The Unknowing Son of an Unknowing Man.

So this girl is going down on me, it’s taking some pressure pain that I have, away. This happens on a basketball court in Queens, and I’m not sure who the girl is and it’s pretty dark outside. I’m in a drunken stupor and I slur something to her, that I don’t even recognize. The ground is beginning to stick my bare back and making small indentations. She finishes and swallow, this I could not believe, and walks away giggling like a school girl. I sit up, watching a what looks like a bareback Gorilla run away. Fucking Christ. I pull my hooded sweatshirt back over my head and plug the IPOD back into my ears. A song about Jesus rings through my brain until morning when the vibration of the court awakes me and a large, frightening looking, black guy is standing over me.

“You are one sick mother fucker,” he says to me.
“What happened?” I say, pulling the head phones from my ears.
“You fucking passed out on the basketball court with your pants open, white boy, you lucky you wasn’t raped or some shit.”
“Jesus Fuck,” I stammer and zip my pants up.
I stand up, pushing the hood back, the sun glares upon my face like a scolding parent. I look at the clock at a nearby bank.
“Man, it’s fucking 8:30 in the morning,” I say, rubbing my eyes.
“Yeah bro, this is a basketball team. You need to step.”

I nod, and walk out the gate exiting onto the side walk. I sit down on a bench and pull a pack of Marlboro Lights from my back pocket and stick one into my mouth and light it with the cigarette within the package. I take a drag and lean back, tired. I’m sure I’m in Queens, but where in Queens is the question. I’m sure it’s like a Tuesday or Wednesday, so I’m probably missing some type of physics class. I’m sure that black guy would’ve kicked my ass if my fly wasn’t down. It seemed like he felt bad for me.

* * *

I’m standing at my dorm room door, there’s a clip on it, a hair clip. I haven’t seen it before, and my roommate is away on vacation in Hades or Yemen or some place where they mate goats as thoroughbreds. I’m still examining the clip, and remove it from the handle and pull it up to my face, the cigarette still hanging from my lips, the ash growing and growing begging to flicked off. Then it happens, the door opens and there is a guy standing there, wearing a football jersey, a black and gold football jersey, with nothing on the bottom half of his body.

“Alright,” looking away, I think for a moment. “Honestly, I have two questions.”
“Go ahead,” the below-waist-naked man says.
“Who are you? And why are you naked in my room?” I ask, looking at the ceiling.
“I’m Clyde, and I can’t find my pants,” the guy says.
“One more question, if you wouldn’t mind?” I ask.
“Nah, go ahead.”
“Why are you in my fucking room?”
“Oh, I don’t know, some real skinny bitch dragged me in here, and tied me to a bed post, sucked me off and left, I couldn’t get loose, I had to rip the bed post off. I think she stole my pants,” he says, looking back into the room.
“Veronica…”


Veronica was a first semester triumph of mine. Along with Veronica was Valerie. DV, I called them, for “Double V” or V One and V Two. It was slightly complicated, but if my phone began to ring in the dorm room I could have my roommate pick it up, and say V One or V Two and then I would know if I wanted to speak with them or not.

I fell in love with Veronica the first day I saw her in Oral Communications, mainly because she had a knack for Orally Communicating with me. Strange as that sounds, she’s a very articulate speaker. I mean, if you’re going to take Oral Comm at least be: good at speaking. I’m very diligent at getting something down, so I had her over every day teaching me how to properly say verisimilitude. I don’t know what the word means, but coming from her mouth, it was like: she was already dick diving and I was the treasure at the bottom of the ocean. She had the firmest lips, but the softest and when she had them around me, I knew that I had her sole attention.

Anyway, shit hit the fan, so to speak. I found Valerie in a very gay Theatre History class. Valerie found out about Veronica and Veronica found out about Valerie in the strangest of ways: ménage trois. Simply speaking, a three some with two girls and me, fucking me. It was like I had died and gone to Penthouse headquarters. There was anal, and oral and kissing and hickeys and feet. I’m not sure why there was feet really involved, but I wasn’t up for arguing really. After all was said and done, I had a girl under each arm, I was sweating, breathing heavily. And almost simultaneously they asked:

“How do you know her?”

I didn’t know how to respond to the situation, so I calmly said, with a little bit of a laugh: “I’m kind of seeing you both.”

They both get out of bed, and begin putting their clothes on.

“Whoa, where are you guys going? It’s like three am,” I say quickly.
“Both of us?!” they both scream at nearly the same time.
“Hey, you know, you both have something that the other does have. That’s why I did it,” I say, regretting it almost immediately.
“Like what?” Valerie asks.
“Well, you have a little more meat on you than Veronica, I’m not saying you’re fat, because you’re most definitely not, but Veronica is just so damn thin, like screwing a broad who’s anorexic.”

