The story started with a gun shot. Creeping darkness seemed to permeate the area, and although seemingly alive no one would have expected the shadows to move with such blinding malevolent speed.
And it was her, I should have known. It had to be her, it was always her. Damn she was the very reason I am here. Caught between the proverbial rock and the hard place, and out of Marlboros. It just had to happen now too, not that it matters anymore I’ll be in no shape to tell this story in two seconds from now. And that’s only if she is merciful, but when has a woman ever been? Chewed my heart, spit it like bad tobacco, and now I’m hopin’ this endless barrel is a lighter. But let me backtrack for a second…
There is a reason why most stalkers are men. First let me tell you that we do not think of it as stalking; pursuing, seductively wooing in the age-old tradition of the minstrel under the railing, Rapunzel and her braid. Would anybody have sent Romeo to jail, or locked up ugly old Cyrano for having a busted boxer’s nose before his time and the mighty pen to match his sword skills? We’d be illiterate…
Anyway there is a reason why most stalkers are men, and that’s because I haven’t met a man yet who would consciously deny a woman the right to pursue him and try hard as hell to lay him. Hell it’s too often us on the other end of that line to not enjoy the attention when it happens. And if the lady turns out to be a psycho? Well then you get the occasional restraining order and the odd laugh at the face of some distraught bird in the papers, but no one takes it seriously.
Have me follow a chick around incessantly and next thing you know I’m talking to Larry King from behind bars, Howard Stern is spoofing me while rubbing a porn’s stars implants, and she is crying it off on Oprah’s new Gucci blouse while her book is selling millions…
Talk of fair under the sun…
Passing on all the details, that’s how I ended up here, facing her, and itching with withdrawal. The cigarette industry is full of shit let me tell you, every time you think you can make it through the day with less than half a pack, something’s gotta remind you you’re a closet crackhead…But you probably wanna know more right?
The damn “Public’s Right to Know”…
And why all this talk about stalkers you might ask while you’re at it? Please don’t be shy now, not now that you’ve got me going…
I have never stalked anybody, not that you’d think so by my introductory statement, but really never, and the last thing I expected was to be stalked by her. Or by anybody. It’s all gotta do with Myspace.com, and the virtual world of Internet “communication”, call it whatever you want its a major fuckfest out there, wherever “there” is between the folds of space. The best one is Migente.com, every damn Nuyorican, Dominican, Wannabe Cuban Refugee is up on it talking about upholding the culture. Just as long as they wear rubbers, and remember that Herpes has no cure…
So I hooked up my page at Myspace, same as everybody, pictures to make me look better than I am (which is pretty good, no joke) and a whole bunch of personality type shit as if the crap you pour on your web page has got anything to do with your natural abilities, but such is the beauty of the Web, every one is a virtual god, Job the Lawnmower Man, a retard with a computer…
Anyway she came up pretty late on my list, after I had deleted a potential few. Their pics were way too much, and plus any chick who throws herself at you like that, virtual or not, half naked on a web cam…well you get my drift, back to Migente and a little visit from Santa Herpes every few years if you’ve been a good boy…
The thing is this; I got a thing for older women. No joke. I do. I like me an experienced mama, but hey she actually had me going: no picture, I was blocked off her page, and could only chat her panties down when she chose so. Which was pretty often, but not so often. Well, whatever she did, one day I ended up in the 15th precinct in Honolulu, high on X with a major headache and two broken ribs….
“Hey q-t how bout Honolulu?”
Now has anybody ever got a one liner charged with such rampant Spring Break sexuality? Certainly not yours truly. Many things have stayed in South Beach and Cancun, and in Panama City, and in St Thomas…and in Jamaica, many more I straight up forgot, and all for the good I’m sure, but I’m goin’ on thirty, although not for much longer, and how more secret a rendezvous than waiting for Pipeline to wash your love making off the sandy beaches?
Anyway, I had never been to Honolulu, hated Bay Watch Hawaii, and if she had suggested anything continental I would have found a reason to ignore her…well maybe not, but this is my story anyway. If you wanna read hers just check the headlines tomorrow, this is a residential neighborhood, if a back alley and that 357 will make noise to deafen a blearing elephant.
We fixed the date for April 20th, at that very time, if anybody has missed the reference then you were probably that nerd in College studying for his midterms, wedgie to his glasses’ elastic band, and a dick graffittied on his door.
