Whatever the cause, I was not about to let this moment pass.  I focused my mental energy on putting words on paper.  Meanwhile, people came into the bar.  People left.  Songs were played on the jukebox.  There were whispers, shouts, jokes, and laughter.  I was barely aware of any of it.

The closest I came to having my concentration broken was when I felt a woman's hand on my thigh and her voice murmur in my ear, asking what I was writing and if I wanted a shot of tequila. At least I thought it was a woman. I was so consumed by my work that I couldn't tell.  It didn't matter.  I was not to be disturbed.  With the simple white lie "I have scabies," the hand retreated and I was left in peace.

An hour and a half passed.  I dropped my pen and rubbed my tired eyes.  The story was done.  Except for putting a title and byline at the top of the page, I never backtracked.  There were no rewrites, no second thoughts.  Kerouac would have approved, except for when I turned down that drink.

Whatever spell I was under broke when I finished writing and my recent memories began to fade like the hazy morning recollections of a dream.  So when I looked down at the fruit of my efforts and began to read, it was like seeing the words for the very first time:

* * *

HOT LEAD, DEAD SPED

By D. Shithammer Jennings

It was a dark and stormy night at the donut shop.  Ernie, the older and fatter of the two cops, sat in a chair made for a much smaller man, his gelatinous buttocks spilling over the sides.  He turned, and with chocolate-stained lips that looked like a puckered unwiped sphincter, blew kisses at Trixie, the pert young cashier behind the register who worked 12-hour shifts so she could help pay the medical expenses for her mother who had cancer and AIDS.

"You're doing it wrong, Ernie," said Bert, who was considerably younger than his partner and rail thin from a metabolism that vaporized every calorie that went down his gullet.  "If you want to make a favorable impression on a lady, you have to demonstrate an interest in fulfilling her needs."

"You don't say," said Ernie, wiping his upper lip and smearing the bits of chocolate into a dirty Sanchez.

"Totally," said Bert.  "I read it in Hustler."

With that, Bert slapped the palm of his hand down on the table.  When Trixie turned to face him, he brought his jelly donut up just below his lower lip.  His gaze met hers and his tongue descended toward the jelly hole.  It started working it gently at first, almost lovingly.  He then grunted and his tongue kicked into overdrive, its now rapid-fire jackhammer thrust penetrating the gooey orifice, tearing it wider, and causing a high-fructose hemorrhage to spill down over the lanky cop's bony fingers.

Trixie averted her eyes and went back to her original task of making sure that all the dollar bills in the till were facing the same direction.

"Yeah," said Bert.  "That's the shit."

Just then, a voice crackled in on the walkie-talkie hanging from Ernie's belt.  It reported a domestic disturbance at 821 N. Piojos Avenue and was requesting a unit to respond.

"No rest for the wicked," said Ernie, reaching for the walkie-talkie as he rocked one butt cheek up off the chair and cut the cheese.  Unfortunately for the police dispatcher on the other end, Ernie had his thumb pressing the talk button when his ass tuba was sounding the call to arms.

"Unit 47 is on it," Ernie said into the speaker.  There was no utterance from the dispatcher other than an utterance that sounded like "eww," or perhaps "ugh."

"Let's go, Bert," said Ernie.

"Ready to roll," said Bert, who drew upon his high-school basketball experience and lobbed a hook shot of his jelly donut toward the trash can.  It was a near perfect throw and he sank the pastry in the wastebasket easily.  The watercolor Trixie had painted and hung over the receptacle provided an excellent backboard, the donut bouncing neatly off the portrait of balance-beam gold medalist Shawn Johnson planting her dismount and leaving only a small red stain between the young gymnast's supple thighs.

Ernie and Bert left the donut shop and sped away in their patrol car.

Meanwhile at 821 N. Piojos Avenue, a woman with a pair of garden shears was chasing her husband around the dining-room table.  After flushing her medication a few days before, she decided that her husband was having an affair with their pet parrot and that the only way to restore domestic bliss was to emasculate him.  Her husband's emphatic denials only served to fuel her rage.

 "Give us a kiss," said the bird.

The husband knew he had no chance of fighting off his wife, who outweighed him by at least 50 pounds and possessed a feral strength common among those who have gone berserk.  Earlier on while she was busy arming herself in the garage, he had managed to lock her out of the house and dial 911 before she used her Billy Blanks Tae Bo Workout training to kick in the front door.   Now as the two did laps around the table, he was confident that he would only have to stay away from her for a few more minutes until the cops arrived.

He was sadly mistaken because at that very moment, Ernie and Bert's police car was pulling up in front of the driveway at 821 S. Piojos Avenue, home of Mrs. Mongo and her son Lloyd.

Lloyd Mongo, a 25 year old man with a learning disability, was crouched on the floor inside the house with his nose about a foot away from the TV screen.  He was watching his favorite show, "Spartacus: Blood and Sand."  His mother had outfitted his protective retard helmet with one of those paper snowflake decorations that folds back upon itself, giving his headgear the look that it was topped with a Roman gladiator's crest.  Lloyd wore that helmet with pride and wielded a wooden yardstick as a makeshift sword.

Mrs. Mongo was not at home.  She had gone to the store to pick up a quart of cheap vodka.  Purchasing liquor was a violation of her parloe but she had found that the dull haze of inebriation provided a little vacation from the stress of caring for someone whose heart was good but was able to nothing but need.

Lloyd's lower lip folded down almost to chin level and thick rivulets of drool streamed from the corners of his mouth, as often happened when he saw full or partial nudity on television.  Alas, this moment of prurient joy was cut short when Ernie and Bert's shoulders smashed through the screen door and the two police officers propelled themselves into the living room.  Ernie staggered forward, barely able to stay on his feet while Bert was steadier and immediately assumed a firing stance with his weapon pointing directly at Lloyd Mongo.

Lloyd, startled by the commotion stood up and turned to face the two policemen.  He had never had a gun pointed at him so he decided to introduce himself.

"I am Tardacus!" he said.

"Freeze, fucknugget!" commanded Bert.

Lloyd wanted to dance instead of freeze so he bounced up and down while waving his yardstick sword around over his head.

"See ya later, gladiator," Lloyd said, singing the words as much as speaking them.

Bert responded to these shenanigans by unloading his his service revolver into Lloyd Mongo's chest.  The impact of the six bullets knocked Lloyd straight back.  Marrowly missing the television, he landed on the floor with his feet crossed at the ankles and his arms outstretched at the shoulders.  His heart stopped beating, his IQ dropped 57 points, and he was dead.

"Jeez," said Ernie, catching his breath and steadying himself.  "I think you just shot an unarmed man."

"Yeah and I'd do it again," said Bert, illustrating his point by pulling the trigger a few more times so the hammer would click over the empty chambers.

"If we don't fix this up, it's gonna be a royal pain in the ass," said Ernie. "I've been through this before.  There will be questions, internal affairs, community-oversight committees.  I better go get the throwdown kit."

