Hag

Pinto guy was pretty antsy on the way. He kept saying he just had to make a couple of stops first. I’d already dropped so I was seeing tracers on the way down into the ravine, and wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying. He stopped the car in the parking lot of the three giant glass pyramids, the ones that are the different climates—jungle, desert and something else. I wished they were open and I could go into the desert one. It would have been so nice to just sit by a cactus.

Pinto guy asked for a blowjob and I started laughing. I was screaming, really. He got pissed and just started jerking off. There was no hundred lot of acid, I guess. I was getting hypnotized by the steam on the glass of the jungle pyramid, or maybe I was hallucinating. I kept doing the side-eye to see if he was finished, and finally he took out some Kleenex and drove me back to the party.

Lance was still in the living room with the Witch and the Warlock. There were so many people it was hard to move, and the Warlock kept saying, “Isn’t that right bebbe?” to everybody. The Witch cornered me and started talking about owls just as the Pyramid Pinto jerk off guy came up to us. “Well, I’m going now,” he said. “Bye.” “You have an important connection to this boy,” the Witch said as he squeezed his way out the door, “I can sense it.”

When all the cherry cars and the paddy wagon arrived we walked three doors down to Garnet’s house. It was a Brian Jones kind of place. Persian carpets, paintings. He took Lance into the other room to show him the art, and Anika arranged herself beside me on the couch. She craned around and stared right into my eyes. “There’s something I would like to ask you,” she said. “Is there a character in Alice in Wonderland you particularly connect with?”

“Yeah…. Alice.” I said. She was still staring. I could hear Lance laughing in the kitchen, a piercing heeeee hawwww guffaw that reminded me of a donkey crying.

“I think that is possibly the most conventional answer I have ever received to that question” she said. The laughter in the kitchen suddenly became high-pitched squeals. Lance came rushing into the living room, with Garnet behind him. He was carrying a platter of meat. “Ewww! I saw the veins!” Lance screamed. It was moose, not mousse. “We have to get out of here! Let’s go to the club.”

The first person we saw when we got there was Farrah. Empress Farrah, the boy most wanted. He rules the club. A mind tuned to the intricacies of command. He has blonde lioness hair in the manner of a Charlie’s Angel, thus his name. He approached our table with his sister Ping Pong, sending the chicken hawks fluttering. Lance began babbling about moose and paddy wagons. “And this is your sister?” Farrah said, turning his high beams on me. “You must come from a gorgeous family.” He tossed his hair and looked at Lance. ” She’s Dorian Gray.”

“We’ve singled you out for the court,” Farrah said. “Won’t you come over?” The silent presence of Ping Pong was bugging me. She was beyond cryptic, smiling serenely at each one of Farrah’s pronouncements.

“We have been divine,” Farrah said as he served Lance and me mint tea. We were sitting on the floor in his living room. “But somehow along the way we forgot this and act as though we are limited by matter.” He leaned back on his pile of pillows and smiled. He’d insisted we put on embroidered Moroccan caftans. I was trying to arrange myself within the red and gold satin and pull the side slits together around my upper thighs. I thought he looked just like Brian Jones.

Lance hadn’t stopped nattering since we arrived. He knelt in front of Farrah, balanced on the tips of his fingers, talking about the new Billy Joel song that he liked.

“It’s like my theme song. I don’t care what you say anymore this is my life! Doo doo doo doo doo…’cause you know, it is, right?” Farrah got up only using one leg and said, “I have some very wonderful Lebanese hashish. We can use the hookah. ” When he was gone I punched Lance in the arm “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re acting like a real douchebag.”

Lance whispered, “Maybe, but he’s the best one at the club and you’ve got him.” I doubted it. Yes, he invited us over and at the club he was certainly fawning over me.
I wasn’t used to being on the sparkly receiving end of things.

I went with Farrah to his room to watch Mary Hartman Mary Hartman. We sat on the edge of the bed and held hands. Ping Pong came in at one point and sat leaning against the headboard. We watched most of the episode and then Lance came in the room. His opened his mouth and it just hung like that. “Ahhhhhhh!” he said. I looked behind me and Ping Pong was completely nude, Farrah’s other hand buried in her.

I think it’s great to be Alice. She gets to meet everyone in the story.

I was leaning over the counter at work, reading the new Creem magazine. Ilya the manager was hovering, pressing his corduroy crotch into the small of my back. “The Runaways, yes?” he said, reaching over me to pour some Canadian Club into my coke. He was eating a kielbasa in a paper napkin. Little Ukraine was the saddest kiosk of all time. Our only customers were teenagers wishing to score MDA.

“Here comes your girlfriend” Ilya said. I looked up and saw Lance walking towards us with a big orange duffle bag. Lance barely glanced at him and threw the bag down.
“I have to talk to you. We have to get out of here.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know that caretaker lady at the bingo hall? The one that wears the green cardigan all the time?”
“What about her?”
“She caught me with the cash box last night.”
“I told you! God! As if they weren’t ever going to notice.”
“Anyway. I’m going to go stay at my Dad’s in Calgary. Actually, I think I should move there. The clubs there are way better…”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because,” he said, staring at the kielbasa slowly rotating on the hot dog caddy, ” I want you to come with me.”

I thought about it. I didn’t think my Mom would even care if I moved to Calgary for a while. She was working graveyards and seeing this idiot intern from the hospital. It would be pretty great to live in a house with a pool.

Lance and I went down to the Greyhound to sell the rest of the hundred lot so we could get to Calgary. Lance went into the men’s room and I sat on the bench. I couldn’t bring myself to actually ask anyone if they want to buy some acid, even the batik skirt girl who would probably be a prime candidate. When he came out he says he sold the whole lot, and we can go. I didn’t know so many businessmen liked acid.
We hitched a ride to Calgary with a guy with a pickup truck and pale blue cowboy boots to match his suit. Lance and I cracked up when he got out to fill the tank and we saw that his boots were only painted on the bottom, the part that poked out from under his pants.

We hit a thunderstorm right around Red Deer. I love driving through lightning. It’s the one time you’re in the exact right place to be, the safest spot. The Cowboy guy mentioned the Parkside Continental at one point, so Lance perked up and started being a suck, asking all these polite questions about his job, thinking here’s a way in to the club. I know how his mind works.