Our PC hardware trouble tech owes me about two large for last season's Super Bowl, so it goes without saying that my system can not only sing and dance, it can also ask if you need those nifty binoculars they hand out to the poor souls in the nosebleed seats at the New York Metropolitan Opera.

It also means that my calls get answered before you can do the good old Pulp Fiction 'Blueberry Pie' speed test.

"Well, all right, maybe not that fast.

But pretty quick."

For the record, my Bruce Willis interpretation is dead on.

I put a big fat "X" next to this door's address, and make a note to e-mail Ryan to let him know that maintenance on his is forthcoming.

I realize that I'm closing on that golden arch of the day - a completed task list - and check my watch. I still have about four hours to kill. This means that I can get to my favourite part of the night, which is basically just sitting upstairs drinking coffee and pursuing the Great American Dream.

For those of you who don't get out much, the definition of the Great American Dream has changed a little over the past few years. It used to be that this would entail you growing up clean, sober, and heterosexual so that you could get into the college of your father's choosing. Sometime during college you'd hook up with someone who didn't flinch at the thought of ditching invertebrate taxonomy in favour of developing new and exciting methods for selecting the perfect spray starch for the white shirt you'd wear at work. You didn't have a day job because people tended to work no more than one job. Wait a second - let's take that back.

You wouldn't have a job. You'd have a career. Something nice and stable from which to launch out of the seedy little World War II program house you were living in to a nice priority zoned piece of fame you could call your own. You'd kick out two-point-five spawn of your very own and then lay it up between the spawn and medicaid as to who was going to pay for your upper bowel cleaning every five years.

These days it's changed. You work a job, not a career. This is because there's not a single thing worth doing that will satisfy the modern capitalist. Everytime you get content your self-righteous neighbor decides to trash your deranged little world by buying a cooler Volkswagen.

These days you grow up. You hope that you're sexually abused or beaten within an inch of your life so that you qualify for free therapy on some state aided program. You hope for the free therapy because everyone needs it these days. You can forget about needing to grow up clean or sober. Everyone needs some recently evicted monkey to earn any respect around here. Don't worry about your sexual orientation, either. Gay men have job security in spades no matter how much Solitaire they spend the day playing on their work machines. Lesbians (or 'The Lesbanese" as Karlie calls them) are so smashingly en vogue that it's now a virtal fame thrower as opposed to some sort of social stigma.

Don't worry about houses or medicaid. No one but your parents can really get a decent permanent pad these days, and there isn't a single government health plan to rely on that isn't universally slated by every major psychic and financial network to peter out within a decade.

These days we all want a home business. A snappy looking companion with a styling hair cut. We want to make money on the side so that it's not readily apparent to any finance seeking buddies just how close you are to retirement. These days your retirement account can be bought, sold, invested, divested, and gambled out to enough different banking institutions and long-term plans that no one will have a single damned clue who to attempt collection from after you die with a million dollar lung cancer bill.

It may not sound like it, but the Great American Dream has gotten a lot simpler. I can do boys or girls, don't have to worry about whether or not I'll outlive my income - it's a tactical certainty.

Somewhere over the last decade the Great American dream has become getting clever comebacks. Paydirt isn't in the money as much as it is the method in the modern world.

For me, tonight, the Great American Dream means I'll get to place a few more wagers online, research a few of my more difficult forthcoming bets, and basically set the stage for the dance of the almighty greenbacks.

For the record, this is the only musical I'm likely to stand for more than three minutes. Well, ok, it takes me longer than that to come in the shower. But only a little.

For the record, the area immediately outside Ryan's door smells like a chemical waste facility. I'm no totally sure, but I'd be willing to bet a week's pay that smoking here might just be the fastest solution to any chemical peel interests you have. This is mainly because the area smells like it's used to mix paint and blood in equal parts. I don't notice this most nights because of the outstanding ventilation system each of the science labs have. Tonight, however, I am right outside his door. This kind of smell makes me glad I don't have to actually enter his work area. I'd hate to find myself in a crate shipped to Mexico in response to my having inhaled enough of whatever the hell this is to knock me out for three days.

Note to self.
You can lead an athlete to a pussywhipped wholly distracted opponent, but you can't make him sack up and carry, smack, or throw an icon across a wide line on the playing surface.

You can also lead this same athlete to a game placing them in the opposite situation and they'll kick ass, take names, and make you a few hundred dollars on an all-odds against-long-shot.

This is sort of like the old addage about how you can't guarantee a horse will drink malt liquor, even in the presence of alluring swmiwear and a nice looking party.

I'm outside Tim and Karlie's door. Inside, I can hear loud music and a lot of girlish giggling. Part Karlie, part someone else. I can smell inscence and cigarette smoke outside on their aparment's stoop, cold wind blowing and all. It's dark. Really dark. I've only been off work long enough to shower. Normally, I'd take a nap and get some decently priced yet tasty sushi somewhere.

But I've been 'penciled in' for Karlie's little shin dig and have been to enough parties at Tim's house to know that sleeping or eating beforehand are not only optional, they're a waste of perfectly good leisure time.

You can open the door and walk right in when they're doing their party. When you walk in, you'll actually be able to identify the scent of the little cones they burn as being Sandalwood, Sage, or perhaps even Jasmine - all depending on the mood of the party. Knowing that she's having a friend over, knowing their recreational habits, and knowing that they'll vanish and leave me with said friend for no less than seven to nine hours....I can pretty comfortable predict that tonight's scent is Jasmine.

This is because Karlie knows that Jasmine makes me crazy. Vanilla does too, but only if it's an undertoned sort of caught in the hair smell that you don't notice till you're already trapped into giving her a long shoulder rub. Pinned against some surface with her in your lap and her head next to your face you are the victim of sensual assault via your olfactory senses. This is the sort of gang rape gig that both Karlie's hair and body oils excel. It's terribly likely that kindly Ms. Whoever The Hell Has Come From the Internet has been briefed, sprayed, and prepared with this same knowledge. I won't really be able to verify this until I'm stuck in some close quarters situation with the girl, though. Then I'll be able to look over at Karlie and tell by the smirk on her face exactly what's planned for me.

As I was saying, you could walk right into their apartment. As a stranger, you might even be asked or seduced into staying if you were cool enough at the right time. Me, I'm expected company and am basically supposed to act as a psychic television for their company while Tim and Karlie are off screwing each other blind in the bedroom. This means that the front and only outside door to their place won't lock until after I'm inside for the night.

There'll be all the cursory greetings, the hugs, the silently licked hellos from across the room. Tim looking at me with that smile that says a combination of "Great to see you" and "I wonder if you've slept with my wife yet" at the same time. He smiles so convincingly that you can't tell if either sentiment would be a good or bad one.

Their living room looks like anyone elses, I suppose. As long as you come from an alternate universe where everyone worships bad porn posters from the 70's you won't feel the least bit out of place. As long as the incense doesn't burn your eyes you're going to get along fine. If you don't mind people smoking and dripping two inch long ashes into a fur covered ash tray you'll be the greatest thing since sliced bread - for a period of no less than ten minutes.

And if you can play nice long enough for the shock of the long flat mirror on their coffe table to pass, you might get to pick a song on the stereo. Don't say anything about the razor blade next to the pile of white powder, and you're likely to get asked how cool you are with -

well....you know.

Stuff.