Ernie went outside to the trunk of the police car and returned with a black nylon sack.  He opened its zipper and planted its contents on Lloyd Mongo.

"He doesn't look so innocent now.  Does he, Bert?" said Ernie.

"He sure as hell doesn't," said Bert.

It was true.  Lloyd might have been sprawled out in the same position as Jesus on the cross, but he looked decidedly un-Christlike with a loaded gun in one hand and a DVD full of kiddie porn in the other.

The hearing over the shooting would prove to be a mere formality, a rubber-stamp affair that ended with the suggestion that Bert be awarded with a citation of merit.  The blame was to fall elsewhere.

Even though Lloyd Mongo was allegedly an armed and dangerous pedophile, records showed that his mental handicap was too severe for him to be held responsible for his actions.  Culpability must therefore fall squarely on his mother.  She was tried and convicted of parole violation and criminal neglect, which qualified as her second and third strike and sshe was sentenced to 25 years to life.

Mrs. Mongo gambled with alcohol and lost.  Can you afford to make the same mistake?

And there it was, the finest piece of fiction I had ever penned.  I had clearly outdone myself with this work of unparalleled savage beauty.

What separated the story from my lesser efforts, and in fact, propelled it from its opening as a charming if innocuous cop bromance toward its tragic conclusion and cautionary coda was an honest appreciation for an oft overlooked segment of humanity.  In short, I owed it all to retarded people, the learning disabled, the mentally handicapped, dipshits, or whatever one chose to call them.  It was their spirit and zest for living that I gave a face to in the form of Lloyd Mongo, a simple man who was denied the right to live his own simple dream.

"I love retards!" I blurted, unable to contain my gratitude.

My outburst garnered a few odd looks from a couple of other bar patrons, and approving nod from Henry Silt, and a perplexed smile from the lipstick-smeared face of Carl.

What? I could hardly believe it. I wondered how Carl, who had arguably one of the least kissable faces on the planet, ended up with a ruby-red smudge that went all the way from his mouth top behind his earlobe.  That question was answered when he went back to making out with the woman sitting next to him.  She was older but still attractive.  In fact, she looked a whole lot like...Marlo Thomas?  I'm not saying that was her, but the resemblance was uncanny.  Perhaps there was plenty of magic on this night of nights to go around.

At that point, my elation ebbed and I realized what a fool I'd been.  I left Chuck E. Cheese in a huff because I didn't care for the Huey Lewis karaoke crowd.  Well, that was the old me.  From this point forward, I was going to cease being so petty and judgmental.  I was going to march back to Chuck E. Cheese right then, order myself a slice of Hawaiian, and give a standing ovation after every Huey Lewis song.

Or rather, I would if it wasn't already too late.  Bar time was ten to eleven, so it was probably actually fifteen minutes before that.  There was a good chance that Chuck E. Cheese was closed.  Maybe they were staying open later because of karaoke night.  It was worth a try.

I put my notebook in my backpack and left the bar.  It was raining harder now wand had been for some time, judging from the size of the puddles in the intersection the traffic went splashing through.  I hurried along at a brisk trot, almost slipping and falling on the wet sidewalk a couple of times because the soles of my shoes had worn to the point where there was almost no traction.

Chuck E. Cheese was closed when I arrived.  The doors were bolted and there were no lights or signs of movement inside.

However, the Huey Lewis singers had not gone home.  They stood outside in the rain, presumably waiting for their ride.  The scene made me think of domestic turkeys and how they tend to drown when left outside in the rain because of their habit of staring up in the sky with their mouths hanging open.  These birds are known for their low intelligence ('tard and feathered, if you will) and I hoped my friends standing across the street would not suffer a similar fate.

Let there be no mistake.  These were my friends and I owed them so much.  I decided to give them my thanks the best way I knew how.  I burst into song, a Huey Lewis song, one I hoped they would enjoy.  I am a terrible singer, utterly talentless, but I could think of no better way to express what I felt.

"The power of love is a curious thing," I sang off key.  "Makes one man weep, makes another man sing..."

They were delighted and by the time I got to "Stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream," they had joined in, making up for my shortcomings as a crooner with their powerful backing vocals.

I walked across the street and by the time we finished the song, I standing right in front of them.  They clapped and laughed, and then in unison, opened their arms wide to take me into their fold.  I stepped forward and let my friends envelope me.  Never in my life had I felt so accepted.  Arms wrapped around me, hands patted my back and pinched the softer parts of my torso.  My armpits were sniffed and one person used my hair as a handkerchief to blow my nose.  I felt a finger start working its way between my buttocks.  I clenched at first then relaxed, welcoming it as one should any friend in need.

The power of love is a curious thing.  It is a curious thing indeed.

Carl was quieter now from his end of the bar. Though his heart undoubtedly still ached for his beloved Marlo Thomas, he wouldn't risk getting cut off.  The prospect of sobering up up must fill a man like Carl with dread, so the only noise he made was a low hum like a dial tone punctuated with the occasional tearful sniffle.

Henry had picked up his towel and glass, and started his cleaning routine.  He seemed to be concentrating on one area, some smudge or water stain visible only to him. 

"Any retards in your family, Dave?" he asked.

"No, but a lot of them sure act like it."

I laughed.  Henry didn't.  I was hoping a little levity would speed this process along.  He would tell me about some cousin or niece of his who could recite Dr. Seuss books verbatim or had sculpted Barney the Dinosaur out of a lump of shit.  I would say how wonderful that was and then steer the conversation toward Henry's cop past.  Something told me it wasn't going to be that way and that I was going to get an earful.

"My grandfather was retarded," he went on.  "He was also the greatest man I ever knew.  Of course, when I was a kid I didn't used to see him that way.  Back then, he was just Grandpa 'Tard.  When we used to go visit, I would laugh at him for opening the cereal box from the bottom and spilling Cheerios all over the kitchen table.  I stopped doing that the day my grandmother hit me upside the head and told me to show some respect.  My grandmother had a huge hand to slap you with, big enough to palm a Thanksgiving turkey.  Anyway, that was the day I found out that my retarded grandfather was a war hero."

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah, the Big One.  He stormed the beaches of Normandy and by the time the war was over, he had been through Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, and earned himself a Purple Heart."

"OK, now I understand," I said. "There was brain damage from his war wound."

"Oh hell no," Henry said.  "Grandpa was shot in the ass.  No, he was retarded from the day he was born.  People used to say the stork dropped him a few times on the way over.  They didn't say it in front of Grandma though, not unless they wanted to get smacked by that big old hand of hers."

"No offense, but I didn't know the Army took people with a serious mental handicap," I said.

"There was a war on, so I guess they were a little more lax then.  Maybe they had a whole different kind of 'don't ask; don't tell' going on at the time, or maybe he just put one over on those Army recruiters.  'He wore a hat and he had a job and he brought home the bacon so no one knew,' just like the song goes.  Grandpa could be very resourceful despite being retarded and all."

