The problem with the world is that dumb people are rarely as dumb as you think and smart people are never quite as smart as you’d hoped. I don’t know why I choose to start this final post on that note, but it seems appropriate.
That said, summer is and was an odd time for me to visit land-locked Denver. Temperatures are invariably in the high 90’s and its so dry that it feels like a tandoori oven. No beach for relief, and the dusty air with its lack of oxygen makes it a struggle for my ravaged lungs to breathe.
So if my goal was to avoid the choking heat of New York I had to be some kind of dumbass to head to Denver.
But my man Catfish has a new apartment with a pool, and he’d been comped a set of tickets to go whitewater rafting up in the Royal Gorge. So in some shape or form I got out on the water everyday, which is what summer’s all about for me.
When we got back from rafting there was a sublime sunset in the sky. A burst of orange and reds that splashed before our spent eyes as we sat on Catfish’s balcony. It was Catfish, EP, the Gentle Giant and me.
“So you leave tomorrow,” Catfish said to me over his shoulder as he monitored the chicken on the barbecue. “Did you have a good trip?”
“Shit yeah,” I answered as EP handed me a glass of wine. “I walked Spiffy everyday, went to Kansas with Jaybird; I went horseback riding, smoked a ton of great weed, got up into the mountains with my dad, went whitewater rafting. Christ, I did it all.”
“...Did you get laid?” EP suddenly asked from the kitchen as he uncorked a fresh bottle of red.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You said you did it all,” EP said as he turned toward me. “Well, did you get laid?”
“..Naw, I guess I didn’t” I had to admit.
“Do you want to?,” the Gentle Giant said as he crumbled some weed into Catfish’s vaporizer. “You can call Lina.”
“Yeah? Is she hot” I asked.
“Fuck yeah,” EP responded as he searched for a clean glass in Catfish’s cabinet, “she’s a pornstar. Or at least, she used to be.”
“No shit,” I answered.
“Yeah,” Catfish assured me with a nod of his head, ”she’s on the internet. Show ‘em guys.”
At which point The Giant brought Catfish’s laptop outside where I got to see this chick in action.
“She does look pretty good,” I admitted.
“Her tits are huge!” EP exclaimed, excited by either those huge tits or his finding of a glass.
“Yeah,” the Gentle Giant chimed in, “and she knows things. How to do things.”
“Hmm,” I thought as I considered it.
“Bring her some weed and she’ll do you twice,” EP said as he came back out on to the balcony, “that is, if you can.”
“Hmmm,” I mumbled again, still on the fence
“Ah come on Lodo. You know you’re a total horndog,” Catfish said to me. “How long you been out here--three weeks? You of all people must be going crazy.”
“I guess there’s some truth to that,” I admitted.
Yet I really wasn’t all that motivated to action. We’d had a long day on the water and the wine and the sunset had put me in a lazy mood.
But an idea in motion stays in motion, and after a few minutes of indecision on my part Catfish suddenly turned from the barbecue to face me.
“Jesus Lodo,” he said with raised tongs as though I’d somehow disappointed him, “you’re still a vibrant man. A single man. I know you’ve got money. Hell, you’ve got a job waiting for you. And you’re a writer for God’s sake--on a roadtrip! You’re obligated to bang this whore.”
“I am?”
“Sure! Jack Kerouack, Jim Carroll, Charles Bukowski, William Vollman. Your favorite--Henry Miller. Who are you to defy tradition? Now you’re some type of groundbreaker or something? Gonna tear down established institutions?”
Catfish. Like Marc Cary when he told me to watch Cold in The ‘D’ it was hard to tell if he was being serious. That’s what made me laugh so hard.
But he’d shamed me.
So I drove out toward the airport where I pulled up to the anonymous, shitbox house and found the former pornstar--Lina waiting for me in her high heels, short denim skirt, and unbuttoned blouse knotted in front. A Chinese Daisy Duke, with big heavy legs and jugs.
She was older than she looked on the internet. Late-30’s. A mix of Asian and Spanish; least that’s what she said. In perfect English that sounded like California. She had a few pock marks on her face, but she was attractive in a debauched way. Jet black hair past her shoulders. Big lips. Those monster tits and thick legs.
If there were any cameras in the small space I didn’t see them, and if she had any male protection they must have been in her closet. If so, they were in there a long time.
She opened the door and scrutinized my face.
“You look like somebody,” she said with a laugh as she led me to her couch.
“I’ve heard that,” I said as I sat down on the worn red cushion. She sat next to me and rested her hands on my lap. Her face was right next to mine. I could smell her stale breath.
“EP says you live in New York”
“That’s true,” I told her. “Brooklyn.”
“I like guys from New York,” she whispered in my ear, then ran her tongue down my neck.
“Oh, well,...”
She traced her way back up my neck with her tongue, then un-knotted her blouse.
“Did you bring some milk money for me baby?” she asked as she squeezed her tits together and bopped them up and down for my amusement.
“What’s that?” I asked, momentarily distracted.
“Mommy can’t work without milk money,” she repeated with expectancy.
“Oh yeah, right. Here you go,” I said, as I reached into my pocket and gave her $200.00. “But don’t say mommy. ”
She counted my stiff 20’s that had come straight out the ATM and laughed.
“You don’t like that? EP loves when I say that shit.”