I remember my first introduction to all of this. Coming through their door, with Karlie instantly attaching herself to me. It was winter time then, not just late fall. There was snow everywhere and the weather was positively miserable. I was wearing my typical subdued earth tones kind of outfit. And my hemp sandals. With no socks. Most people, they see you in sandals with no socks while there's snow on the ground and they ask you if you're out to catch whaever this year's most posh variety of flu is.

Taiwan Chicken Flu. The one that killed all those chickens in Asia and makes everyone sick.

West Nile Virus. Encephalitis. The good old fashioned American cold. Are you into the latest hoeopathic remedies. Here's som kind of slime pellet designed to reduce the amount of time you spend sniffling and bitching at work. Here's some NyQuil, aka Baptist Bourbon, aka the centerpiece of Dennis Leary's stand-up comic routine.

Karlie, she's a bit of an oddball, so she thinks it's the hippest thing in that day's known universe. She thinks that it's great that I'm not worried about the bacterial wrath of God setting up it's own database replication center in my sinus cavity. Karlie, she lets me get in the house for about five minutes before she's down on her knees stronking my feet with her metallic purple fingertips.

Most people have these smooth and clean looking feet. Me, I get stuck with Hobbit feet. I have hair on the tops of my feet. Little toupés of dark brown scruff top each and every single exposed hair. When I wear sandles people notice it. Otherwise, the only person who can tell it's there is me when I wear those uncomfortable kind of dress socks that burn into little balls of smouldering plastic in less than two seconds of direct exposure to fire. I notice it then because it pulls and tears at me in some rather uncomfortable ways. These days, working for the University, I only wear these kinds of socks when I'm too tired to stay awake without some sort of constant pain intereference going on in my nervous center. It stops hurting after a couple of hours and is just this sort of sickly sweet tingle that pops up every now and then.

After another ten minutes, TIm saunters in with this rather sheik little mirror. It has Marvin the Martian on it. Marvin, he's got a ray gun in one hand with the other hand pointing straight to his feet in a totally authoritarian manner. There's a little speech caption that says "On your knees human!". By his feet there's a little bowing spot. An X. 'X' marks the spot for optimum worship exposure. Only we can't really see the 'X' too well because there's this pile of Methampetamine on it. This is my first time to be around this sort of thing.

It's the answer to the question of how Tim can work for fourteen hours straight without making any mistakes. It's the reason Tim sometimes has bags under his eyes big enough to carry the weight of the world's responsibility to fledgling third-world franchise countries. You know the ones. There the little places like Afghanistan that communism put on the map and the triumph of freeing capitalism left in economic torture. It's the reason Tim and Karlie can have sex for, oh I don't know, a bahzillion years or so without stopping for more than the occasional watering break.

Tim, he's coaxing me to make my nervousness go away. Karlie starts making these thick little lines of the stuff with a razor blade. She uses the blade to scrape it into these straight shapes that look like what geologists call Berms. A Berm is a lot like an ocean wave in appearance. It's a crested ridge on a piece of land that falls away in little erosion fractal divets on either side in pretty much equal slopes. Berms are always longer than they are wide or tall. Karlie does this with a practiced ease. She's looking busy, but relaxed. There's a funny little soundtrack as the razor tap dances on the mirror and then scrapes a line away from the pile.

Tap, Tap, scrape.
Tap,T ap, scrape.

It's Frank Sinatra with a bad wooden leg trying to impress some other big beau from the 40's. You dance, dance, slide to one side all dapper and smooth, only with the wooden leg it's more like dragging something that's only a little bit heavy across a freshly waxed slatted wood floor.

Karlie rolls up a dollar bill and leans over a line. She pinches a nostril shut and inhales one of the bigger thicker lines. There's a macro-wind tunnel noise, and she leans back away from the mirror. She does this just in case she can't control her body's sneeze or cough reflex response to inhaling this powder. Cough or sneeze over the mirror, and you'll be stuck trying to reclaim powder from the floor, table-top, and sides of the mirror. Since none of these surfaces are as clean as the mirror this could mean inhaling a lot of lint and mold spores that you really weren't after

There are little thin lines, obviously meant for me, and then the super-thick exclamation point style Berms for Tim and Karlie. These thicker lines, they hit you so hard and so fast that they're called Coffin Nails. Coffin Nails not only because they're sort of bad for you, but because the way they're a little thicker and headed on one side makes them look a lot like 18th century fasteners that an undertaker might hammer into a pine box in order to permanently seal something inside. Coffin Nails is also the universal name for any kind of big thick destined to intoxicate for at least 14 hours line of an inhaled out-of-body molecular adjustment experience.

Tim follows suit. Kneels before Marvin, takes his coffin nail, lays back like dracula for a few minutes, and starts giggling.

I ask if it's fun in any sort of way that might make me want to do it twice. Karlie smiles very big, and gets me down in front of the mirror. I'm a little bit scared. This isn't marijuana. This isn't smoking ciggarettes or drinking while you're still a teenager. This is a genuine, dyed-in--the-wool hard drug. Sitting before me is a federal prison sentence. This is the part where Crockett and Tubbs kick down the door in fancy outfits while talking me down with their anti-gangster diatribe. This is where Joe Friday raises an eyebrow and asks me, "Was it all worth it, kid?" This is a year ago, and all that shit is out of my head when I do it these days.

This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. This is your brain telling your body to lean forward and put a straw into your nose. This is your nose with a straw or a dollar bill or a key or anything that acts like a vacuum siphon or spoon to hold out powder that will be sitting directly on top of some of the best direct to system absorption systems in your body. This is me pinching my nose. This is Karlie's breath on the back of my neck. This is Karlie saying huskily, "You are sooooo going to love this." This is Karlie's hair, longer at that time, falling over my shoulder and innundating me with Patchouli scent. This is her saying "When Tim goes to get more in a little bit, I am going to redefine your sense of total spiritual orgasm." This is me inhaling my first line of powder.

This is my nose, on fire. Burning. My eyes dropping enough water to feed Petunias, Pansies, Roses, and Grapes. This is my skull trying to dissolve from the inside out as if it's just been mimersed in some sort of concentrated organic acidic susbtance.

This is your brain.
This is your brain up for the next 16 hours. This is you having the most intense conversations, artistic experiences, and sex of your life for the next several hours per session. This is all of this being o.k., because meth is one of the strongest central nervous system stimulants in the known universe. This is Tim explaining to you that he;s really ok with this intense handjob oral sex thing that Karlie's been doing to you for the last three hours. It's o.k., because he loves her. He loves you. He wants everyone to be happy, and wants to give to make it happen. He's going to leave now so that you and Karlie can get to know each other better.

This is the most intense pre-orgasm plateu of your life, and it'll be lasting until Tim gets back from Bishops house. Bishop is where Tim gets things, and Ryan is where Bishop goes for it all one step further down the food chain. This is Karlie's index finger massaging your prostate while she's rubbing silicone lubricant up and down your cock slowly and deliberately. This is Karlie's face, shining and sparkling with glitter and lubricant looking right into your eyes. Smiling and licking her lips. She bears down harder and makes you promise Tim in the doorway that you'll hold on to yourself until Tim gets home. This is Karlie making you promise that you'll not come until Tim gets back to the apartment, so that he can watch you come all over her face.

This was my first time to hang out with Karlie. This was my first time to get high with the two of them. This is a pretty much typical experience with them that I do my best to limit to once or twice a month, but usually fail miserably. This is how Tim pays back his debts to me. This is Karlie loving how she feels to be an indetured servant made to make me do things so that her husband doesn't have to cut their habit back to pay me real cash.

