I hope you remember what I can do with it. I eat McDonald’s, but think pussy. Too bad you can’t give head over the phone, ha, ha. I’m so stone exhausted that I’m falling out, but I’m sober now, Baby, and thinking of you. I hope you made it home okay and I really want you to think about splitting for a while. I can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t. I know a couple of places that’d tickle the shit outa you again, like ’member that town with the Madonna Inn that had that big pink sign and the honeymoon suite with the big round bed with the pink fuzzy spread and the heart-shaped Jacuzzi on the tile ledge next to it and how that little pretty thing of yours opened itself for me, you lying back there, holding your legs open in both your fists, ’member that? ’N I’m strong to the finish because I eat my spinach, ha, ha, ha. Think about it. I’ve got the big bucks for it. What I’ve got right now could all be gone tomorrow. I wanna do it. Don’t you wanna do it? I know I really wanna do it. And just remember, this isn’t only about partying down while you still can…
’Cause then I kept myself from slapping the Bejesus outa her ’cause she just got pissed that I went over and opened the refrigerator like, ‘You can’t open the refrigerator, man; you don’t live here no more!’ Or some weird kinda shit like that! I mean I had given my word I would never be hitting people again and I kept it. I really did, even in the face of certain provoking events that I’m not even gonna mention. And then the next thing was, it was like I just didn’t care if we were together or not, ’n I guess how it really stopped was her, not me. She said, ‘You really want to hurt me, don’t you.’ And for some reason that did it. It stopped me. It did. I said, ‘You’re not in love with him.’ ’N she said, ‘Oh, yes I am! ’N he’s the only man that’s ever made me, too!’ Now that wasn’t true. I didn’t buy that. I said, ‘Ah, fuck, you’re just a chick and chicks can be seduced, so don’t make out like it’s the romance of the century!’ She does that to me all the time, let’s me get so close, then tells me she wants to be with someone else, sees if she can get me pissed, see. It always excites the shit outa her if she can get me pissed. I don’t know, I don’t know, but I see I’m getting more patient. I just didn’t take the bait. Or like death. Take death. I see it for exactly what it is. Like them Paras coming in to get me. I saw them looking at me. They were standing over me looking down at me but I wasn’t there. I was up on the ceiling watching them talking down to me and me talking up to them. I wasn’t really there, see, ’n what they did didn’t matter. Then I was in the hospital knowing now, for sure, consciousness goes on to exist, but, hey, maybe not! Maybe you can only leave your body as long as it’s still alive! Ha, ha! Hard to say, you know, and only one way to find out. One of the Paras said it was cosmic to see someone dead, and then to bring them back to life. ‘Wrong, you Peckerheads,’ I said, ‘I was never dead!’
Justify?! Justify?! Hey, fuck you, man! No one’s trying to justify nothin’! I told you! Right up front I told you! When a dude tells me he’s done with a chick I believe him! You did, man! You told me yourself, man! The hell you didn’t, John! You did! The day you got sentencing you told me! The hell you didn’t! The day you got on the bus you said it, ‘The bitch and I are done, man!’ That’s exactly what the fuck you said! ’N I can prove it, too, man…
All’s I wanted was for her to say, ‘I’m sorry, Baby. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m glad you’re back. Lemme put my arms around you...’
Yeah, doesn’t she look like she’s stoned? She always does. You’re absolutely right. Hey, she’s my buddy, man. Anybody says shit ’bout her I’ll kick their ass, man. I’ll kick their motherfuckin’ ass, whether I can do it or not!
Now the hot one over there, tha’ little one, she was ponying her ass off, she was definitely out there, was how I was thinking, first time I ever saw the two of them at the Palomino Club, they both was dancing together then. Now this is something that goes way back, like right after I first met all them people, Johnny, Eddie, Teri, Jackie. ’N Jac ’n John was tight then, before he got popped off for wrecking into all those cars in the Ban-Dar parking lot that time ’cause he was pissed off at her or something, when I’d first moved up here. So this time I’m watching Ter dance, ’n Jac says, ‘You’ve always liked that, huh? ’N I go, ‘Your little sister?’ ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘I’ve seen you watching her.’ Now I don’t say nothing, and she goes, ‘Hey, I can handle your weirdness if you can handle mine.’ Then the next second, ’cause I don’t say nothing, I’m thinking about it, see, she starts in at me, like really pissed, saying, ‘I see that really gets you off, doesn’t it.’ And then walks out! Man, I’m not even sure what she’s saying, right? She’s the one that had the idea that I had the idea, which I did, ha, ha, so’s I had to go on outside an’ run her down. So then she wouldn’t talk to me, so I says, ‘You know you love me; you know that.’ ’N she unlocks the car, lets me in, then pushes me right out again. Then changes her mind, tells me to get back in, takes me back to her place, an’ we get down, ’n she’s mad about it all over again, and kicks me out!