Fat Tuesday’s. My spot. The best Southern Comfort Hurricane there is and nothing but drunkards with fake I.D. What the fuck was I thinking? I had never even seen the bitch (lady readers you’ll have to excuse me but there’s only so much you can say about a chick staring you down with a big fuckin’ gun), but as with all things romantic and cheezy the clichés remain true: we all linger for that one blind date that answers all our questions, from the dumbest contestants on Dismissed, to Fiona in Shrek, or just Shamiqua on the block, guys included, so I dialed up, typed my credit card number down, booked the no smoker window seat, and was ready to roll with no time for jet lag. United Airlines flight 934 landing at Honululu Int at 3/20 on 4/20. Bags you’d say? Didn’t bother had my swim trunks under my Result Jeans, crisp and baggy and off for Waikiki baby!
By 4/20 the next morning I had stopped waiting for her. I was shit faced out of my head, and there was no doubt someone had slipped something in my drink. Now I had talked to nothing but underage girls all night, so I was quite sure I hadn’t run into her by accident, nor had I ever considered then that the slick shorty was actually there observing me until I was distracted enough to slip a tab in my SoCo…next thing you know I’m sky rocket high, the earth a pebble from the Magellanic Cloud and my hands all over some 17 year old titties…
I swear she said 18 your honor!
He believed me about as much as Lieutenant Kawaihie who had happily bashed in a few of my ribs, bloodied my nose and blackened my eyeball. I’m too dark skinned to bruise easily, damn Polynesians, the chick could have been a line backer, I like to think I landed a few good ones, but lets face it she wasn’t the one facing the judge looking like Jeffrey Dahmer on a bad day with traces of every drug including human urine in her system…don’t ask, I must have pissed the bar tender off. I was shipped back to Continental America on the next thing smokin’ and a three month sentence to rehab, community service at the Methadone Clinic on 161st and Grant on top of a year long probation…Yankee Stadium here I come…
And we just had to lose…mother-fucking Red Sox, break an eighty six year old jinx in a historical comeback, losing three nothing in the American Series finals (World Series semi finals for those who don’t know) and beating us at Yankee Stadium game 7 of the series…Fuck.
Anyway, I didn’t hear from boo in a minute. Good thing too, I would have punched my computer into buying myself a new one. Who in the short history of the Homo Sapien ever got stood up in Hawaii. My boy Nick used to say “Man, I couldn’t even get laid in Hawaii!” Well I got news for you Nick, neither can I…
I blocked her off. No way I was gonna talk to her, or chat, type, whatever you wanna call this “I’m trying to get laid can I at least get some head?” tryin’ too hard to be innovative bullshit. Fuck the Internet. The Onion said something funny the other day in their horoscope by Lloyd Schumer Retired Machinist: “As you by a new webcam, virtual simulator and sign up for Skype, you will find the fine line between technophile and pedophile becoming even more blurry.” Fuck the Internet.
Six months happily went by until I get a new email from some unknown broad saying: “Dick.”
What?! I mean who?! And yeah what?!
“You cheating fuck.”
Real cold shit. Who?!
“Not fifteen minutes and you were cheating on me.”
Huh?! Needless to say in six months I hadn’t given what’s her face a thought, well except every time I had to give a damn crakhead the Nancy Reagan line. If that really worked, we would have “just said no” to her husband in Office. From shitty actor to shittier President, well, he was better than our Commander in Chief now, at least he was continuing a war not making one up…
“Bitch, I don’t fucking know you!”
I mean really I don’t even know her name. And I was cheating on her?
“I saw you with that girl! Is that what you do? Jack off to 90210?! Fucker.”
BLOCK YOU OFF.
Now some people think that it’s important to have a come back. I don’t. Coming back at somebody falls right into their little attention seeking game and I’d rather ignore them. Why? Cuz personally I never felt worse than when I’m talking to thin air, with my verbal adversary going: “Uh huh yeah right.”
Next thing you know I’m getting two hundred mails a day. I mean literally Two Hundred, and all from her. Who is she? Can anybody tell me? Because I really would like to know right now given that she is about to shoot me in the face. And the thing was this, every day, all, and I mean All, the mails were from different monikers (nicknames, nick is short for moniker for those who never read Iceberg Slim novels), so I could BLOCK YOU OFF as much as I wanted she had found her way right through my control pad.
So I signed off Myspace. It was only a matter of time really, plus I’m getting laid anyway, she just made it easier, and the next day there goes my window glass, and I live on the thirty second floor…
So at first I was thinking, kids, maybe, my neighbor, she’s been mad at me for the last year since I accidentally dyed all her clothes pink with my underwear in the basement, but the 32nd floor rules out kids, unless he’s one hell of a little leaguer, and would have required a boomerang from my neighbor, which a two pound stone is not last time checked unless the immutable laws of physics and gravity have been reversed over Midtown, which they might have been, or so would David Blaine lead to believe…
The next day, however, every single one of her new emails and each again from the new alias name, (I mean is this chick Jared or something?) was titled:
Broken Heart, Broken Glass.