This is a very common experience if you're a frequent character in the Karlie and Tim show. It's a lot like the Bob Newhart show, or Mad About You, only there's no dog, and Jennifer Anniston won't be making a return appearance as anyone's long lost girlfriend.

This is me, knocking on the door.

Karlie is waiting in her typical nightglow glory.

She's got glitter in her hair, a light coloured fake tear drawn on the side of her face in blue, and purple lipstick. She's dyed her hair red, but not in any kind of Kate Winslet sort of way. She looks deliciously like some Japanese cartoon portrayal of an American girl. If you've spent any time up late at night you know the kind of cartoons I'm talking about. It's the action adventure epic of good and evil wrapped hidden behind a veil of good old fashioned pseudo-erotica.

There's the smell of ammonia and bleach in the air. With the smell's strength at the level it is, I can make out that more than one person felt the need to make a change. I can also smell Jasmine and Patchouli in the air.

Note to self: It's going to be one of those nights.

Right now, both Tim and the mysterious visitor are out of sight, but I can hear them in the next room. There's a lot of laughter in there.

Karlie spreads her arms out in a straight long line so that she looks like a human balance beam. She's all Vanna White style.

You know, like you could just stand on them on one leg and bow for the Olympic judges. Did you score a perfect ten? Will Coach stop returning your phone calls tomorrow?

She spins in a slow circle, showing off how her petite frame looks in her jeans and apparently brand new t-shirt.

"Your girlfriend likes me better." it says with blue type on a black background. The font looks familiar - something from an album cover or the introductory credits from some film.

"You like?" She smacks a hand on each buttock as she says this. There's a solid popping noise as this happens. Like someone has just slapped a big bag of puppy chow. She's all proud smiles. Purple lipstick has begun a slow 'coup de etat' of her lower right front canine. Karlie and her canines...she's always joked about trying out for a role as a vampire in the next big vampire movie. But with the way things are in her lifestyle, the movies just keep on coming out....and she keeps just saying it.

A lot of things in life go this way.

I give her a huge appreciative grin. "Oh sure. Except I think my invisible girlfriend might like you too much with that hair."

Karlie giggles. "Well then, bring the bitch on!" She squeaks a little on the last bit. "We are going to have soooo much fun tonight. If you seriously dig this whole ultra-violet get-up you're going to really dig Reina and Tim's hair. "

We interrupt this transmission to save you the prattling that Karlie is capable of. This is your min, and next frame down this is your brain not hearing much. This is your brain really just watching how Karlie smiles, how her whole beautiful mouth works. I'd love to pretend this is just me, but I think everyone does this. It's like reading a page in a boring part of some book. Paragraph starter etcetera. You just read the start because it's all that you really need to read to know how things are going to finish. Once you reach that point, she's just beautiful AM band static. She's the visual to go with the post-war dream, the hockey scores, the whole point set match melodrama. You wait for her to inhale with labour or reach for a cigarette and then you know she's almost done.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming, complete with Jenna Jameson as a red-headed anime character.

"----out of town for a while. No one can find him. Tim got all froggy and saved the day by scoring some party favours at work. It's supposed to be some awesome stuff. He said the chick he bought it from in the Tier on playground raved on about it forever."

She produces a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She flips a cigarette between her fingers like she's doing some sort of coin trick before becoming a noxious little effigy to the beauty of modern American suicide.

"Reina is from Dallas. She's outrageously cool and cute, so try not to bore her."

A running joke between Karlie and me is that I'm hideously cute to fuck o fuck with, but that I'm boring for the first ten minutes of any conversation. Being as this is in direct violation of her theory that any impression you're going to make on a girl is done in the first five, this is something she tries to get me meditating on before she introduces me to people.

This is me, taking off my jacket and sitting down on the loveseat. Marvin and his marching powder are in front of me. It's really hard no to look at what he's pointing at.

Karlie might look like just another seductive pixie type, but a guy could probably learn a lot about what women want just from listening to her.

If he weren't - you know, just watching her mouth move.

Karlie starts telling me that in addition to fun, tonight will involve some new experiences for me. New drugs, new sex (insert lascivious wink here), new realities and practices.

She reminds me again of what a stick in the mud I can be, and suggests the much like a spoonful of sugar, a head full of dust will make any medicine go down - in a most delightful way.

I'm getting down on the floor, and Karlie is carving me out a coffin nail. It's a respectable sized little icon lying there on polished glass the way it is. I hand her fifty dollars - it's the little cover charge I've been paying for my part of our self-destruction. It's more expensive than a movie, but a hell of a lot cheaper than sushi.

This sort of helps to balance the concept in my head. Based on the new party favours she's talking about, her friend from out of town, and the size of the 20th century crypt construction kit in front of me it all seems like I'll be coming out ahead of the game.

Karlie is done dicing. I'm kneeling before Marvin, getting ready to do my Martian homage routine.

It's funny how every habit develops it's own set of rituals. Drug users the world over do it, regardless of the legitimacy of their chosen habits. Right now, I feel like I always do right before I do a line of anything. A little nervous, a lot anxious.

Karlie watches me doing the routine. She always watches guests with a mixture of curiosity, joy of sharing, and paranoia. Watching lets her see if you're going to have a stroke in ten minutes. Watching the line diminish and your eyes water proves you're not a cop in her mind. It gives her something to poke at you about later.

I start talking as I do the geometric proof of habitual substantiation.

Take stock of self while rolling a bill into a snorting tube. Let the bill unroll and drop as I notice a lovely custom glass snorting tube. Pick up the tube and twirl it once between the fingers.

Pulse and breathing close to normal. Nostrils are clear enough. Snort air good an hard one time to get them a bit raw and sensitive - and to clear any nasal debris.

"It's a good thing you and Tim are so freaky and eclectic, Karlie"

You lick your lips, You twitch your nose to drive off any sneeze inducing itches. In case I haven't mentioned it at least four times before, sneezing a hundred dollars worth of high into an orange shag carpet will not improve your approval rating with the populace at large.

"Why's that?"

You take a good and deep breath. You insert the glass tube into your nostril as you bend over. Exhale slow and gentle.

"Because otherwise, some people might mistake this whole seventies porn-theme in your living room as nothing more than the product of under funded sex fiends with bad taste in decor. That, or that maybe you don't know the address of your local Ethan Allen retailer."

Karlie giggles. "Oh, you! You're already on those precious little knees of yours. Now shut up and blow, bitch."

You pinch your nostril.
You put the tube right at the beginning of the train tracks.
You signal the conductor.
He pulls the whistle cable.
There's a mid-pitch sucking noise as my nose vacuums up the wide white line in front of it.

Goodbye sober head. This train is, as Steven Tyler might say, now a-Rollin.

You lean back.
You tell your nostrils and tear ducts to quit their bitching,
You try not to sneeze.
You do a little bit of snorting chunky parts of the powder farther into your sinuses.

You feel Karlie at your ear, just like a dozen times before. Right there,. breathing soft and smooth like some sort of little poetic iron lung. She's saying that as good as this feels, Reina is even better.

"Ok you two, he's dusted. Come back in here before I get jealous or bored enough to jump Paul." She shouts this in the general direction of the hallway. There's only one hall in their apartment, leading back to a little intersection where you pick between a bathroom and two bedrooms. Should you have difficulty locating it, just look for the wall with the "Behind The Green Door" movie poster on it.

Tim and Reina come out of the bedroom on the right. Reina is holding one arm near the elbow, nursing a Scooby Doo bandage there that's toward the inside of her arm more than the crook of the elbow itself.