‘Mommy likes you, she wants you to come back and see her. She’s sorry about being so mean.’ That’s what her kid said. She coached her, I know she did. First she says what her name is. ‘I’m Dawnie,’ she says. Then says how far along in school she is. Then, ‘Come see Mommy; you better come!’ Eight years old, man, and already she’s running a hustle. Now this is right after the first time we’ve gotten down, Jac ’n me. So now I’m talkin’: ‘Meet me at the Stardust,’ I say. Like no way am I gonna be on her turf, not till we get some clear understanding laid down. Hey, you gotta believe! Like no way am I gonna rub Big J.’s nose in it. I hope to Christ he never knows! Yeah, I know how he does. Yeah, and forget it. Making the dude feel bad is just not my style okay? So, anyways, the motel, right? She says she’ll get rid of her kids if I want that. That’s what she says. She’ll leave them with her mother – now this’s before we even get down – she’ll leave her kids, she knows I’ll really like her, she can see everything that’s ahead, she knows how it’s all gonna work out, it’s all gonna be just wonderful, that’s how it’s all gonna be, then says she’d like to have another kid, like one of mine, maybe. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘not one of yours, maybe, but, if the right person came along?’ Yeah, ‘the right person.’ Sure. You bet. ’Cause you know what I thought? If she’d do that to them, go off and leave her own kids, why wouldn’t she do that to one of mine? ‘Look,’ I told her, ‘calm down; don’t be so damn desperate; things are all right the way they are. You don’t have to give up your kids.’ So you know what she said? ‘No one leaves me,’ she says, ‘I always leave them.’ ‘Well, great,’ I say, ‘you do that; there’s the door and that round thing there, there about halfway down, that’s the doorknob.’ Which starts it, right? And now we’re down and going at it and she can’t get her nut! I mean, no way! Nothing works! ‘So, look,’ I say, ‘are you on the pill?’ ‘The pill?’ she says. ‘Well, maybe I am, and maybe I’m not.’ ‘That’s it,’ I say, ‘that’s why you’re so uptight. I mean you sure weren’t the last time. You sure got off the last time.’ ‘Well, sure,’ she says, ’cause that was with a stranger, you can always get off with a stranger, now you’re not a stranger!’
Nope, he’s always been like that. ‘One a’ these days, Bub,’ I says to him, I told him, ‘you’re gonna get your ass knocked clear up to your shoulders.’ Shit, I’ve got the diabetes, the emphysema, the chronic heart disorder to deal with, the two leaky heart valves ’n all that shit, but that’s nothing compared to the worry. It’s the goddamn worry that’s killing me. ’Cause if he’d just quit fucking around ’n start playing on the square. Well, he won’t. ’Cause you tell a kid something and don’t follow through on it, you break something that never comes around again. The day his mother kicked me out I told her it’d come back on her. Her whole damn family’s like that. They did it to her as a kid, and she did it to him. ’Cause he don’t trust nobody, see. He’ll tell you he does, but he doesn’t. ’Cause she quit on him right from the get-go, and he quits on himself. Right from the get-go! All she could say was, ‘It’s dead, I tell ya; it’s already dead!’ ’N she wouldn’t push, see, not one lick. ‘You wanna die, goddamn you,’ I told her, ‘You just go ahead ’n die, but don’t you quit!’ Well, she quit, and I hadda go out there, grab me another doc, ’n have the poor little shit cut right out. Put him in an incubator. Cost me a goddamn bundle, too. I’ve seen it all, Kiddo; you can take it from me. I’ve been fucked by experts, and big ol’ bright eyes thinks he can slip one by me, coming over here wanting two hundred bucks. ‘What’s that for, Jackie and the kids? Bullshit,’ I told him, ‘I know what it’s for. You ain’t foolin’ me. That oughta take care of you and your problem for about two days,’ is what I said. ‘You show me a paycheck, an’ then we’ll talk some money for your kids.’ You know, I raised the dumb bastard and he thinks I don’t know what he’s thinking! And her, Irene! All that pious and holy talk now! She was hell on wheels, Buster. She could tell you the length ’n width of every cock in this town, hard or soft, an’ now every other word outa her mouth is, ‘Jesus’ this, ’n ‘Jesus’ that. Been born again, see. Thinks that’s gonna do her some good.