A Set- up Job

He looked round. He saw the usual Saturday night crowd. He thought, who can I use tonight? Would that thin femme over there with the red hair like to do it to me while I'm doing it to him/her? How about Mr. Cowboy to the right of her/him at the bar. Tough looker, sure, but the Stetson is pure white and perfectly trimmed and creased and new as yesterday wishes. How about that bank clerk little mousy looking man of the hunched shoulders variety? Would he like to be dominated by me? How about that lumber jack wearing dude with the green Mohawk which hardly goes with the lumber jack over shirt, not to mention the faded denims of the up scale variety?

Weary, Saturday night, and it's coming on spring. The air is hot in this place. It smells of sweat and desperation. Who do I pick? To do me while I do them. It is hurry hurry for me. I smell 29 coming up soon and that means the smell of cordite as I put the barrel to my head and press the trigger. Who do I care about for an hour? No way any of these jerks can be with me the entire night. Much less two hours. They know this will be their lucky night. They feel it in their bones. Their drinks are piling up on the bar and on the tables in the booths. Well, that is why I came here. To let them experience a bit of heaven.

And then the depths of hell. I see the previous ones I've picked. Some of them are so foolish they still expect me to answer their emails, to IM them, when-surprise—my server is down, or they send me tons of IMs and they know I'm on line, however, weary poor them, I can't answer, god know I try, and let them know after an hour or so of their desperate messages that become more desperate and sometimes angry and then oh so horribly sorry and then back anger, so sometimes I feel sorry for them, like hell, and I answer back—but darling I've IMed your every message; aren't you getting them, love? And then they will apologize all over the place; then they and I start the game all over again.

I can't quite tell you which is more fun. One two in and out and out the door. Or hello? Hello? Are you there? And me there, oh so desperately trying to answer them, doing my flat line best while they flat line as they remember me and how good I was and how horny I made them, and they are in fits of depredation that, well, to tell the truth, even that is beginning to bore me, so I shall pick up another soul and kick his soul to smithereens; they will long; that will make up for my longing soon, because, after all, friend of mine, my hair is beginning to recede just a tiny little bit, and I have to work out more and more. But I shall have my memories, and they shall have theirs, but only of me; I will have mine of me, and my ascendancy, and shall not go beyond that point, which is why I always video cam and can keep us forever more in time stand still.

So they are looking at me, mongoose to snake, but these days, which is which? Their eyes don't look wide even though the bar is now smoke-free, but I've not seen some of these blokes before, so they don't know my clever routine; after all, to be original is the game to play, and there are other games to play, whatever they want, I do, because I am their pleasure, for that hurts the most; and whoever wished for the return of pain? So I stroll in and am tall, though not as lean as I used to be, and maybe I can't be as cat like as before, but they look, still, some of my formers in anger, some of my formers in fear, for I like to make them afraid, and to make them think they have created the fear themselves and naturally they've only themselves to blame.

My futures look at me the same way—suspicious—and it occurs to me as I move to the bar and order a beer frosty ice please from the fool behind the bar, wearing nothing but an apron—fine if you like fatties who are balding-not me-that they've always looked suspiciously, all the ones over the age of seventeen or so, and perhaps I have been too, without knowing it—is it conceivable they have been onto me? I have always been onto them—no—don't think with fear no matter how small—it is like them seeing my bones and laughing at me in rue and in rue not laughing at all. I take the beer from the pudge and slurp it down too fast, I cough and rub my hand cross my frozen momentarily lips—I tell the guy in front of me who can't be more than a college freshman to move off the stool so I can crowd in here—among—the losers—and show them what a winner is truly like—show them there is the game, but more than that—there is the finesse of the game—and that is what it comes down to—that is the evening they have always been in—perpetual twilight—but—as the kid moves over to stand on the side and takes his drink with him, marshaled strengthed by all these red and blue lights, and the cliché music on the machine and fools a couple here and there dancing with each other alone and pretending they'll ever see forty again—

