friend of mine,” I said. “Have you ever seen
Mr. Destiny
? It’s about this asshole, and a magic bartender gives him a wish—”

“Hey, look, you dumb motherfucker, leave me the fuck alone,” the lady interrupted. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not
exactly having the greatest day.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just that—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” The lady then suddenly softened her look toward me. She seemed to be studying me the way an ape does when
it wants a banana. “Jesus,” she said tenderly, “you really don’t get it, do you?” She brushed my one hair out of my eyes and
touched my cheek. “You’re sweet.”

“Oh, well, thanks… uh . . .” It was starting to get even weirder. I got a sense that this lady wanted to thank me in a way
that I wasn’t very comfortable with. Then, in her thick Chicago-style accent, she said, “Do you want a date?”

“Oh, no, that’s all right, I’m—”

“Come on. I’ll suck your balls through your cock and then fuck ’em back on for forty bucks.”

“Uh… huh?” I said, not sure that I heard her correctly. “Look, I gotta get going.”

“Sure,” she said, and dropped her hands to the ground. She hoisted herself up, wiped away her running mascara, and sniffed.

“Look at me. I’m a mess.” She half laughed. “What the fuck happened to me? One minute you’re giving a naïve intern at the
House of Blues a hummer, and the next thing you know . . .” She trailed off and just stood there. She started to cry again,
and that’s when I took my cue.

I quietly got back in the car and headed out to Providence. I never got my snacks, but it was just as well. When I got to
the end of the truck stop, I glanced at my rear-view mirror, just in time to see the lady fix herself up and then slowly and
sadly walk into the men’s room and shut the door behind her. She made the same mistake twice! No wonder she’s so miserable.
Oh, well. I can’t wait to tell my good buddy Jim Belushi about this one! He’s gonna freak!!

See ya later kittens,

David

This is reprinted with permission from
Playboy
magazine, whom I will never write for or patronize until the guy who hired me to do this piece is fired. This is the piece
as I originally wrote it, but this fucking asshole goes and, without ever consulting me, adds his own lame jokes! Without
ever mentioning it. That should be illegal, I believe. So now attached to my name is this piece with some of my stuff removed
and his corny, obvious jokes added. Infuriating. I think the original is pretty good, so I’m including it in this book. Why
not? It’s called “Letter from the Future,” and it was written a long, long time ago.

H
ELLO
, I
AM FROM THE FUTURE
. M
Y NAME IS
T
ULLY
S
PETERTRENCH
, and I am writing from my home state of Baja California Mexico California. The year is 2118. I would normally just use my
Teleporter 3000™ and simply hand deliver the letter, but my teleporter got fucked up after the Not Enough Beer Riots of last
quarter, so here it is. I have mailed it to a Mail Boxes, Etc. in the fall of ’98, but we all know how lame the post office
is, so who knows when it will get there. By the way, how much are stamps back then? Now they cost over two chickens apiece!

Anyhoo, hello there.

I woke up this morning to the official headline floating above my bed-like Pseudobed™. It read, “Nigger Elected President!”
I couldn’t believe it. A black man was in the White House. Jason Nigger had actually won. Mr. Nigger was able to overcome
an unfortunate and ironic last name to claim the third most powerful position (more powerful are the positions of vice president
and Emmy Award winner for Best Actress in a Dramatic Series) in the United States of America and Friends
^©
. Personally, I had “rooted” (as voting is now called) for Devry Ahmad, a pre-post-op transsexual and scion of the wealthy
Ahmad family. The Ahmads made their fortune in the artificial heart sauce business, creating over twenty different sauces
for artificial hearts. I didn’t mind Nigger, but I was swayed by Ahmad’s promise of a free maid for every true American citizen.
Oh, well. There are some things I’m looking forward to with this new administration. I’ve seen so many pictures of the olden
days when there used to be snow on the artificial trees. If the energy policies are reversed, maybe I’ll get to experience
that without having to use the Teleporter™.

After I woke up and popped a few Shower Pills
^®
™, I put one of my penises (evolution!) in the penis scanner and left my quadrent for workfun at the local Water
^®
™ Treatment Plant. Officially my workfun title is Head of Crybabies. I guess I should explain, when the last source of fresh
water was poisoned in the Year of the Officially Recognized Lord 2042, the country instituted a bold and exciting new plan
to replenish our Water
^®
™ supply. Desalinization of tears! So, after it became legal to clone immigrants, Senate Pro-Tem Wal-Mart (R-America) came
upon the solution of torturing them and extracting their tears! Now Water
^®
™ only costs fourteen tap dances! When I got to my workfun station, my boss, Angela Lansbury’s Cousin the Third, told me that
she needed to see me in her office. “Your orifice?” I asked, thereby fulfilling my pun quota of the day. “Very good,” she
replied, “but seriously, I need to see you in my office.”

When I got to her office she motioned me over to her bed. I took off my jacket, put on a hat, and crawled in. She told her
assistdog to forward her calls to the bed. The assistdog barked her understanding and nudged the door shut behind us. I was
nervous because I rarely let anybody see me in a hat, much less my boss, but here I was.

“You have a beautiful hat,” she said rather coyly. “Do you mind if I fuck with it?” “No. No, of course not, Ms. Habigan. Go
right ahead.” She took off the hat, put it on her head, and then knocked it off with her tongue. I hadn’t seen a trick like
that since my great-great-great-grandfather took me to the Jim Rose Circus Circus Casino in Las Vegas. We had a couple of
minutes of sex, and then she fired me. I had a feeling this was going to happen and had a contingency plan for earning money.
I collected my severence pay, cashed out, went home, got in my Teleporter™, ported back to 1999, invested in American flags
manufactured in China by prison labor (I also invested in Chinese prison labor), and then went back to my bank account. Viola!
The old “Teleporter Switcheroo.” I can’t believe it took me that long to figure out an ending to this little story.

Thank you,

David Cross

A
S THIS WAS GOING TO PRESS AND
I
WAS SKIMMING IT OVER FOR
one last time but not really paying that much attention because I had already gone over it before, my mind started drifting,
and it occurred to me how much subject matter I left out. Or, didn’t cover, might be a more appropriate thing to write, since
I can always cover it later in a second book (if you’d be so generous enough to have me) and I didn’t think of it to include
initially, so it wasn’t knowingly omitted. Anyway, I realized that I’ve written about the dangerous lunacy of the more prevalent
and obvious religions, specifically the sexist, sadly insular, and antiquated demands of extreme Judaism, but have barely
commented on the criminality and immoral depravity of Islam (which translates to, literally, “be in submission” to God). Nor
of the attendant dangers of Sharia law to not just all women and unbearded men but most of humanity and its very future on
this planet.