Tim has apparently gone and lot about thirty percent of his brain function in the hour or so since our shift ended. This isn't indicated by tremors or any sort of stagger so much as by the fact that he's eschewed the haircut he had earlier in favour of something a bit more drastic and extreme looking.

Earlier he had one of those spikey moussed-up boy band haircuts that you see so many twenty something men sport these days. Now, he's ready for a punk band. His dark brown hair matches Karlie's and is a close cropped Mohawk. He is Mr. Grin in response to my wide eyed reaction.

This is pretty gutsy for him to be doing, given that I was coming over and all. Given that I'm sort of paying to be somewhere that's available to me so that we can hang out together while sparing him the trouble of repaying his increasing bad wagers tab.

It's also ballsy of him if you consider the fact that I'm sort-of like one of his bosses.

Me, I don't care what Tim looks like as long as he's an ass in a chair with a tongue to pronounce the words "I'm sure we can fix that for you right away." I don't care if he wears a ballet outfit complete down to the slippers.

My boss, however, will most likely shit live newborn kittens over something so unprofessional and unpreventable.

As Tim sits down, I notice that he has a bandage to match the one Reina has in the same spot, on the opposite arm.

Reina looks like one of those super-chic modern hippie girls. bone white complexion, no make-up, freckles, blue eyes, and long curly black hair down to the middle of her back. She's added long streaks of purple and red to her hair recently, with some little strands that are entwined in some sort of reggae looking green and red cords.

Her t-shirt is sky blue, and has the words "girl power" printed in glitter text with little stars bouncing away from the top of each character in the phrase.

My Jasmine meter has just hit ten.

Tim goes over behind Karlie and says "This is my mate, Paul. Like I said before, we work together."

Tim always introduces me as his mate. Like we just got off the plane from Australia to deliver fucking Koalas to some zoo or something.

Me, my big inner fear is that someday, someone somewhere is going to not know about wannabe Australians and think that this means we fuck like sweaty monkeys whenever people aren't around.

Well, maybe it isn't just the whole 'g'day mate' trip he's on when showing off friends. Tim also stands way too damn close to anyone he's talking to or about. He's basically your average personal space squatter. Should you ever find him standing all Paul Hogan style on your forehead, don't say I never warned you.

Tim's coup de grace is to mention how I look like such a cute little cube monkey in my Dockers and white shirt when I'm at work

Karlie completes Tim's faux aussie act with her own little apology for me being me. "Paul's a total sports geek in addition to his computer addictions, but makes great money at both. So....cut him two millionths of an inch of slack if he goes into some kind of crazy bent about the National Baseball League or something."

Reina sits through all of this with one of those 'poor you' looks on her face. Halfway through Karlie mentioning my potential for bents pertaining to national league sports I can see Karlie making rolling eye gestures. This gets me to grinning.

This is your average weekend night at Karlie's house. This is you with two people you really wish you didn't know this well. This is the feel of your friends making sure that you feel exactly the same way you would if it were Thanksgiving and the aunt who somehow manages to be both impoverished and the best gift buyer is pinching your cheeks in front of this year's fianceé.

Reina decides to do the whole set and match routine to the end. She asks the fateful question in this sort of husky and hoarse voice that is completely contrary to her looks. She sounds like a tired auctioneed after a five hour estate sale. She sounds like a phone sex operator (not that I'd know much about those - I just read the articles they suggest after the flesh tattoo version of a tarrot reading) who's been doing the virtual deed for about a decade too long. She asks:

"So, did you know Tim before he worked at the school?"

This is a baiting deal. We're in the doldrums of intoxication right now. I'm not quite sober - after all, I can already feel my skin starting to tingle and get more sensitive. The smell of the jasmine and patchouli in the air has me semi-erect in my oh-so-cute DKNY khaki pants. They're starting to talk, going through it all. I nod and smile a lot.

But me, reall I'm still only in the de-militarized zone of drug sense at the moment. They're all moving right along at warp factor seven in their cute little outfits with the right smells and the right looks and the perfect hair and the brand new special colour streaks. Me, I'm nervous and edgy about the fix I've just inhaled.

You see, each and every drug user goes through a unique phenomenon each and every time they imbibe a dose of something.

You look at the bag the Man with the pockets has handed you. Whether there's some kind of ground up plant, some sort of powder, or a few ampoules of some medicinal surgery grade pain killer, you try the impossible. You're looking really close for the magic signs of the divine connection. What you're really doing is playing a terrible little mind-teasing joke on yourself. Trying to solve a riddle that doesn't really matter. Ninety percent of the time you buy regardless of the outcome of the riddle.

Colour. Is it the right colour. This is always a crapshoot. You know what colour you really want. Maybe it's the fluorescent green of nicely grown hydroponic hemp. Maybe you want china-white heroin. Maybe you want that mustard yellow methampetamine that everyone in the universe who orbits occasionally knows is really just 'filter dope'. But in the end, there's always somebody's sister's brother's cousin's roomate's best friend who told a fable about something the exact same colour as what you're seeing at the time. And the story is good. So good that there's something crazy and beautiful involved.

"...and right before we moved into this apartment they were running around together just kind of partying where they could, making enough to fix from time to time, but mainly Tim just stood there and looked psycho whenever Paul went to cash in on something someone owed him..."

Texture. Is it chunky enough. Stemmy enough. Are there too many seeds. Do the little flakes of crystal look like they're mainly drug or are they some sort of fruit preservative. This you can develop a useful eye for. Are there too many colours in the flakes when you look at them closely. This can indicate a bad cooking job at the manufacturer or even worse, that what you're buying is just someone else's crushed up medication

"...and then Paul landed the Tier two job and started talking Tim up..." Reina is watching me. I must be showing signs of it hitting. Take assessment. Am I blue? Am I red? Am I there or then? The fact that this sort of stuff is a constant blur that takes place while I occasionally interrup to correct flaws in Tim or Karlie's story is a sign that the waves are breaking on shore now. I'm no longer in the sea of the sane. I'm now the driftwood to be used in someone's distant fire.

Smell. The smell can tell you things too. Did someone make this recently. Does it smell like it's turning into something else. Me, I've been around enough chemistry majors to know that some chemical concoctions are very very stable, and some are not. Sometimes you buy powder and it'll keep for a year as long as you keep in in a cool dry location. Some stuff, you buy it and you know from look and smell of the bag that it's on the way back to atomic oneness with the atmospheric hydrogen trapped in whatever container Chef Boyardee had lying around right before the buyer came by.

Chef Boyardee. This is what a lot of people in the "industry" tend to call clandestine drug manufacturers. You call them shit like this because you never really want to know anything about them. It would be like finding out that Tom Landry had to wear plastic underwear all the way through college. There's a certain magic for the chemicals that you totally lose when you know that whoever actually made them has to urinate and sweat just like the rest of us. They lose that Lucky the Leprechaun prestige that they walk into a room with.

You also call them Chef Boyardee when you're talking to other people because you don't really want to know who they are. Chances are extremely good that if you know a cook on a name to name basis that you're deeper into this particular gene pool than you or anyone you care about has much real business being. No one wants to know the guy who did in Jimmy Hoffa. It's fun to theorize, fun to point fingers and name names - as long as you're never right or completely certain. Being completely certain can land you in an entirely different side of things that's considerably less fun. Tim, he knows names. He knows people. Tim's a part side small time deal maker and party favour provider. Me, I'll stick to letting people lose beer money on ball games. I don't get to carry a cheap nine millimeter, but on the other foot I'm also not likely to find myself nibbling on the barrel of one either.