“Don’t tell me that.”
And I’m not gonna say anything either. At least not about what happened next. You’ll have to go to a different blog for that, though I’ll mention Lina was a really good lay. Knew things as the Gentle Giant had said. But I introduce her only because of a conversation we had about an hour later.
I’d just got out the shower and stepped back into the bedroom to get dressed. Lina looked me up and down.
“How old are you?’ she asked me.
“”I’ll be 44.”
“Really. ...What do you do out there in New York?” she asked.
I didn’t want to say investigator, so I said, “I don’t do anything--I just quit my job.”
We looked at each other silently. Lina lay on her belly on top of the bed. The sight of her big ass and huge tits began to make me hard again. She placed her index finger on my junk and traced a path along its increasing length.
“Hey,” I said as I reached into my pocket, “EP said if I gave you this I could maybe get another throw. What d’ya say?”
She reached for the weed and smelled it.
“EP gave you this?” she asked.
“Um hmm. Its from the clinic.”
She smelled it again.
“...Okay, let’s go in here.”
Lina threw on a robe and led me back to the original room. We sat on the green carpeted floor and leaned against the couch as she proceeded to dump the weed on to a large glossy magazine.
“So why’d you come out here if you’re from New York?” she asked as she broke-up the buds.
“I’ve got my dog out here. I had to leave her when I moved to New York, but I see her whenever I get free time. Plus my niece is out here--and my sister. My folks..all my people really.”
Lina nodded her head, then activated a vaporizer that was on a small table.
“Let that warm-up for a minute,” she said. “...So, you mind if I ask why you quit your job? Women like a working man you know.”
I laughed.
“No, I don’t mind. We’d had this meeting--a meeting I was on time for. Nobody denies that. Except there were only four chairs in my boss’s office. We’ve got five people in my unit but only four chairs, right? So no big deal, I run out to get a chair from my cubicle when my boss is like (here I snap my fingers and point) 'Where do you think you’re going? You’re not going anywhere....'"
I told her the story. The whole story. I’d told it often by this point so I had all the little nuances and phrases down. At one point I used that phrase pulling rank like the guy on the plane had said and began to get myself worked up all over again. Lina laughed at that as she installed the whip and drew from the vaporizer.
“..So that’s it?” she said when I’d finished. She was careful the way she said it, unsure as to my sensitivities. “That made you so mad that you quit?” she asked again as she handed me the whip.
“Yep,” I told her. “Why, you wouldn’t have done that?”
But Lina just held up her hands and stayed quiet.
“Come on,” I said, “you can tell me. I’m not gonna freak-out on you. We’re just two people talking.”
Lina’s eyes narrowed as she evaluated me. She was older than in her movies. Late 30’s at least.
“..Let me ask you, do you like New York?” she asked as she reached for the whip.
“Yeah, definitely--except for summer.”
“Okay. And did you like this job?”
“Yeah I liked it, when they’d just let me do the job. But I couldn’t do the other stuff. The personal relations stuff.”
“Like that meeting with your boss, right? That made you angry,” she said flatly.
“I suppose. Why do you say it like that?”
“No reason. Men get angry, that’s all..,” she trailed off as she drew a long, deep inhale from the whip. I waited for her to complete the thought but she obviously had no plans to do so.
“...Well don’t stop there,” I said with a laugh that I hoped would put her at ease. “Tell me what you think. You’ve got me curious now.”
She exhaled her hit and sighed in a single mannerism as she handed me the whip.
“Well baby,” she said cautiously, “...I mean, maybe this wasn't really about your boss. Job’s are a pain in the ass, but listen to what you said. You’ve got your niece out here, and your folks. All your people--isn’t that how you said it? Even your dog’s out here.”
“Yeah, so.”
“So,...”
Again she hesitated, not sure of my reaction; as though used to violence.
“Go on,” I said as I took a pull off the whip.
“..Well,...it just sort of sounds like--I don’t know.”
“Just say it!” I said again.
“...Well, it sounds like maybe things just sort of dried-up on you out there in New York. Know what I mean? Its happened to me.“
“Dried-up?” I asked.
“Yeah, you know. Like maybe the love just ran out over there. Why else would you get so mad? I mean, you seem like a happy guy. Good looking. If you were a woman you’d have just gone home and cried. But you’re a man so you got angry. Maybe--I don’t know you at all.”
Something ‘bout the look on my face must have caused her to withdraw; which in fact, made me angry. But I couldn’t help but consider what she’d said.
“...What?” she eventually asked as she gestured toward the whip.
“Nothing,” I said as I took one final pull and handed it to her, “they said you knew things.”
* NOTE: Special thanks to anyone who's stuck with me thus far, and who's supported the blog throughout these 300+ posts. Until this last series, I've posted almost every 3-4 days, and I'm fairly proud of what I've accomplished. The blog format definitely made me a better writer. That said, I really wanted a lot more out of this last one, but I've been forced to write it piecemeal--an hour or so here and there, and I feel its suffered.
As you can see, my new job has caused the time between posts to become almost moronic. As such, I think I'm gonna have to end Stays Put here. Just feels like the end--at least of this set of stories (though they could all use a second draft).
The link to my new blog is posted at the very top of this page; as well as on the right-hand side, beneath the LINKS header. Thanks for reading!
