After thirty minutes of a drunken argument about the necessity and quality of the Los Angeles subway system, Todd and I find ourselves waiting at the Hollywood terminal to test it out at one A.M. Next to us a family with a retarded kid and what I assume to be some kind of junkie also wait for the next train. Todd elbows me and points in the general direction of a hobo, crouching by what I make out to be a log of human shit near the stairwell and says, “Dude, check out that guy with his deuce.”
The retarded kid sees the feces at the same time Todd does and starts screaming, “Mommy, he poodied! Mommy, that man poodied on the ground!” which gets no reaction from the hobo, who remains crouched by his work. This goes on for a while.
When the subway train finally pulls up, I convince Todd to get on a car that does not contain the retarded kid, which turns out to be a mistake because the car we do get on contains a weatherworn woman who can’t be any younger than fifty-five with eyes that don’t really focus on anything holding a brown-stained teddy bear that at one time was pink, and a black guy in an Adidas sweat suit who I’m pretty sure is carrying at least a knife, but more likely a gun.
The train pulls away from the terminal and our fate is sealed.
Todd says, “So what do you think now?” and I’m reminded that there was an original reason for us to be on the subway.
I say, “Uh, I still think L.A. can do without it.”
“Whatever, dude. This is the fucking shit.”
Todd and I don’t say anything for the next few minutes. Then the old lady with the bear says what I think is the following: “Kiss my bear and I’ll suck your cock.”
I’m positive she didn’t actually say this and I’m drunk enough to say, “Excuse me?”
And she says again, “Kiss my bear and I’ll suck your cock.”
Todd says, “Did she just say kiss my bear and I’ll suck your cock?”
The old lady says, “You bet your ass I’ll suck those cocks.”
Todd and I are both stunned into silence. She says again, “Kiss my bear and I’ll suck your cock.”
I shoot a quick glance at the black guy in the Adidas sweat suit just to see if he’s getting any of this. He seems to be unfazed by what’s going on and I don’t know if any of this means anything to him until he says, “Well, you gonna kiss her fuckin’ bear or what?” And it becomes suddenly clear to me that this man is the bear-wielding old lady’s pimp. I immediately wonder if I’m going to be forced to accept a blow job from this aged and most likely disease-ridden whore at gunpoint, and worse, made to kiss her bear in order to receive the blow job.
I look at Todd, who’s dazed.
I say, “Uh, no, thanks.”
The pimp says, “You two faggots or somethin’?”
The old whore scratches out a laugh and then says, “Hey, faggots, you kiss my bear and I’ll suck your faggot cocks.”
For some reason my immediate reaction is to defend my sexuality to the pimp and his whore, so I say, “No, we’re straight.”
The pimp says, “Then kiss her fuckin’ bear.”
Todd finally chimes in, “I don’t think so, man.”
The whore says again, “You kiss my bear and I’ll suck your cock.”
The pimp says, “If you ain’t gonna kiss her bear then you gotta get off this train.”
I wonder how close the next stop is and hope we get to it before we’re killed.
For the next five minutes the whore insists that we kiss her bear so she can suck our cocks, and the pimp keeps asking us if we’re sure we’re not faggots. When we get to the next stop, across the street from Universal Studios, Todd and I get off the train and make our way aboveground, where we take a cab back to the bar we originally came from in Hollywood.
As we sit back down at the bar and order two beers, Todd says, “Hey, dude, was that bitch on the subway ninety-eight percent?”
Despite the possibly life-threatening situation we managed to narrowly escape, I force myself to imagine getting head from the repulsive whore and then fucking her so I can accurately answer Todd’s question.
I say, “She’s about as close to a two-percenter as you can get, but if it’s disease-free and she disappears right after I fuck her and her pimp’s not around…I’d fuck her.”
Todd says, “Me, too.”