"...and then Paul finally got over himself and reccomended my application out of the stack. I didn't use him as a reference and we were very careful about how much time we spent around each other at first when we were in the building. Paul, he's too careful...maybe too paranoid....acts like he knows everything about everything....but really, despite the pain in the ass and risk of it all for both of us, it's been really profitable. Those Tier one kids will buy anything you set in front of them..."

This goes on for what feels like ten minutes. But it's really more like two hours. In a nutshell, the story is this. Tim and I met through a buddy while I was still in school. This buddy placed a bet for Tim. A bad one. The kind that leave him owing me enough money to make me nervous about going over to collect in person. Five large. Five large is, for those of you not in any kind of off the cuff business, five thousand dollars. I was happy when the scores came up like I knew they would, but not surprised. And the happiness faded when I went to meet Tim and saw that he was clearly a regular user of about anything you can imagine taking into your system. This all went away after a long late-night waflles session at a nearby Denny's. To most people, Tim comes off as being a little bit spooky. Me, I'm not far from being just like him, but in a slightly different way. On the tree, gambling and drugs look totally different. In a nutshell, and to the legal system, they're almost identical.

Reina and I end up getting along, which makes everything a bit easier. Funny thing is, that Reina and Tim are sharing some sort of experience that Karlie and I have been left out of. Secret smiles, dancing eyes, and the fact that they keep both seeing similar things in the room. Things that aren't really there. Ghosts in the room. Rooms in the ghosts.

You get the picture. Things like Karlie and I looking like UHF television ghosts during a day of cloudy skies and bad signal. Karlie promises she'll explain the visuals when we go to the store. Note to self: Tim and Reina go nowhere public tonight or tomorrow. For some reason Karlie thinks this is funny as hell. Me, I'm used to the world seeming a little too Melrose Place for my comfort, so I try to take it in pace.

For those of you standing in the rain with an empty stomach and looking in through the window of this restraunt to catch this scene, let me remind you about the chronological black hole that occurs with methamphetine. Anything that feels like it's only taken a few minutes has probably involved more than an hour. So even the most simple acts, such as Reina and I getting up to say bye to Tim and Karlie so that we can roll down the road to pick up ciggarettes and diet colas are involved.

Forty minutes it takes to decide what to get and where we're driving. Which cell phone are we taking. Who's driving, and which car looks the least like the vehicle of a Miami Vice style kingpin. Making sure no one's carrying anything more potent than aspirin. Do your clothes smell like drugs. Are your eyes dilated, or pinholed out - little needle marks in an empty brown sky. Make sure no one has a pager, or a wireless palmtop that resembles a wireless messenger.

I'm wondering what time it really is, looking at my watch. I'm looking because Tim and Karlie are renowned for having the visual morse code of their VCR make the furniture's shadows do Braille shadowboxing on the posters adorning their walls. Tim tells me to chill, that it's still only three or four in the morning. This is, of course, not true since we'd still be toiling at our desks on our separate floors with me wondering if that telephone is still bleeding.

If you were in this room and sober, you'd be ready to punch everyone and would go get your own damn convenience store gear. If you were in this room and not sober, well....this is all in stride and doesn't seem untimely. We decide on my car, no cell phone, and head to a store a few miles away. We could use the convenience store right across the street from our apartment complex, but I usually won't allow or go for that kind of stupidity.

I mean, just imagine it. You walk in to the same convenience store every weekend high as a kite. Then you buys things and look like a cartoon junkie. Then you shamble across the street. Always going in the same direction when leaving that you arrived from. I can almost hear the clerk talking to the police now. "Oh yeah, sure oficer. They went that way. Same way they came from. Come to think of it, they always come from that direction. Aren't there some apartments over there or something?" Conversations like that lead to the colonization of your apartment's parking lot by unmarked police vehicles. Conversations like that lead to undercover police officers and genuine paranoia gripping the area as the new tennants in 32C seem to be exactly like you and your friends in interest, fervor, age, and fashion.

I'll be having no part of such stupid failures to avoid trouble. So we're driving a few extra miles to an all night store near three different nightclubs. This is my spot of choice if I have to go anywhere while storming at night. After all, if you positively must go anywhere while intoxicated, you need to make it somewhere so close to the right type of nightclubs that you aren't even in the running for the scariest character in the restraunt or gas station.

This way, the attendant or clerks aren't scared of you, and they don't have their fingers on any kind of personal alarm switch while you talk to them. Quite the contrary. These clubs that are so close to this intersection - this intersection with it's Denny's restraunt and all night gas station - they're special clubs.

One of them is a S&M club that hosts a wide variety of character types. Another is an all-gay club for both men and women. Number three is just your average run of the mill establishment for 20 to 40 year old singles - as long as average means that you like hard techno and a constant ecstacy party. Number three is one of my favourite local clubs, which is why I choose this spot. In a pinch, I could dive into those doors and disappear in minutes.

In the end, the only thing I end up having to settle for in the way of druggie stupidity is Reina wearing these weird yellow sunglasses. Given that the average hung over college girl might well run around with sunglasses on at this hour - fearing the anti-vampiric rise of the sun over the horizon this is totally do-able. Besides, Reina says these sunglasses with their yellow tone on everything help her to see the world in a better light. It filters everything out in a cool way that makes it easier to read what the universe really has us all lip synching to.

They think I'm paranoid. I think I'm prepared. I think about this kind of stuff all the time.
Just in case something should, you know, happen sometime.
Because you never really know when something nutty might happen.

Because you never know when you're going to leave your cell phone behind on accident. You never know when your voice mail is going to be the only thing fieldnig the frantic call from the day shift's Tier three.

The one that says that the local sheriff is here with agents acting on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Agency. That all these guys are in navy blue jackets with yellow stenciled letters on the back. That they all have guns and really short pieces of paper with interesting phrases on them.

Words like:
"location is a suspected clandestine narcotics laboratory"
and
"authorized to use force should such force be deemed necessary"
and
"...to be held at all costs"

And that these guys are here for Ryan. The school's wonderboy. And they've been doing a lot of poking around in Tier one. And they're asking just how close Paul is to Tim. And sorry, man, but they're headed back in here for Ryan's door key. I'm gonna let them have the card key, but you might straighten any crooked picture frames you have hanging around before you go home or come back to the campus. Just in case.

"Yeah, anyway Paul. You know what I mean. Just in case something should, you know, happen. " Then the audible click of someone hanging up.

I'd know that this was all going on at this exact moment. I know this now because of looking back at it all with God from up on high. What I remember thinking the most when I found all of this part out was how funny it all was. Me running around high, with the DEA being in observation of my house. From less than a block away. Read as: In My Apartment Complex's Parking Lot.

All things considered, you really have to hand it to God on account of her sense of humor. I mean, let's be serious for a second.
If this were some good cop bad cop comedy movie, with me being James Belushi or someone like that, well....in that case this would all be a very funny scene.
You know, ironic as hell and all.

Things being what they are, though, I'm walking down stairs with Reina. We're getting in my car. Reina is all grins and liquid sex as she slides down the bannister. Clearly Reina takes this whole inner child thing very very seriously. You could tell her that sliding down the bannister is dangerous. You could tell her that she's as likely to fall and bust her ass into a thousand little fragments of misplaced bone all humpty-dumpty style as she is to complete her three-musketeers style slide to grace. You can tell her anything right now and Reina will listen. From watching her for the last bit of time in my head, I can tell you this. I can also tell you that afterward she'll just smile in retort. It's her own zen sort of way of showing the value of the slide. Cradle and all.