"Wow," I said.  "That's really amazing.  May I have another bourbon?"

"Water back?"

"Please."

Henry put the pristine glass and bar towel down, then picked up my empty tumbler and water glass.  I pulled four more dollar bills from my wallet.  When Henry returned, there was twice as much bourbon in my glass as last time.

"This one's on me."

I put another dollar on the bar and stuffed the other three in my shirt pocket.  Henry went down to the end of the bar, poured some more brandy in Carl's glass, gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and returned.  He picked up his towel and glass again and commenced giving the rim a good wipe.

"So where was I?" he asked.

"Your grandfather's enlistment."

"Ah yes.  Grandpa had a lot of trouble getting through basic training even though he tried harder than anybody.  Physically, there was no problem.  Grandpa may be have been pushing 40 when he enlisted, but working on the killing floor at his uncle's slaughterhouse since the age of five toughened him up for pretty much anything they could throw at him.  It was the retardation.  I remember how reading and simple arithmetic used to enrage him.  He almost flunked out of basic.  Fortunately, the army had a special, slower-paced program for people who grew up in Mississippi.  Once my grandfather got transferred into that one, he did just fine and was the first one off his boat on D-Day.  You remind me of him in a way."

"I do?"

"Sure, Grandpa was creative too, always making stuff.  There's one of his creations over there," and motioned with his head toward a framed picture next to the cash register. 

It was an old black-and-white photograph of a snowman in the woods.  I never paid much attention to it before.  Upon closer inspection, I could see that the trees looked like they had been blown apart by artillery fire and that the snowman was wearing a Hitler mustache.

"Bastogne," he said. 

Henry stopped wiping the glass, folded the towel, and put them both down on the bar.  It looked like he ran out of things so say, or at least ran out of steam.  It was time to change the subject.  His grandfather must have been a real inspiration to any retard who had ever lusted for battle, but I had heard about enough. I tried what I thought was a clever segue to move the topic to Henry Silt, police officer.

"I bet knowing what obstacles your grandfather had to overcome really came in handy during your tougher days on the force," I said.

"Indeed it did," said Henry.  "A lot of people don't know this but most criminals are retarded, or at least borderline cases.  I know their challenges and how their frustrations can lead them to break the law.  Drunks are retarded too, at least while they're still drunk.  Just look at poor Carl over there.  But knowing what I know, I have never had to reach for that baseball bat because I know how to talk to people.  And in the 20 years that I was a police officer, I never once had to draw my gun for exactly the same reason."

This was not the sort of cop story that I wanted to write.

"Not every cop was like me," he continued.  "How could they be? And the results were often tragic.  Cop plus retard plus misunderstanding equals senseless killing."

And right there, Henry Silt gave me my story premise on a plate.  It was going to be intense, violent, moving, and full of gritty realism.  I could not wait to get started.

Down at the end of the bar, Carl got it into his head that quiet time was over.

"Fuck you Troy Donahue!" he yelled.

"It's Phil," said Henry. "Not Troy.  She married Phil Donahue and if you can't keep quiet, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

I pulled my spiral notebook from my backpack and put it on the bar.  Drawing a pen from my jacket pocket, I began to write:

It was a dark and stormy night at the donut shop...

"Scissors chip rock," I said and walked away, leaving the two to debate my interpretation of the rules between them.

The wind had picked up somewhat while I had been indoors and a light rain had begun to fall.  I liked how the sparse cool drops felt against my face and was looking forward to a real downpour once I was safely indoors.  As much as I liked it when city streets took a beating from the elements, I could not help but think about how the weather effected the homeless who had no place to go.

There was one such unfortunate soul up at the next corner.  He was sitting cross-legged wearing a Hefty Bag fashioned into a poncho, the ink on his cardboard sign already starting to run.  Here was a man who looked truly needy so I crossed to the other side of the street to avoid him.

Panhandlers are annoying enough under any circumstances.  The way they ask for money, it's as if I'm personally responsible for their poverty.  When the raindrops start to fall, they kick it up a notch and give me attitude like the bad weather is my fault as well.  Do I really need to tell these people that even if I am charitable and give, it's still up to them at the end of the day? That if they ever wish to better their lives, they need to lay off the booze and be willing to work any job regardless if they feel it's beneath them?  I resented the unfairness of the world for making me feel compelled to say these things when a simple "fuck off" should suffice.

Meanwhile, evidence of my own failure in life sat in my backpack.  Or rather, it didn't.  I might be better off giving up and never writing that story if it weren't for how much I'd hyped it, mostly to myself.  Much of the power of this literary vaporware lay in the fact that it had never been written.  Stories I've actually completed have visible flaws and are probably unpublishable nowhere other than my blog, but this is not the case when a creative work has no substance to tarnish its promise.

I hoped to get some writing done at Henry's bar.  No, I didn't believe that liquor would improve my skills as an author, though it can seem like it does at the time.  It was the proprietor, Henry Silt, who would.  I walked the rest of the way in the drizzle and went inside.

Henry was a retired cop so I was confident that if I could get him talking about his days on the force, his anecdotes could put some meat on the bones on my story.  He ran his business with a concise if old-fashioned vision of what a bar should be.  There was the obligatory neon sign of a martini glass out front even thought most of the clientele drank whiskey or beer, or perhaps wine out of a box for the ladies.  Unlike a lot of bars in the city, there was no art on the walls, just wood paneling and beer posters with patriotic bikini babes sporting Old Glory camel toe.

Henry's never had a deejay.  If people wanted music they could pick a song on the jukebox that featured such 70s luminaries as Supertramp, Kansas, and the Captain and Tennille. 

Nor was there a need for video cameras as a deterrent against misbehavior.  Order was maintained by a baseball bat kept behind the bar and a proprietor who brooked no bullshit.  People hardly ever got out of line and nobody did it more than once. This is not to say that Henry was not a nice guy, far from it.  As long as you managed to stay out of people's faces and keep your head off the bar, he was a real sweetheart.

Henry was wearing his usual getup, a white dress shirt and a black vest.  It was what you saw bartenders wear on old TV shows, back in the days of ashtrays, cigarette smoke, and pickled eggs in a jar.  Henry was no longer a policeman but it was his nature to always be a man in uniform.

I took a seat on a barstool in front of Henry, who was cleaning a glass with a towel.  As far as I could tell it was always the same glass and he never used it to pour a drink.  It was the cleanest glass in the place, too clean for the likes of us.

I ordered a well bourbon straight up with a water back.  Henry brought them and I laid four dollar bills on the bar, three for the drink and a buck for tip.  He scooped up the money, rapped his knuckles on the bar, and went back to the register.

"Slow night," I said as he was ringing up the sale.

"Yeah, so far," he said.  "It may pick up."