I actually read the first five, pointless really, but what the hell? And check this out:
Death is but a door,
Time is but a window,
I will be back.
I mean yo, shorty had actually quoted Vigo. Vigo! The Scourge of Carpathia, The Terror of Moldavia, the one man that even Bill Murray got scared of, and I don’t have Lady Liberty or proton packs at my disposal to knock her out if it comes to that…
I’m about to sound really slow, but with that came back her message saying she had been in the bar observing back in sunny, blurry-as-all-fuck Hawaii, and the X…Yeah I know slow, but then I was just pissed off, which dulls your wits, the best is being pissed off but drunk, then you can do some serious thinking.
I started checking every room in my apartment, which didn’t take long, rent doesn’t match size in New York City unless rent triples with each floor so that even the Atmosphere ain’t free these days, but anyway, she wasn’t inside my house, but that’s when I started thinking, that doesn’t mean she’s not inside my building…
Boom, down to the lobby, to find out if anybody, female preferably, had not rented out a flat in my tower. No go. So I ran across the street to the building opposite my own, even from there it would have been a hell of a shot, but it was a better theory than a 500ft little leaguer.
It turns out that yeah someone had rented a spot in that building. And when? Just eight months ago. And where? On the 33rd floor. This was my chance. I started firing questions at the Doorman, who gave me that patient New Yorkers-are-all-self involved-assholes nod, before answering:
“I couldn’t say sir, the va et viens are intense here. This is New York City.”
And there goes that fuck-you-self involved-New York-Asshole-you can’t-touch-me-I-am-doing-my-job smile. “Va et Viens!” Do I look like Francois to you motherfucker?!
The Manager was in no better a position to be of any assistance (isn’t America supposed to be the land of customer service?), because the apartment had been rented out by a man, not a lady, no sir, and his name had been? Check it out! Marcus Eric Dyson, MED, which is why all my friends call me Doc…
I’m not Tyler Durden, I’m not Johnny Depp in Secret Window, I’m no fuckin’ schyzo (I realize that my language has dropped quite a few levels in standard since I started this single perspective narrative dear reader, or listener if anybody’s there, but those were trying moments), there must be a hundred Marcus Eric Dysons in New York for all I knew, but check this out:
Our signatures matched.
Now after I babbled my story out at him and convinced him of my long arm in matters of the Law, he agreed to let me see the lease. Any forensics expert would have concluded that the hand writings were different, but it was MY signature; and the flat was empty. Whoever had lived there for the past eight months, enjoying a donut by the long view, boxed seats for the Marcus Eric Dyson Show had packed up and left.
There were no furniture in the apartment, something like that would have been noticed by my favorite Doorman, the bath tub had not been washed in at least eight months (the look of utter revulsion at both the grime and the cost to get it cleaned on the manager’s face did lighten my day a little), and flies buzzed in the stinking bedroom over the white turned brown floor mat, I’ll pass the details on the toilet bowl. In case I didn’t use enough words to paint a picture (which is a thousand by the way, no more no less) anybody who has seen Buffalo Bill’s basement before Clarice got to him will know exactly what I’m saying. I was half expecting to find a previous victim hanging with his skin peeled off and: “Too slow Slick” carved across his chest.
NYPD was of no more assistance than the other two, I mean try filing a complaint against a virtual stalker, whose name you don’t know, who’s face you’ve never seen, while on probation for attempt at statutory rape because you were stupid enough to follow her, who apparently is YOU, all the way to Hawaii for a first date. The other pig actually said: “Hell I wouldn’t cross the Mason-Dixon Line for pussy.” Lard ass…Well there was nothing they could do they said but lock her up for being a smelly chick, and that was no crime under New York State Law, but maybe I could file a federal complaint with the Bureau of Sanitation. That’s the one problem with cops, you can’t beat ‘em up.
I went all the way to Alphabet city the Loizada as Porto Ricans say, only to stumble into a bar whose owner was this wannabe rock star called Sean, insisting on playing what he thought was gonna be the next big hit by his band called My Best Fiend, I guess that makes him a gonnabe, and which song? “My Psycho”. Wow, My Psycho, by My Best Fiend, that’s way original Sean, I think you got something there. Care for the hook? “My Psychooo! Is breaking my windoow….” I ran the fuck out of there without paying for my Long Island…
I was so dazed, anguished and all around fucked up by the time I got home, which was late, drunk and famished that I didn’t pay any attention to the new reception lady in my building…
I woke up in the middle afternoon. Well woke up doesn’t quite say it; I bolted up in mid afternoon. Ever watched a western? You see what happens when a grazing cow hears a gunshot? Well that’s how I woke up, fully clothed cotton mouthed and a hangover from here to Beijing and back, via the Atlantic both ways.