"Girl Power" her shirt says. Funny thing is that this is really one of God's favourite t-shirt prophecies. So I guess maybe there is something to these shirts all these younger people wear. Maybe God really digs Girl Power.
Maybe God wants us all to advertise that we're a "Superstar".
Maybe God really wants Oracle and Microsoft SQL programmers to run around in clever shirts that show a simple search query designed to sift through the wheat and the chaff of humanity in search of people whose value in the clue column is greater than zero.
And it's not like I don't know, or that God doesn't know, but Reina doesn't.

Reina is so totally unaware that she's carrying the end of the world in her purse with two fresh diabetic syringes.

150cc, nice small needles, orange caps over the tips, clear caps over the plungers. Totally sterile. Karlie, she took off the plastic and wrote everyone's name on them based on pre-measured doses that have been reccomended for us per body weight by Bishop - the man with the totally chessy name who could not identify the playing piece of the same name if asked to do so..
Each syringe is pretty in it's way, opalescent contents inside.
Each syringe is carrying a healthy dose of reality.

But I really can't act like I know this yet.

It's kind of like one of those precognitive dreams. I know the script and the score, but we're doing this to find out where our little routine starts to transcend into the end of the world.

This is so God can watch the movie preview of the universe and figure out which scenes haven't had the proper digital imaging work done on them. This is so God can hand edit each little frame that still shows some four thousand dollar microphone bobbing on the end of a boom.

This is to keep the world from turning out looking as bad on the big screen as Dolomite did back in the days of movies that exploited the stereotypical lifestyle spray painted into the world of inner city african-americans.

Somewhere upstairs, God is gathering her purse contents and locking the front door. Getting ready for a trip. Me and Reina, we're leaving the parking lot in my car, with me driving extra careful. We're on the road and moving to the intersection I prefer, but we're not travelling in the metaphysical sense. This is just short of one of those vacation cruises. Just short of genuine enjoyment in the form of realized perfection and ambition. We are, after all, only going after soft drinks and cigarettes.

For each and every step you take toward a given goal, the rotation of the Earth along her wobbly little axis is bringing it bounding - sometimes closer, sometimes farther away - at an incredible rate. If I'd been the right combination of astronimical sciences and mathematics major, I could tell you right now that the rotation is either making our trip a little faster or that the celerstial factors of the universe are uniting to make the trip take just that much longer.

I'm not that right combination of stellar and macro-mathemtatical physical sciences, though. If you were to ask me right now, I'd probably say it's working against me. There's no real traffic to speak of at this hour, but we're still taking forever to get to the damn convenience store. The arc-sodium lights are reflecting off the front of Reina's stylish yellow sunglasses. They're catching in the erotic blood red streaks she's added to her hair earlier.

They're sparkling like jealous candies on the metal-flake lipstick she's wearing.

Reaina notices me staring at the sunglasses again and starts giggling. She says ok ok, I know they look a little off. I know nobody does this without looking like they wish they were in an Irish rock band. But really, the score goes like this:

"In these sunglasses, the world is as yellow as I am. Through these two hundred dollar plastic make-believe picture windows the world is an art gallery built to remind me that they are the same colours inside and out as I am.

Through these sunglasses I can see that the universe is just as afraid of itself as I am of me."

The radio is no longer playing anything useful. It's all static and early morning news reports. The weird car wreck I saw on my way to work is the top story of the morning. Right now the running theory from the authorities is that someone laid the people out in that strange conga line and then bolted before they could give the run-down on what really happened to the police. The police are a little bit mystified by a few of the facts. Despite the fact that none of the cars seems to have impacted at a speed sufficient enough to cause any significant body or frame damage to themselves, each and every one of those people on the roadside embankment is dead. There were no broken bones. There was no sign of bleeding. No one remembers seeing anyone move the bodies. No one remembers seeing the people walk up to the embankment and die. It's all more than just a little bit off the beaten path of what the police are accustomed to. The police are asking anyone with information that may be useful to the case to call a phone number. Some bored sounding detective is promising that those who wish to leave an anonymous tip should call this number.

Anonymous. I love the sound of that, especially when it's coming from them mouths of police force employees. As if those of us in the real world don't know that they can track your number and location in about half the time it takes for them to get your story out of you. As if the rest of us don't know that they'll come looking for the good old fashioned Paul Harvey-esque "Rest of the Story" in person a day or two later.

Reina is bored by the radio. Being as she is totally restless and talkative in her own methamphetamine lit state, she's talking about how much she loves to ride in cars. The feel of motion being so completely ethereal. How she wishes there were some way to ride on the hood of the car with her hair flying all over and her arms outstretched like some superheroine. She's talking about her favourite riding toys when she was a girl. How she always loved to take off with her brother's Big Wheel, a sit down tricycle that had two small birghtly coloured wheels in the back, and one huge sticker adorned wheel up front. You moved the thing by pedalling it down the road. It had a place to set your feet when you wanted to just coast for a minute - maybe down the hill at the end of the block. If you got to moving too fast there was this little plastic handbrake you could pull that would stop one of the rear wheels. That if you were going fast enough when you pulled this handbrake you could do one of those James Garner Rockford files turn arounds. The kind of turn-around where you slide one-hundred-and-eighty degrees from your original direction of travel.

She talks about how much she loved that toy. Skinned knees from when she was thrown off of it once doing a skid turn. Her brother chasing her down the road, one arm raised and terminating in a fist as he ran with all his might, promising to get her for taking off with his Big Wheel. Ah, the old days, she says. She always wanted to see who would win in a race if every kid in her old neighborhood were to get together for a race.

I'm suddenly stricken by the visual aspect of this. Twenty kids lined up at the top of a hill, then all rolling forward in a hodge podge of multicolouerd rubber-maid plastic tricycles. Reina at the front as a six-year-old girl, gold and royal blue tassels on the handlebars and her squealing with delight as she pulls to the front. People skid turning at the bottom of the hill. Pedalling with all their might to come out ahead after a curve.

This might be funnier to watch than the special olypmics. This would certainly be a lot more fun to bet on. Most other trikes passed, most injuries, most improved position over the last-half block, who'll win, who'll come in last. Best lap-time, most accurate power-slide. Who was the most valuable race team member. Who had the fastest pit stop. Who didn't use the pit stops at all.

You get the picture, I'm sure.

We're parked at the convenience store, and from here I can see the Denny's where I first met Tim. It's changed over the past couple of years. Back then it looked as seedy as any inner city all night joint might have. These days it's been done in some sort of film-noir abience. There's black and white posters all over the outside of the place. Humphrey Bogart from Casa Blanca. Pictures of people from the first internationally important American movies - the ones that were all about either the false impressions of the old west or the roaring twenties. The western ones are particularly interesting. From here I can just make out the four foot tall poster of the that cat who played lead in the old western Shane. His name escapes me, but I remember loving that one. For those of you that haven't seen it, but are contemplating renting it when the special anniversary digital video format release happens, let me tell you something important:

Shane dies at the end. He's all hunched over on his horse and looking a bit bad off from his gunshot wound. We never really see him die. We never really see him dead. In the old days this means that there's a mystery to the movie. These days, it's a bit like hearing that Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman isn't playing football for the next few seasons thanks to his fiftieth concussion. You never see him give up the game, but everyone knows that guy isn't coming back. Shane died. In modern movies, he'd be fodder for a sequel. You can thank the movie gods that this movie wasn't made in the nineties, otherwise there'd be three sequels. One where he comes back to kill the brother of the bad guy, one where he comes back with a black partner in some good cop better cop spinoff, and then the one where he's some kind of undead nightmare god who can only be dispelled by the hero fucking three virgins on some catholic altar in Manhattan.