That was possible.  At the moment though, the only other customer was a regular named Carl.  I once made the mistake of making conversation with him.  He told me he lost his wife.  I never found out if he meant that she died or left him, a point that became moot when he showed me a picture of her.  His "wife" turned out to be Marlo Thomas, the photograph cut out from an old magazine.  Business might pick up later but it was a safe bet the barstools on either side of Carl wouldn't stay occupied for long.

"So how's the night treating you?" asked Henry.

"Eh, all right," I said.  "I had hoped to get some pizza at the Chuck E. Cheese down the street but they had some sort of special-ed karaoke thing going on, which is fine but not my scene."

"You don't like retarded people much, do you Dave?"

"I like them about as much as I like anybody," I said.

"Fair enough," said Henry.  "But you probably think the retarded life is easy street, kind of like going cradle to grave on 'Romper Room.'  A lot of people do, but it ain't like that.  Ordinarily, I wouldn't say anything.  I make it my policy to let people believe what they want, but I know you're a writer so you're all up in that human-condition shit.  Do you want to know the real deal?"

Down at the other end of the bar, Carl slammed his drink glass down, shouted "Marlo, you bitch!" and started sobbing with his head in his hands.

"Quiet down, Carl," said.  "We're trying to have a conversation over here.  So how about it, Dave?"

"Yeah," I said.  "I'd like to know."

I walked along a dimly lit backstreet with broken bottles in the gutters and the odd mattress tossed onto the sidewalk.  I turned the collar of my jacket up, as much to hide my face from a world I loathed as from the damp chill in the air.  If I had been wearing a fedora, I would have pulled the brim down until it was resting on the bridge of my nose.  If I'd smoked, I would have puffed away to keep my features obscured in a cloud of nicotine exhaust.  Yeah, I was having that kind of night.

My mood would have been better if I'd finished my latest fiction project, or started it for that matter.  All I had to show for my efforts was a single page in the spiral notebook in my backpack, with half a dozen story titles crossed out.  I hadn't even decided on the name of a single character.  All I had was the general idea for the story.  It was going to be about two cops who had to confront their inner demons as well as the criminal underworld.  I'd planned on clean, crisp prose that held true to the practice of showing and not telling.  It was going to be my best work yet if I could ever get around to writing the thing.

I decided to put the matter out of my mind and headed off toward Chuck E. Cheese, which was only a few blocks away.  A lot of people don't like the place, snobs mostly.  They would rather go to one of those authentic Italian pizzerias, the kind where both the men and women working there look like Vic Tayback.  I prefer the sound of arcade games, the animatronic vaudeville, and every pizza pie made in strict compliance with corporate standards.

Hawaiian was the way to go, just a slice or two, rather than the entire pie of that variety I ritually consume each December 7th to honor the brave Americans killed at Pearl Harbor.  Even one slice would be enough to whisk my mind away from these dreary urban climes to a tropical paradise, a land where all beverages are drunk from coconut shells and there is a miniature hula girl dancing on every dashboard.  In a few short minutes, I'd be making my purchase and thanking the pimply cashier with a heartfelt Mahalo.

I turned the corner onto the street where my local Chuck E. Cheese was located, about a block away between a massage parlor and a methadone clinic.  The eponymous cap-wearing rodent on the brightly lit sign welcomed visitors to what was advertised as a place  "where a kid can be kid."  I was glad it was past 9 pm because that was exactly the kind of situation I wanted to avoid.  I never much liked children and didn't know which was worse, their nonstop entitled cacophony or the dirty looks their parents would give me whenever I told the little bastards to go fuck themselves.

When I walked through the front door of Chuck E Cheese, it was more like a nightclub than a pizza parlor inside.  The lights were dimmed and there were a number of people milling around in the dark.  Mercifully, none of them appeared to be child-sized.  Music started playing in the back room and when I was trying to figure out what song it was, some guy straight-armed me between the shoulder blades while shouting "Excyooze meee!"

I spun around and had every intention of punching him out if he were smaller and weaker than I was.  He was likely both, but since he clearly had Down syndrome it would have been considered poor form to clock him one.  I was still trying to make sense of the "HUEY RAWKS!" emblazoned across the front of his tee shirt when he elbowed past me and started making his way toward the back.

By now, there was no doubt in my mind what song was playing.  It was "Workin for a Livin" by Huey Lewis and the News.  It was one of his earlier songs, off his second album I believe.  At the time, it was almost considered sort of new wave in an AM radio sort of way.

When I followed the bonus-chromosomed man back, I saw a makeshift stage and a hand-painted banner that read:

DEVELOPMENTALLY DELAYED KARAOKE NITE @ DA CHEEZ!!!

ALL HUEY LEWIS, ALL NITE LONG

YEAH!!!

So that was it then.  The speds had taken over.  So much for enjoying my slice of Hawaiian in peace.

The singer who got up on stage was a youngish woman with a mousie-brown Cleopatra haircut.  She stood about five-foot nothing and had a girlish figure that was equal parts Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  There was a video screen displaying the lyrics to the song but she either could not read them or she just decided to improvise.

"I take a lot of ribbin' 'cause I'm workin' for a gibbon," she sang.

Some in the crowd loudly cheered her on while others silently rocked back and forth, either to the beat of the music or to their own internal metronome.   Nobody seemed to care whether she was singing the right words or not.

And why should they, I thought as a deep-seated ugly bitterness overtook me and forced my lip into a sneer.  What did they know about working for a living, struggling day to day where the victor gets the spoils.  Their Olympics was not about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, it was about winning a medal even if you ran the wrong way down the track when the starting pistol fired.

I wisely chose to keep my contempt to myself.  I was outnumbered.  Sure, the Downsers and thyroid dwarfs wouldn't put up much of a fight if the scene turned violent.  However, the hulking man-child contingent was also there, real Mice and Men Lenny brutes who are real sweethearts unless you're foolish enough to make them think you're not nice.  I had no desire to be clubbed over the head with my arm after it had been ripped from its socket.

The song ended and the singer took a moment to bow and wave to the crowd as they thunderously applauded before she left the stage.  There was a new singer, the guy who had jostled me, and a new song, "I Want a New Drug."

A new drug.  That was an excellent idea.  The intoxicating effects of music, particularly this Huey Lewis karaoke, just wasn't doing it for me.  I turned and made my way to the exit.  There was a bar a few blocks away.  It was a real dive, perfect for man who had a hankering for a cheap well bourbon, served neat, maybe with a hair in it.

Since there were a couple of tampons missing, I began with the assumption that whoever put them there planted them as a stash for personal use.  If this was the case, I could safely eliminate all male coworkers from my suspect list.  The same logic could be used to eliminate all the more venerable female ones as well, especially the few whose blue-rinse cooters haven't shed a drop of blood since Hinckley shot Reagan.

Unfortunately, this did not even come close to eliminating the possibilities to a select few.  My workplace is pretty large, relatively young, and women make up at least half of it.  Even if it did not run afoul of both the sexual-harassment policy and common courtesy, it simply would not be feasible for me to confront and accuse each potential tampon-box planter individually.