I shall not think into this kingdom of idiots. The starch smell of the back room and the grumbling sweating groping back there---the fish eyes all round me—the stables of hands that link to hands that tremble when they look the strongest—the favors done, the favors returned, and it's all geared to who's on top—not necessarily sexually, dearest—as I put my elbows on the bar and take a cigarette pack from my pocket, take out one, and light it, and then puff on it, waiting for someone to disapprove—but here the deed and here the salvation and that counts for more than doing it by yourself; fevers and triumphs and what vulgarities can count inside these dens of words over the music insultingly loud that it is giving me, not noticing till now, a terrible headache—and what if everyone's wise and everyone is trying to top the other by being the terrified and the victor and then reversing the role—it's little more than professional wrestling—trust no one, it's a set-up job, babe.

Tonight I'm Mr. Professional Man with the Armani suit and the club tie, but last month, or two months ago I was Mr. Stetson over there, and a month before that I was somebody else, not that I'm insecure in my own skin, honey, but it's just a crotch laugh worth of fun to see them begging in person and more fun seeing them begging on their IMs, hey babe you there you aren't fooling me babe so long sweetie see you later pal go to hell oh honey come on one time just say hello will ya? Please and they look at me, this crowd in the Krush Groove Bar, circa 1971—and my eyes adored you, didn't they? I look down the bar, trying to find Mr. Pathetic who is looking at his drink and has his hands to his chin—and is sadder than hell. Hey, bud, wanna get sadder? I'm your man. So I toss the beer off and slam the mug down on the bar hard, loud enough to get their attention, as I see it's worked, some have startled and jumped, and to make that sound over the babble and the abba turned up to ear bleeding is something monumental. I look at the mug to be sure it hasn't shattered.

I think—yes, mongoose and snake for sure. The vanquished and defeated. The melancholy and forlorn, the ditz heads and the muscle men who found their hearts, not to mention their brains, the weakest muscles of all, and my future conquests, my future are you there love? Hey love? You busy tonight love? Can you just say I love you to me? It's like crackling paper into a phone when you want the caller to think they've got a bad connection or the phone is out of order, Jack, but this is just one upping with the technology, and of course I get cell numbers all the time, they do everything but throw them at me, course I give mine out only to the elite, and ditch them when it suits my fancy, so I flip out my cell and look at numbers not there, so I push buttons and chat fake like with Mandrake the Magician or what ever Houdini ghost extant, and I laugh real big, and I talk real big about that three million dollar deal I've almost pushed through, and then honey you and me and nobody else will be living on easy street, and I hear the talk round me dying down, as they want to listen in so I get real palsy with whispering so it will drive them nuts wanting to be the he who gets to live with me on easy street, course there's no..well anyways...

So they crowd round me closer—I notice them getting from the stools and the booths and they are just gradually moving in closer to me-like everybody does, eager though I've kicked them in the gut like they all are—and I hunch over to talk to the invisible man on the cell and somebody turns the music up way louder and there is too much sweat and too little air, and the sweat is not mine, me? I never did, cool, baby, cool—the sweat is from them—from the whole, as I look up and around, a forest of men and they don't look—they just look—like it's the end of a tired day at the office and nothing matters anymore, not even the guy, that would be the timid bank clerk, perfectly ironically obviously enough it would be, who rips the phone from my hands and says hello to silence, which come to think of it was right before he laughed dispiritedly and had no reason to tell anyone why, but it didn't matter to them even when two of the larger specimens on this petri dish pull me from my stool, a distinctily new experience; I find I don't care for it; as I hear the sound of glass breaking and out of the corner of my eye, notice Pudgy the Bartender is stronger than he looks, feeling hands on my arms and my face—that are now hurting—hurting-a novelty for me—hey, watch the threads, bubba, the grasping is very tight—I never have been held quite this hard before, and the last thought before I'm begun to be stripped and passed around by this group of south paws, the last thought before my eyes are closed for me is this—

Why couldn't I have broken that damn beer mug myself? Come on, it's the height of humiliation. Then I began to feel kicks—different kinds of kicks from the ones I had grown so accustomed to. I am highly displeased.