The glory of the modern movie screen lay in it's shortsightedness. Shane happened before Oliver Stone started caring about movies, so he'll never come back to help Ellen Ripley kill off the last alien. Thank god for the human memory.

We go inside, and it's Rashi at the counter. The store is all brightly lit like some sort of operating room. The floors are polished to such a high sheen that you can clearly make out the scuffmarks everywhere. This store is old. It's been through more owners than most sports superstars have wives. I love this place.

Reina's shirt is hiked up a little in the front from where her belt pushed it around as we rode in my car. You can see a dangly three piece belly button piercing jointed to look like a rose vine. Each little thorn has a rhinestone on it. Rashi behind the counter turns to tell us hello and is instantly transfixed. I have to kind of give him some slack here.

She starts walking down the aisles, eyeballing the junk food that's on permanent display. Little towers built as a worshipful statue to American obesity. She picks up the occasional item and reads the back, counting carbohydrates. Counting sugar grams. She's on some sort of special diet that's the exact opposite of being a vegetarian.

These vegans (as the vegetarians like to refer to themselves) vary in their dedication. Some won't touch meat at all, while others can still cuddle up to avian and fish meat. This girl, she mainly eats meat. The pure protein of it all gives her two car loads of energy. Even without the methamphetamine she'd be hyper as a nine year old in a toy store. All she has to do is carefully keep herself regulated away from more than a small amount of carbs and any processed sugar. As long as she does this she can either keep a stable weight, or lose what she wants on a week to week basis. She says that the only thing she really misses is good french bread. The fresh stuff that restraunts make in-house to go with the more expensive meals.

She sees us both staring at her and pops a finger in her mouth. She starts to chew and lick at the tip of it lasciviously. I get my sly take me now look, but keep calm. Rashi behind me at the counter though, his eyes must've all but fallen out when she did this because she starts laughing out loud. She's at the drink cooler now, which just happens to be by the bathroom. This gets me to thinking all kinds of things while I watch her shift from side to side as she stands there, open door and looking at the drinks inside. She turns to the side and her nipples are pert through her shirt. Poking out like little fingertips that are identifying the better beverages behind the invisible barrier made by the warm air of the store and the cold air in the cooler. You can tell by these weird malformed ring-shaped bumps around them that her nipples are pierced.

Rashi is agape at the counter. I guess he doesn't get much of this, despite how closely he's located to the clubs. I'll wager that on weekends there's all kinds of lovely women in and out of here on their way to some party. But given that Rashi looks like an underweight and out of work computer programmer behind awful horn-rimmed glasses, I'll also take your money on the bet that no one messes with him like this. He looks almost predatory. In a way I'm happy about this.

He's worked here during the night shift for as long as I've been coming to this spot, making the beer runs or what have you for Tim and Karlie when they're too fucked up to let out of their door. He's a community college student. I've talked to him enough to know that he's working his way through school, and that on his current paycheck rate it'll take him a decade to complete a four-year study program. He also boasts about having a "very respectable pornography collection" on his home computer.

Reina's not beautiful in the supermodel sense so much as she's just oozing raw girl sensuality. I turn to Rashi. I smile at him and get a nod of recognition. From behind Reina I make the thumb and forefinger circle at him and wink. This is international sign language for "no shit brother, I'm there". I jerk my thumb at the bathroom and wink again. It takes him a minute to figure out that I'm asking if we can use the bathroom.

Not we as in me or her separately, but we as in together. Say, Joe, mind if we loosen up in your bathroom. Nothing serious, we won't take long. Say, Joe, when was the last time you had a chance to listen in to some serious screwing around in the cooler?

It takes a few seconds to figure out that I am both serious and waiting for his call on it. Finally he either decides I'm bluffing and he'll call, or that he really doesn't give a shit either way. He hands me this sign over the counter that says "Out Of Order". I smile and hand him a card. This card has a phone number for a low-rent new-in-town bookie and a set of score layouts for a few upcoming football games. It's not money, but it might as well be.

He takes it.He knows to trust my judgment on this kind of thing.
You see, me and Rashi, we've had the talk. He knows about the apartment. The insurance, the table, the furniture. He's not a real apostle yet, but he's standing at the bottom of the mount waiting to see exactly how many tuna sandwhiches I can make out the salmon and unleaven bread. He's not yet seen the light, but he's done reading in the dark.

Rashi, he's looking for something - a quicker way.

A way to turn a decade into four years.
And much like the rest of us, he's even willing to let people fuck in his boss's restroom to make that happen.

The truth here is the same amongst junkies and entrepreneurs of all trades. Show them a light at the end of a tunnel, and they'll forget all about the sign that warns of an occasional oncoming train.

I walk up to Reina, coming in really close behind her. I can feel soft curls flatten out against my shirt as my torse meets hers. There's a tenseness for a moment before she recognizes my reflection in the cooler door, but then she relaxes against me, pushing her backside into my pelvis.

This is the cruelty of my will surrendering to Jasmine and Patchouli. This is me having a tremble. This is me running my fingertips down her goosebumped arms. I can hear my pulse in my ears, doing some sort of indian drum beat. The store's radio at the front is playing James Taylor. Me, I think that he can keep his fire and rain. I'll settle for the restroom. I turn her toward the door and give her a gentle go signal, but she hesitates.

I move the sign around our sides until it is eye level in front of her. She starts laughing again. Between chuckles, I tell her I’m not sure if the sign is talking about us or the bathroom, but that for now it’ll be about the room to anyone who wants to use it. I let her know that the guy at the counter gave it to me.

We're headed for the bathroom.

She opens the door for me. The light in the restroom is off, but there's a right triangle of light on the floor where the ultra-white from the overhead neon of the store is filtering in. Marble-esque tiles glitter up at us from amongst a highway system of moldy looking grout.

She says, "First floor, new experiences and reality central. After you, my dear Alphonse." She swats me on the ass as I walk in. Right now I'm thanking Rashi for the fact that he cleans the bathroom every two hours. The floor as I walk in isn't too terribly filthy right away, but the air smells clean.

Reina's smell starts to fill up the air as soon as she lets the door close. Usually I'm all calm and collective before something like this, but right now I am shakey. Right now I'm wondering if I'm a passenger on some carnival ride. There's some shuffling sounds of flesh on tile as Reina fumbles for the light switch. Then there's a click, and then man's version of God's first truly important act in Genesis takes place. An electrical pulse glides through positive and negative contacts inside a tube of pressurized glass. The electricity starts exciting the atoms of this gas until they're energetic enough to produce light.

From the cheap dime store novel of a bathroom stall:
In this shitter, here I sit
Spewing little balls of shit
And he who reads these words of wit
Eats those little balls of shit.

Or

Rashi gives good head.

There’s a lot of scuffing around that one. You can tell Rashi spent some serious time trying to get rid of that one with a Brillo pad. Scrub scrub. Rashi. Scrub scrub. Gives. Scrub scrub. Good. Scrub scrub. Head. Maybe he tried to use acetone to help loosen up the paint. Maybe he tried to go over it with a permanent marker.

Maybe he did these things, and maybe he didn’t. You can still read it, though. Hard to tell what got him so worked up. The scratching goes down into the metal a little ways. The words were carved with a knife into the metal of this particular urinal stall. Maybe he was afraid people would think it was true. Maybe he was afraid the truth would get out. I’ll never know, and really don’t care.