As if the question of who wasn't perplexing enough, figuring out why seemed absolutely mind boggling.  We all have desk drawers.  Why would a woman choose to store her feminine-hygiene products in my cube rather than her own?  Naturally, I smelled a conspiracy.

One only has to look through my extensive secret file that is no doubt being amassed in the basement of some quasi-legal shadow-government agency somewhere.  "It is hard to imagine how someone who is so chronically inappropriate with the basest of sensibilities and immaturity run riot has neither been incarcerated or beaten to death by decent people.  It is our recommendation that Jennings be tempted to perform some loathsome act for which he shall be apprehended and severely punished."

In light of this, the motivation behind this becomes pretty clear.  The person or persons responsible placed the tampons in my cube in the hope that I would be caught on video taking one one of them out of its wrapper and putting it in the office coffee pot.  You know what?  I would have done it in a heartbeat too if I had not been onto their little game.

These sorts of dirty tricks by the Global Managers are nothing new.  One need only look at the tragic case of Phineas Gage.  Gage was a railroad employee in the mid-nineteenth century.  By all accounts, he was both a conscientious worker and a virtuous person.  All accounts, that is, until his "accident."  In 1848 while working as a crew foreman in Vermont, Gage was in the vicinity of some dynamite that "just happened to go off" and launch a three and a half foot tamping iron up through his jaw and out the top of his head.

It is my guess that he learned something he shouldn't have and because he was a good American, said he would go public.  Among the railroad robber barons, only locomotives were allowed to do any whistle blowing.

The injury changed Phineas Gage forever.  The once solid citizen had been transformed into a violent and lecherous alcoholic.  Even if he made good on his threat to tell all, no one would trust a man who was known for the horrible sucking sounds his cranium made while he downed one rye whiskey after another and tried to ram his hand up a barmaid's skirt.

I was certain that the merciless success of silencing Phineas Gage has emboldened many thuggish operatives over the years and that I was the intended target of this brutal legacy.  I have to admit that I was skeptical at first.  I was willing to accept as mere coincidence the fact that both of us being in the employ of large profit-motivated organizations, or even that "Gage" and "Dave" have the same number of letters.  What I could not dismiss was the undeniable fact that TAMPING IRON THROUGH THE BRAIN is an anagram of INHERIT THROUGH BRING A TAMPON.

I know that I'm going to have to watch my back to avoid a similar fate.

Sometimes that's because my writing for that day is complete crap.  On my latest project, I don't think that's the case.  At least I hope so.  It's a longer piece, not as long as "Hold Me Closer Tiny Cancer," but too lengthy to whip out in a single day.

That's about it for now.  I don't have much more to say today.  It would be a shame to finish before culturally enriching you in some small way.  I know.  How about a haiku about tea?  Ito En Teas' Tea had a haiku contest and I really wanted to enter, but the contest was already over when I went to their website.  Oh well, their loss is your gain.  Here is my haiku:

I pissed in your tea

Hey you stupid fucking bitch

Drink my goddamn piss

I'll be back Friday.  I think.  Fuck, I don't know.

So I took care of that task.  Along with sleep, feeding myself, and basic personal hygiene, the bare essentials were checked off my to-do list.  It was time to get creative.

I have a couple of good ideas for stories (along with countless bad ones) but I felt this weird inertia that kept me from diving into either of them.  I wasn't too worried.  It was only Saturday afternoon and my muse would either return to me or wouldn't.

I spent a couple of hours on Stickam chatting with a friend of mine in Europe.  He's usually a good conversationalist and it was my hope that some witty banter would provide a colonic for my writer's block

There were two factors that kept this from working out as well as I liked.  The first was the time-zone difference.  My friend was nine hours ahead so mid afternoon for me was past midnight for him.  The second factor was the lump of hashish he decided to smoke.  In a few short moments, an engaging and intelligent human being was transformed into a spaced-out dullard with sleepy-creepy Baldwin eyes.  I was on my own.

So there I was, craving an artistic outlet but not knowing quite what to write.  If I could draw, paint, or play an instrument, I might have created something beautiful that I could be proud of.  Instead I had to make do with whatever was within reach, which turned out to be a roll of toilet paper, a bottle of Tapatio hot sauce, and a plastic baby head.

The baby head, purchased in Japan in 2003, is actually a piggy bank with the coin slot in the location of the fontanel.  Now before any of you jump to conclusions, let me just say that the slot is too narrow and the plastic too hard to use the head as a sex toy. Besides, I'm not just some sicko.  I have the soul of an artist.  That's why I used the hot sauce and toilet paper to make it look like the baby had its eyes gushed out and then was hastily bandaged in a futile attempt to keep the blood from gushing down its face.

So that was Saturday.  Sunday was, of anything, even less productive.  I finished reading Roald Dahl's My Uncle Oswald, which I enjoyed for the most part but was a little let down by the ending.  I've read books with worse endings (most of Harry Crews' work falls under this category), but Dahl's short stories have never lacked for satisfying and twisted conclusions.

I eventually found my way down to the Argus, as I am prone to do.  I waited until after the Giant's game was over because I don't do well around sports fans who are drunk and stupid enough to think that their home-team hard on had any bearing on the outcome of the game.  Instead I showed up while the 49ers were playing.  They suck this year so the crowd was not nearly so rowdy.

I took out my notebook and scribbled down the opening to one of the stories.  It wasn't much but it was something I could work with.  Every little bit helps.

I was still feeling distracted so I started surfing the web on my iPhone.  I learned that the flood of red sludge in Hungary had actually killed people, at least seven of them.  The phrase "Hungarian Ghoulish" popped into my head and I was proud of myself coming up with that.  I wanted to turn that into something, a poem perhaps.  I never got that far in this endeavor, probably because I could not decide between this opening verse:

Red Sludge

Red Death

I can barely hold my breath

and this one:

Red Death

Red Sludge

I can barely hold my fudge

There are some things in life best left unaccomplished.

This sounds like a lame excuse but let me explain.  I hated getting that jury summons.  Obsessing over it took up all my free time, well, except for the hours spent drinking or playing Civilization IV with the space race and time limit options turned off so I could experiencing the joys of endless wars.  More on that later.

At this point, some of you are no doubt shaking your heads and thinking that not only am I an unreliable blogger, but also a real crybaby in the citizenship department.  I can't say I blame you.  The right to trial by jury is one of those things that makes this country great.  The orientation video they play in the jury assembly room says so and I could see myself enjoying the experience.  With California's three strikes law, I might even have a hand in putting some guy away for 25 to life for stealing a candy bar.  Ha ha.  Fuck you. The gavel comes down.

The only drawback is not getting paid for my time.  Your bosses can't legally fire you for going on jury duty, nor can they threaten you, call you mean names, or put a thumbtack on your chair if you are called upon to serve.  However, they are under no obligation to pay you and your landlady is able to legally evict you if you don't earn enough money to pay rent.