A loud bang goes off in my head, and I believe it’s my conscience that’s calling me
an asshole. I sit there, and watch as the sculpture’s of nakedness are fully clothed.

* * *

The next day, laying in bed, naked, drinking a bottle of aged scotch, kind of drowning my sorrows, I have my father’s wake today, but I have a few classes that I’m going to try and make. I’m sitting at the end of my bed, it’s around ten-thirty in the morning, and I’m still not dressed; class starts in about ten minutes. I light a cigarette and pull on a pair of pants, I don’t even bother with the underwear. After placing the stogie on the dresser I pull a black t-shirt on, I pick the cigarette back up and stick it between my lips taking another drag. I bend down tying my shoes and pick up my wallet, cell phone, keys and make my way out the door into the hallway.

You know when you’re driving down a road, that you almost frequent on a daily basis, and you don’t recognize some of the houses on the road, because after all those times you’ve driven down it, you don’t pay attention to them. Standing in the hallway, I’m hit with a hard realization, that I have no idea where I am. I don’t recognize the walls, or any of the posters that people have hung up. Dave Matthews Band and Phantom Planet. I get a weird tingling sensation in my head and I feel faint for a moment, clutching the wall I vomit at my feet and drop to my knees. Dry heaving momentarily and then vomiting again. Blood. Damn.

I get up, coughing, clearing the taste from my throat, which is almost impossible. I walk down the steps, wondering why I’m throwing up, I had a little scotch, but I’ve never thrown up from scotch. I stop at a water fountain on the first floor and drink some. My throat is burning, and the water helps slightly, but not too much. Finally, I guess almost instantly I collapse onto the floor and thus ending a streak.

* * *

I awoken by the beeping of a machine. I feel a little better, but I’m in a hospital somewhere, and sit up quickly. No one is there, I look down at my arms, and I have a tube dug into my right arms main vein. I lay back down and the door opens, in walks a guy in a white coat, a doctor no less, a young guy about thirty-five or so. I look at him.
“What happened?” I ask.
“You collapsed,” he responds.
“Thanks for stating the obvious,” I say.
“Did you throw up blood?” he asks.
“I think so, yeah.”
“Okay,” he responds, writing something down on a chart.
“I believe you’re suffering from exhaustion and stress, stress leading to an inflamed ulcer, which caused you to throw up blood this morning,” he says not looking at me. “When you’re feeling a little better you’re free to go.”
“How long have I been here?”
“I wasn’t here when you got in, but I think a little over an hour. You got somewhere you need to be?”
“My father’s wake.”

I sit up on the bed a little bit, I’m not feeling very well. I can’t taste the burning in the back of my throat from vomiting before. Almost ignorantly I pull the tube from my arm, and instantly I feel the worse pain you could possibly imagine. I have a low threshold for pain, so it may feel like a tickle to some people, to me…not exactly.
“I’ve got to go,” I say to the doctor.
“Okay, I’ll get you a nurse to take you out in a chair,” he says, walking out.
“No need for that.”
“Policy.”

Policy my ass, I don’t think all hospitals have policies, I think hospitals have candy-stripers, and that’s a thought I’d think about as the non-candy-striper nurse pushed me through the auto doors of the hospital onto the city sidewalk.

“Do I have to tip you or something?” I ask her, but she just ignores me and walks back into the hospital.

I hail a cab and take it to west 56th and walk the rest of the way to my parents apartment. I got out early, because I can never remember what the cross street name is. It’s like when you know how to get somewhere, and you can go there with your eyes closed, but you don’t know the name of one fucking street; absolutely ironic. I enter through the building and enter the elevator which is embossed in gold. I keep thinking about Duck Tales and for the life of me, I can understand why. The elevator opens to my parents floor of the building, a butler stands there with his arm extended. I shake his hand. He doesn’t leave, so I shake his hand again.
“I’m not shaking your hand again,” I say.
“Your coat, sir,” he says, I remove it and place it over his arm.

The wake is solemn, it’s kind of depressing in a way; I guess you’d expect that though. I walk through a crowd of people, they all give me this look of despair and pity. I don’t want to be pitied for my father’s death. He was a psycho-therapist and was murdered by a patient. I loved my dad and believed that he was a brilliant guy, but dead is dead, you pitying me isn’t going to bring him back.

Suddenly a heat wave rushes over me, as if I’d been caught doing something wrong. My thoughts race through my mind quickly; almost unbearable.




Okay, this might be it for some time.