The one thing I can be grateful for is that alcohol kills your dreams apparently, and so does heroin, or so said Kurt Cobain. Thank God I didn’t have dreams, Allah, Yahweh, whoever the fuck, even good old Kurt. Should never have called his band Nirvana by the way, maybe he was trying to get to it, but then, why all the drugs? Liquor? Courtney Love? Maybe he was afraid of his dreams. Maybe. Either that or he had to wake up next to Courtney and it was already hard enough having to pass out next to Courtney, so the last thing you wanted to do was to have to think about Courtney while you slept…
But I’m drifting…I bolted up, fully clothed and cotton mouthed as fuck, I can’t remember who was Cotton Mouth in Kill Bill, maybe Lucy Liu… anyway that look on her face when she realized she had just been scalped clean, that’s probably how I’m gonna look in a fraction of a second, except that gat ain’t no Hatori Hanzo, no way José, I’m gonna feel that bullet let me tell you…
The least I could have done was take a shower and change, but that was the last thing on my mind. The first thing being: Why among all the fools mama raised in spite of numerous claims to the contrary had I returned right to the building, floor, apartment and bedroom where she, Marcus Eric Dyson Double D, knew that I stayed at?!
I ran for the door, bumped my head right against it, stumbled back against the wall, and couldn’t find my keys. I turned my apartment inside out; they were exactly where I’d left them the night before: in the pants I had slept in, in the pocket I had patted fifteen times without once putting my hand in it.
They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and again and expecting different results. Whoever genius came up with that one lived in a world where items had never been shrunk to fit fifty to a two inch pocket, must’ve lived around the 12th century where you had to have forearms the size of Hulk Hogan’s thighs to carry a set of keys. Remember The Name of the Rose? (Not just the sex scene we all remember that) but every time they had to open a door? Or turn a page in a book for that matter? It looked like it took all the energy in an Extra Value Meal to make it through the preface. No wonder no one could read back in the day, who would want too? Not after you had already toiled all day in the field beating slaves, chewing on a straw…
Once I had put my hand on the key, I unlocked the top lock, and popped my head outside, looking down the hallway for any motion or flash of a Hatori Hanzo. The neighbor across the hall from me is a bona fide voyeur too; he must be looking through the peephole having a field day. But you probably wanna know what actually happened after my paranoia subsided, not my endless rant in fifteen square feet…
When I reached the lobby, I realized that in spite of all my previous reasoning (thank you mama), my apartment was the safest place for me to be, just as long as it was empty when I walked in and shut the door behind me. Everywhere else, anywhere else and any other member of the majority gender on this planet was not…
The guy at the reception desk caught my bleary eyes, and the sweet cologne whose fragrance only a dozen Long Island Ice Teas truly blends and handed me a postcard. Well not really a postcard, one of those cards you make out of a snap shot. It was a picture of me, sitting in Sean’s bar viewed from the bathroom and it read:
If I show you the roses, will you follow?
I love that song now, I do. Where The Wild Roses Grow by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds featuring Kylie Minogue, I just wonder every time how Elisa Day hadn’t seen it coming…The reception guy, Jim, his name tag said, was grinning at me:
“You must have made quite an impression on her last night.”
And that grin as if I had been caught making out with the ugliest chick in the bar. Who?! Who motherfucker?! Impression on who?! Jim wasn’t grinning so hard anymore, and God was my head throbbing. The temp last night, the girl sitting right behind this desk is who. Jeez pall, I’m just saying….
I thought back to what I was thinking outside the elevator. By the time I managed to get my head back that is, with Jim reaching slowly under his desk for the security button, and considered heading back up, work from home, order take out Chinese and weed delivery service for the rest of my life. But by then she could already be inside my house, I couldn’t get lucky twice, and how would I know who would be delivering my food anyway?
I kept looking out the back window of the cab and back at the post card. Hakeem better make it to Queens and fast, but that’s not gonna happen not caught in late afternoon NYC traffic; only place worse is Bangkok, I’d be lucky if I made it before nightfall, and in this traffic anybody who could follow me was worthy of getting stalked by, I mean that’s some serious detective skills we’re talking here. Why Queens? Cuz I absolutely loathe the place, so there’s no chance of me getting distracted there…
How could he have been so stupid?