Granted, such an outcome is extremely unlikely.  I have yet to hear of a single instance of someone being thrown out on the street as a result of having to sit on a jury.  Most cases don't last that long and for the ones that do, even the least sympathetic of judges are willing to dismiss a juror because of financial hardship.  Unfortunately, they rarely share my view that hardship begins with the first penny of lost income.  I must therefore fall back on the proud tradition of using every trick in the book to get out of jury duty. 

A little finesse is necessary here.  Unless you're willing to get cited for contempt, you can't threaten the judge with causing a mistrial out of spite.  A juror does have the right to do exactly that but only as an unanounced act of revenge and only if one at least pretends to have considered the evidence in the trial.  You just have to be able to say with a straight face, "I voted to acquit because the prosecution based their entire case on just three eyewitnesses and a single fingerprint lifted from the victim's perineum.  I still got reasonable doubt to burn."

Even if you do have the kind of mean streak necessary for this act of vengeance, you still had to sit on a jury.  As I said before, I'm fine with fulfilling my civic duty as long as my employer picks up the tab.  Unfortunately, I work as a contractor for an agency that pays nothing.  That means I make no money.  That also means that I will pay no taxes on the money I do not earn and if you hadn't noticed, this country is strapped for cash.  I would argue that it is my patriotic duty to earn a full paycheck and let some non-taxpayer sit in the jury box.  If you look around, there are plenty of these folks to choose from.  If need be, they can wheel in some retiree from an assisted-living center, feeding tube and all.

The wheels in my head started turning about how I could get myself excused.  Because I was summoned to the courthouse near Civic Center and not the Hall of Justice, this was to be a civil suit rather a criminal trial.  If this was to be personal-injury case, my plan was to say the same things I said when I summoned a decade ago.  "Mr. Plaintiff's attorney, pull your snout up out of the trough and listen to me.  When awarding damages, I will vote against any sum in excess of what covers medical expenses and lost wages.  This is a court of law, not the goddamn lottery."

I'm paraphrasing here but you get the general idea.

I could tell the judge was onto me but we both knew there wasn't a thing he could do about it.  I had played the tort-reform card and it was either boot me or suffer the consequences.  I was out the door within the hour.

 So I had a plan that may or may not work.  The week of 9/27 was a long way off.  I have a nasty habit of worrying about things that I can't do anything about and nonproductive diversion is often my only escape.  Heading out to the bar is usually a good plan but my liver is not as resilient a punching bag as it once was.  I find most TV unwatchable and while reading is quite enjoyable, it stimulates rather than numbs the mind.  When my mind is stimulated it gravitates toward unpleasant topics, like my jury summons.

To save both my liver and my sanity, I started playing Civilization IV on my laptop at home.  This was exactly the kind of diversion I needed but I found the early stages of each game tedious.  Let's face it.  Building a granary is never going to be as much fun as orchestrating land, sea, and air units to pound the crap out of an enemy position.  Just when things started getting good, some rival would launch a mission to Alpha Centauri and the game would be over.  I turned off the space-race option but that only got me as far as 2050, the normal ending year for the game.  After I turned off the time limit, the game could pretty much last forever as long as I didn't score a quick and decisive victory.  Since I'm at best a mediocre player this was not to be an issue.

I imagined myself ruling Civ empire as a modern Tiberius: brooding, suspicious, and delighted by perversion.  I closed my borders to other civilizations and built up a huge military, often starting senseless wars where the sole objective was to capture a single enemy city so I could rename it to "Fort Buttrape."  The real world has never been this good. 

As years of unchecked pollution took their toll, the global-warming feature of the game started transforming fertile farmland in this world into desert.  The populations in my cities began to starve and the shortage of arable land served as yet another reason to start wars of expansion.  In my mind's eye, my empire had a quaint but effective propaganda machine.  Every night the populace was herded into classrooms where movie projectors reminiscent of those from my school days would show inspirational newsreels with booming narration like:

INDUSTRY AND AGGRESSION WORKING TOGETHER FOR A LARGER TOMORROW

This sort of thing filled my head even when I wasn't playing the game.  I maintained my presence of mind at work, but only because I had to.  In social circles, I'd nod my head and say things like "Is that a fact?" while thinking more about my game world than what was being said to me.  In my world, you see, no one would receive a jury summons.  The court system would overhauled so human juries were replaced by a panel of 12 Daleks.  The conviction rate would hold at a steady 100 percent.  Crime would cease to exist.  If it weren't for the specter of global extinction by famine, the place would be paradise.

Time on planet earth continued to move ahead and before I knew it, the week of 9/27 was upon me.  On 4:30 in the afternoon of the preceding Friday, I checked the court website to see if my jury group was order was ordered to report.  It wasn't.  I dodged the first bullet.  There were four more to go and then I was off the hook for another year.  The next two days followed the same pattern and I thought I was home free.  Then my number came up and I was to report to the jury assembly room at 8:45 Thursday morning.

I could scarcely believe it.  Every time I've been summoned for jury duty, they've called in everybody they need in the first cxouple of days of the week.  I felt cheated.  I didn't sleep well that night.  I spent a lot of time thinking of every possible way I could get excused from jury service.  Since I knew nothing about the case or the judge, nothing could be a guaranteed success.

In the end, I lucked out.  Whatever case I was supposed to be on went into continuance and we were all excused.  The total length of my jury service was less than an hour and a half.  I was a free man, and a good thing too.  I needed to have all my wits about me because the city that would one day be known as "Port Yeastclam" was not going to liberate itself.

I would not even have to make a conscious decision to stop writing.  If experience has taught me anything, it is that not writing is the default behavior.  Writers walk way from their craft all the time, never to return.  They go on to do other things with their lives like pay attention to their loved ones or pursue some other creative endeavor that does not make them want to drink heavily.  Sometimes giving up is the smart and healthy thing to do.

Then again, I've never been one to lead either a smart or healthy life.  I have therefore decided to get myself out of whatever rut I've been in and give this writing thing another go.  I owe it to...well, no one in particular except for that part of me that craves attention.

After reading the preceding paragraphs, you have probably already figured out that the only point this blog entry has is to be simply be there, which is kind of like masturbating while fantasizing about your hand.

Anyway, I'll post more tomorrow and I promise it will be better than this.  I figure pretty much anything would have to be.

The thirtieth reunion is supposed to be the big one. at least I've gotten it into my head that it is.  I suppose that's because my father went to his thirtieth back in 1979.  He wouldn't have gone unless he thought there were some importance attached to it. 

Dad had few kind words for his high-school days, and why should he?  He grew up in the Imperial Valley,  downwind of the Salton Sea where temperatures routinely top 110 degrees and surrounded by people without the good sense to move somewhere else.  Perhaps he considered the experience as a rite of passage and a time to reflect.  At the very least, he was amused to see the senior voted "Most Likely to Succeed" pumping gas at a local filling station.

Self-assessment is a cinch when someone else takes the brunt of life's little ironies.

I, on the other hand, did not spend my high-school years in such a hell on earth.  I spent them in Santa Barbara, which can only be considered hell in a "Hotel California" sort of way.  With beautiful beaches, a near-perfect climate, and a multitude of idle rich living in the hills surrounding the town, it was almost a forgone conclusion that Santa Barbara would have a soap opera named after it.

So in some small way, those of us who grew up there learned to think of ourselves as better than everyone else.  Don't blame us though.  It isn't our fault.  It's yours.  If more of you were better at hiding your envy when I mentioned my hometown, I might have learned to temper my arrogance.  It's not like where you grew up is that awful.  Where was that again?  Oxnard?  I suppose that isn't such a bad place, not that anyone would ever name a soap opera after it or anything.  Let's be serious.

Most of my friends haven't attended any of their reunions and never plan to.  I can understand their reasoning.  They have no desire to relive a period of their live when jocks, cheerleaders, and other subhumans ruled their world.  However, it could have been a lot worse.  If you clump a bunch of people together who are full of herd instinct and insecurity, then add hormones to the mix, some cliquishness and dysfunction are par for the course.  We should consider ourselves lucky our situations didn't deteriorate into Lord of the Flies with erections.

Also, no one takes the old social strata seriously anymore, not even the once popular kids.  The real world, even what passes for it in Santa Barbara, has thrown icewater of our preconceptions of society and for the most part, people have adjusted accordingly.  I have actually experienced nominees for homecoming queen treat me as an equal, and if I was feeling charitable, I have returned the courtesy.

I've attended all my reunions that end with a zero.  The tenth came when I was still young enough to want to impress my old classmates.  I was more or less a non-entity in high school.  I was in a bunch of school plays where I was cast in small supporting roles and wrote fluff pieces for the school newspaper during my senior year.

So in 1990, I showed up in a nice suit and spoke about my fledgling career as a computer programmer with sky's-the-limit enthusiasm.  I made it a point to only get moderately drunk.  Sure there were people who were more successful than me but that didn't matter.  I was had turned out OK.  I was somebody, sort of.

I reappeared after another decade had passed.  During that period, I had done a fair amount of traveling and showed up with my then wife I had met in Amsterdam in 1993.  I was also on the verge of becoming filthy rich, at least I thought so at the time.  I was working for a dot com and although the boom was beginning to falter, I shrugged it off as a minor hiccup in an era of unparalleled prosperity.

I felt I didn't need to impress anybody and it showed.  Those who remembered me as a nice enough if somewhat nerdy kid were now faced with a fat drunken slob who hadn't had a haircut in over a year and said "fuck" far more often than was absolutely necessary.  Looking back, it's amazing what lengths I was willing to go to show that I had nothing to prove.

In the next couple of years, I lost my wife, my job, and what little direction I had in life.  I still had a penchant for debauchery and threw myself into it with a single-mindedness I have never exhibited for any pursuit before or since.  After years of this nonsense, I settled into my current existence as a functional boozehound.  I wouldn't consider myself a success story but I manage to hold a job and my episodes of being a public embarrassment are kept to a minimum.

So it was with this modest sense of accomplishment that i showed up for my thirtieth reunion.  My girlfriend Paula came with me, which was a definite plus.  I saw my classmates as I'm sure they saw me, youth and potential bitch slapped by Father Time, and I needed a co-conspirator in my corner with whom I could talk smack.  Also, Paula has genuine social skills.  She is good at carrying on a conversation on some pleasant but mundane topic at length, a talent that has eluded me.   When cornered by good and decent people, my fight-or-flight instinct kicks in and I'll try to back them off by telling them how I found Jesus after dropping eight hits of acid and microwaving my cat.

With Paula pinch-hitting for me, I was allowed to sit back and take in my surroundings.  Or better still, get up and move among these people with whom I had little in common except for some distant memories and a grim slide into middle age.   We wore nametags with our senior pictures on them to help people recognize us.  Even with that hint hanging from my lapel, I had to remove my glasses while the person squinted at me, scratched his or her head, and ultimately took my word for it. 

Music I never liked played on a sound system at adult-friendly volume while a slideshow of images of "Mork and Mindy" and other cultural icons of our youth were projected on a screen above the dance floor.  People ate, drank, danced, and chatted with each other.  Most seemed to be having a good time.  We may not have happy to have gotten older but we were plenty happy to still be alive.

I headed off to the bathroom and snapped a photo of myself in the mirror.  The paunchy nearsighted me standing in front of the toilet stall didn't look much like the fresh-faced kid on my lapel.  I was OK with that.  I didn't think I would be but I was.

I left the bathroom to go find Paula and let the evening wind down.

"You let a killer go free and I bet you laughed when you watched him kill Cindy's sister," Brock said.

"I didn't laugh," I said, which was true.  I probably should have also said that I didn't see her get killed.  She was already dead.  Maybe he found her that way.

"I bet you laughed a lot.  I always knew you were a little punk and now you've gone too far.  You've had it.  Just wait until after school."

"I have to go straight home after school," I said.

"You're not even going to make it home, punk.  Count on it."

I expected Brock to slug me right then and there but he just walked away.  He left me alone during lunch and recess periods as well.  Whatever he had in store for me was going to wait until there were no teachers around to stop him.

The bell rang at the end of the day.  Brock, who sat in the back of the class, was the first out the door.  I left the same time as most of the students so I would be surrounded by as many kids as possible on the way out.  Outside the school, people started to disperse.  I decided to change from the usual path I took home.  I cut over several blocks from the way I normally went and doubled back a few times, always looking over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't being followed.

It took almost an hour extra to get to the street I lived on but I felt it was worth it.  I thought I was home free until Brock stepped out from behind a hedge.  He was holding the Louisville Slugger his dad had bought him when he started playing Little League.

"You've had it, punk," he said.

He swung the bat, hitting me with a glancing blow to the shoulder that almost knocked me down.  It hurt like a lot where I'd been hit but I was too scared to stick around and cry.  As I turned around and ran, he was yelling about how the next swing was going to be aimed at my head.

I could hear Brock's feet pounding the sidewalk behind me.  He was a faster runner than I was and I was sure I'd never make it home before his bat smashed in the side of my skull.  Then the sound of Brock's footsteps stopped.  There was a muffled cry and then silence.

I turned around and saw the man from yesterday.  He had grabbed Brock from behind and looked like he had no intention of letting him go.  Brock's eyes were opened wide and tears ran out from the corners.  He probably wanted to scream but there was no chance of that with the man's huge hand covering his mouth.

"Go home," the man said.  "I'll take it from here."

I turned and ran the rest of the way home.  When I got there. my mother was demanding to know what had taken me so long.  I went upstairs to my room as she threatened to ground me until I reached voting age.

The next day, I was back at the police station.  Lieutenant Simpkins sat me down and put a photograph on the table in front of me.  It was Brock Dixon.  He was dead.  He had been set on fire and had almost his entire baseball bat shoved up his butt.  I couldn't tell which had happened first.  He demanded answers.  I shrugged.  There was another lineup, another meeting with the sketch artist (I described Brock's dad this time), and I was sent home. 