Any suspense flick where the bad guy wins bears that inevitable question. How could the good guy, who had been so smart up to that very moment, suddenly make the dumbest mistake that cost him is life?
Well I got the answer now; he was stupid because you only realize how stupid you are when it’s too late to do a damn thing about it.
You get stupid because you get secure, because once the panic recedes, once the adrenaline fades out of your system, you start thinking like a damned fool again, and you forget for that second too long exactly in what shit you are. You get comfortable for one second, disregard the wrong noise, take the wrong turn, the turn that just fifteen seconds ago you would have never took, and that’s when everybody and their mama goes: How could he have been so stupid?
I got stupid cuz I got lost in my thoughts, I got stupid because I thought: Well, I’ve been alone for at least fifteen minutes maybe I can allow myself a breath, and a smoke. So I made that turn down that back alley, started looking through my pockets for my Marlboros, found them, realized my pack was empty, and that’s when I heard a muttered word (They called me the Wild Row-woze, but my nayme was Eerik Die-son), and turned around upon the endless barrel hoping it was a lighter and back to square fuckin one. Had the chick planted this song in my head on purpose so that would be the last song I’d sing?
So here I am staring down the barrel of a gun, in pitch darkness, facing her a woman I cannot see and have never seen, whose name I didn’t know, singing a twist to the creepiest song I had ever heard hoping that somebody would please get Riddick so he could tell me at least what the fuck she looked like in this area permeating creeping darkness of blinding malevolently fast shadows, thinking: Damn how could I have been so stupid?
And for a second there I actually believe that I will have time to get some answers, understand, figure what the hell had happened? And why me? And is she at least cute? Or am I getting shot by a butt ugly broad? Not that it makes a difference as far as bone/lead friction calculated within velocity/distance matters divided into the effective penetration factor plus Murphy’s Law.
All the questions that a million other people throughout history have wondered when facing a death they had not foreseen, could not possibly have predicted would happen to them when they woke up that morning kissed their wife, husband, inflatable doll, goodbye got on the subway, or train, or car, and commuted to the Financial District only to find AA Flight number 11 about to smash right through their coffee machine, must have asked themselves (even though they had just seen the exact same thing happen across the plaza from them 20 minutes before) and that not one single one of them ever got to find out. So why should I get mine?
One thing is true though about staring death in the face. I don’t know about any shining light and open arms. I remember Benicio Del Toro on Actors’ Studio, what he would like God to tell him at the Pearly Gates: “Here’s the key, come and go as you please.” But I won’t be that lucky, even Lucifer hadn’t been, it’s a one way street as far as I’m concerned so I can’t tell you about a shiny light, or a bright smile or wide arms, or big giant boobs, but I can tell you this.
Right before you die Time extends towards infinity. Take this endless narrative, my useless anecdotes, bad jokes, foul talk, and tutti cuanti, I only started winding my tale down at the very moment I turned around on the barrel with nicotine withdrawal. I don’t know if you’re entire life flashes through your head, that will be another fraction of a second into eons of time between Now and Then, but I know this much. Either I have been granted a full blown live experience of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity spoken in the immortal words of LL Cool J as: “put your hands on a burning stove a second will feel like an hour, make love to a beautiful woman and an hour will feel like a second”, with Michael Rappaport to concur.
Anyway…So it’s either that or my brains nervous terminals, connections and neurons are way ahead of me in the eternal order of priorities, realizing: “Yo! This is it yall! It’s our last shot! We better start fuckin’ like crazy ‘cuz this is it two seconds ‘til splatter!” and are functioning at such speed that it actually feels like time has stretched out to embrace me and grant me one more lifetime (even if it’s the exact same one, thank you very much Time) before taking mine away from me.
Not that it matters either way because it feels like Time has stretched and that’s ALL that matters right now, because I won’t get any answers, I won’t come and go as I please.
With Time working in slow mo’ I hope the pain won’t stretch out either but I guess that’s the flip side, all I can see is the light of ignition at the once black end of the barrel, and my dumb ass is thinking, Ben “I need acting school” Affleck dressed up as a pale imitation of the Dare Devil, a movie only worth it for the second and a half it takes Jennifer Garner to say: Elektra Nachios (multiplied by the number of times you rewind and replay it), looking down at this guy he just threw onto the MTA tracks and yelling at him: “You see that light at the end of the tunnel? Guess What! It ain’t Heaven! IT’S THE C TRAIN!”
3,2,1…
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