This happened couple of more times, whenever a burned body was found on the street, which went on for about a year before it stopped for good.  I didn't mind because I was grounded and had nothing better to do.  At some point, Lieutenant Simpkins had started calling me "Little Mister Know-Nothing" but he was wrong.  I knew enough not to tell on the only real friend I'd ever had.

We looked northward up the Strip and toward downtown.  The outer edges of what we could see were low-lying homes and businesses, indiscernible from anywhere else in the USA.  The gaudy glory straight in front of us, however, could be nowhere other than Las Vegas.

"I'm glad we came," I said to Paula.  "Thanks for suggesting this place.  Sorry I got all weirded out about being underdressed."

"You're funny," she said.  "You're such a rulebreaker but get squeamish and conformist about the oddest things."

Indeed, it was strange for me to be hesitant about showing up in a swanky joint wearing shorts.  Even after I relented and agreed to come, I was still nervous enough to hide my bare legs under the table when the waitress came by with our drinks.

I like my transgressions to be on my own terms, carefully crafted and if acted out, rehearsed beforehand in front of the mirror.  Most of the time though, I prefer to sit safely behind my keyboard, fighting the power by updating my Facebook status with nonsense like:

"David Jennings suggests using Protein Plus Body Wash because it energizes and moisturizes the skin like thousands of nanorapists penetrating your every pore."

I'm such a rebel.

The view from the cocktail lounge was impressive and in some small way, telling.  Directly in front of us was the Luxor.  Half the "x" in its name on the obelisk in front of the pyramid was burned out.  For a town that prides itself so much on image, leaving this blemish unattended hints that there might be problem with cash flow. 

News reports in past years had begun to say what was once considered unthinkable, that Las Vegas was losing money.  Around the same time the Luxor opened its doors in the 90s, some people got it into their heads that Sin City needed a makeover as a family-friendly destination.  As ideas go, this one ranks up there with New Coke and has been just as resolutely abandoned. 

These days, hot young blackjack dealers with plunging necklines work the tables nearest the doors of downtown casinos along Fremont Street.  Vaguely criminal-looking young men on the strip hand out fliers for gentlemen's clubs and escort services.  With "Whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" as the quasi-official motto, whoring is practically mandatory.  The town had returned to its roots and renewed prosperity would surely follow.

Perhaps the Luxor's lighting glitch was evidence that the town had a ways to go before regaining its former glory.  Then again, maybe it burned out five minutes ago and I didn't know what I was talking about.  I sipped my martini, used my forearm to cover my knees, and silently congratulated myself for my powers of observation.

We paid our bill, took the elevator down to street level, and walked to the bus stop on the other side of the Strip opposite Mandalay Bay.  The sun was down but it was still above eighty degrees. It was a little cooler than it had been and any drop in temperature was welcome.

We were tired and our feet hurt from wandering around all afternoon.  More than just tired, we were fed up.  It's hard to say which was worse, the constant human traffic jams from clumsy drunks' difficulty navigating escalators and revolving doors, or the perfumed air wafting through every casino. 

Actually for Paula, who has allergies and a decent sense of smell, it was no contest.  The perfume was far worse.  I guess they needed to mask the stench of serious gamblers who have been up for days, eschewing basic hygiene and restroom breaks for festering armpits and a pair of depends.

I never got the gambling thing.  I prefer a vice where there is a guaranteed payoff, like drinking.

The bus arrived and we got in.  Soon after we took our seats, Paula leaned her head against the window and fell asleep.

It was a strange sort of public transit, both space age and Orwellian.  The driver was separated from the passenger compartment by a one-way glass panel that gave you the feeling the vehicle might be operating by remote control.  I counted no fewer than six plastic half domes housing security cameras along the ceiling of the bus.  In the Vegas of the 21st century, they would brook no "Fear and Loathing" shenanigans.

So be it.  As I said before, I'm no gambler.  If I'm going to misbehave, I want some reasonable assurance I can get away with it and on this bus, the odds were way too long.

I therefore decided to play it safe and content myself with committing thought crimes of hijinks that would never be.  I imagined what fun it would be to toss metallic sodium into the canals at the Venetian to make the water go kablooey.  Or better yet, leap up on the stage at the Flamingo and flash my junk at Marie Osmond as some sort of bizarre payback for her making me think she was cute on the "Donnie and Marie Show" when I was 14 years old.

Believe it or not, it was completely by accident when I ended up exposing myself to a group of British tourists who were getting on the bus.

It was an innocent wardrobe malfunction.  My shorts had ridden up considerably on that bus seat and when I went to cross my legs, my scrotum flopped out into plain view.  I didn't notice this until I looked down.

After frantically tucking my nads back in, I looked around at the Brits, hoping none of them had gotten an eyeful of my indiscretion.  There were no horrified stares in my direction, which was nice but didn't prove anything.  For the next mile or so until they got off the bus, I listened intently to their conversation trying to see if there was any reference, however veiled, to my naughty bits.  The results of that were inconclusive.  I guess I'll never know.

Someone would know however.  This isn't like the Muni buses back home where passengers can (and do) jack off to their heart's content without any fear from the law.  Somehow I knew that the security cameras on this vehicle were in perfect working order and someone would be watching.  

While  Paula peacefully slept and the bus crossed the no-man's land of dark shuttered storefronts between the Strip and downtown, I let my paranoia wash over me.  I thought about digitized images of my face and scrotum being filed into a potential-predator watchlist.  Better safe than sorry.  I should just be grateful no kids were on the bus.  If some little girl got on and then  pointed between my legs and screamed, that would be the end of my life as I know it.  The doors on the bus would lock.  We would be enveloped in a cloud of sleeping gas and I would wake up in a windowless jail cell.  Everyone else would awaken safely in their hotel rooms with free tickets to see Cher to compensate them for any inconvenience.

The bus pulled up at our stop and Paula and I got off. She was rubbing her eyes, still only half awake.  At some point, I would tell her about my little wardrobe malfunction and we would have a good laugh over it, but now was not the time. I just wasn't in the mood.

It was a few minutes before midnight on the eve of Memorial Day.  Those who had fought and died for their country were being honored, Vegas style.  High up on the enclosure covering Fremont Street, the names of the fallen scrolled by while the grim tally of the total number climbed into the tens of thousands with no end in sight.  Some people on the street stared up silently, paying respect to those who had made the ultimate sacrifice.  Most people continued to stumble around, drunk as ever.

I thought about what would happen, either by human error or act of terrorism, if they got plugged into the wrong database.  Instead of war dead, the names on a sex-offender registry were fed into the works.  I'd look up and wince at the sight of  "Dave 'Nutsack' Jennings" up there among them for all the world to see.  I convinced myself that such a thing could never happen.  The honor of a sacred American holiday would remain intact, and so would mine.