Whether Rashi gives good head or not is nobody’s business but his and this bathroom stall.

The bathroom is a nice big one. Three sinks, a full length mirror that’s cracked at the corner, a towel dispenser, and an electric hand dryer.

There’s two normal sized stalls, and then there’s the one we’re in. It’s the one made for handicapped people. Big door and entryway so that you could roll a wheelchair in. Handrails so that someone in a wheelchair could hoist themselves out of it’s seat and onto the cold hard plastic ring around the toilet.

Reina has me sitting on this seat, with my hands around her waist. We’ve been in here for about ten minutes, but Rashi’s still not bitching. Maybe he’s hoping to pick up some pointers on how to give better head from Reina. Maybe I’m supposed to be the judge.

Call it a lack of imagination, or maybe even a shoddy upbringing, but I’m just not into that sort of thing.

Just now I’m nervous as hell, because I’m about to have sex in this convenience store’s handicapped stall. Reina, she’s completely naked and all rosy coloured in her excitement. I have her propped over me, with one leg waving in thin air while the other is on the handrail of the closest wall. My lips are cupping her clit in a warm little circle.

I’m not nervous about going down on Reina. Don’t get me wrong. This is one of the few sexual things I feel fairly damn confident about. This is one of the things that I can do really well. It’s also something that I’ve done for hours on end with the like of Karlie or one of her buddies.

The real thing here is that this isn’t going so well.

While we need the room that this larger stall gives us, it’s just not very comfortable for someone of Reina’s height or build to be stretching herself out from rail to rail in a stall built to accomodate a wheelchair with enough extra room for it to turn full circle. I’m worrying too much about her to be able to relax into this.

After a little bit of this, she’s aroused enough and seems to be having fun, but I can tell that it’s taking a lot of effort for her to leave one of her legs just hanging in the air. For those of you that don’t think this sounds so difficult, try standing on one leg while leaning forward. Now try to hold your other leg in the air and keep track of how long you can do accomplish the feat. You’re shooting for a time somewhere in the nine minute range.

Being as this is taking away a lot of the fun of this for both of us, I hoist her up a bit and sit on the floor. She’s on her back with her hair fanning out behind her. Long curly bangs are hanging over bone white shoulders. I put my mouth back where women tend to think the money is.

You place your hand on the girl’s lower abdomen, right where she’d stop talking about her tummy and start telling the gynecologist her pelvis begins. Your hand is pointing toward her feet, fingers outstretched. You occasionally do some gentle clawing here. You have a couple of fingers right above the spot where her clitoral hood is.

You pull back on this a bit to tighten the flesh on her pelvis and pull the hood upward the tiniest little bit. You do this in pulses while you push upward and a bit inward with your mouth, lips, and tongue.

You alternate between linear tongue flickers and circular motions. You gently suck, you rotate your mouth with your head. You slide a finger inside and push up and against her graffenberg spot. You rub up and down a bit inside. You push back against the rear of her insides and rub against the wall that shares some nerve endings with her anal passage. You do this with your index finger because it’s long enough to reach wherever you need to go but isn’t wide enough to ruin the feel of being inside her later.

You pay careful attention to where her back arches and what you were doing when it happened. You feel for a change in temperature and a change in pulse or breathing. And when she starts to give in and see angels, you get a little more firm. You push a little more against the special places with your finger, and gently tug at her clit with your lips, backing them with your teeth. You give a smooth biting and popping sensation that gets her to throb internally.

You pull her clit into your lips and suck it in and out of them fast and slow. You change your pace up, you look directly at her constantly. You savour each and every noise she makes. This is a rare thing for humans – at this point we’re not worrying about our cars, our boats, our jobs, our marriages, or our special rate retirement accounts.

In this precise moment of existence, any human being experiencing sex like this becomes a total junkie. Your brain is releasing mega-doses of dopamine. You soak it up. You’re electric. You’re water and power.

Most people, if you could get the thinking part of their head to respond in times like this, they’d swear to whatever deity that they worship that they could light up a soft-white tinted sixty watt General Electric light bulb right now.

If you were, you know, to put one in their mouths just then.

You stop all of this when she starts to push you away because she’s getting too sensitive. You pull away for a few moments, and then run your tongue back up the inside of her thighs, stopping long enough to slip whatever length of tongue inside that you can comfortably accomplish. You do this while you’re rolling her clit back and forth between two wettened fingers.

It’s a little like the directions on a shampoo bottle.

You apply the product.
You lather thoroughly.
You rinse.
You repeat as necessary or desired.

You listen to her fighting the need to make noise. You watch as she throws her hair all over in the throes of something men aren’t ever going to understand.

You smell the increased scent of her everywhere. You’re aroused and driven. With your mouth, you can really get into and totally enjoy pushing someone beyond the limits of their self-control in the most pleasing ways possible.

We lose forty minutes this way. We’re not breaking any world endurance records, but it’s incredibly erotic.

Rashi is knocking on the bathroom door. I hear him say that his shift is almost up. We get up, and Reina is putting her clothes on. She asks if my apartment is really as close to Tim and Karlie’s place as we were all saying. She says if it is, that she’s going to get me back for this later.

I’m dressed again, but Reina stops me from buttoning my shirt. She’s pushing me back down onto the toilet seat. She unzips her purse and pulse something small and cylindrical out.
If it weren’t for the fact that I just finished going down on her, I’d be afraid that it were the harkening Yield sign of male to female sexual relations – the feared and fabled max absorbency mini-tampon. But being as the room’s smell is a total testament to the fact that she isn’t smelling remotely bloody, I know that this is not what she has just produced from the mysterious recesses of her faux-designer leopard print purse.

She turns to me and shows me a 150cc syringe, and my blood runs cold. There’s something pearly coloured in it. This syringe has an orange protection cap over the needle, and a clear cap over the plunger that’s been hastily taped on to cover the fact that plunger is pulled back. I can see on the graduated sides of the syringe that whatever the fuck might be in it, there’s at least 50cc’s in store.

My name is written on the plastic cap. The writing looks like Tim’s.

Fucking Tim. With his bad Aussie interpretation and dime store hood mentality. He knows I don’t use needles. He knows I’d never do this. But still, he’s clearly been involved with the labeling of this thing. Suddenly, the little Scooby Doo bandages he and Reina were sporting when they walked in earlier aren’t so mysterious.

My first thought here is that Karlie is going to flip. Tim’s been off needles for awhile now. If he did the buy tonight, and considering that bandage I noticed…..well, let’s just say that it’s really likely that Tim is back on the Rush train.

Hard to be sure whether it’s the look in my eyes, or the fact that I’m not exactly drooling on the floor, but Reina starts explaining that this won’t hurt.

That I’ll really enjoy this.
That this is something totally new. She knows what she’s doing, and that I should trust her. She did Tim earlier and didn’t mess it up. She’s sure I’ll love what is about to happen.

Reina is straddling me. I’m telling her how I don’t do this. How I’ve never, ever considered using a needle. How I think it’s unnecessary. How it is that whatever is in that needle, there’s a way to turn it into a powder and just snort it instead.

She grins and leans forward, hair falling in my face. One hand is wandering up and down the inside of my thigh, disabling a few more brain cells with every pass. She has a fast pulse and I can hear that she’s still breathing heavy.

Rashi is at the door saying that he’s going to come in if we’re not out in a few minutes. He doesn’t need to get fired he says. The boss will be in the store in less than twenty minutes so please guys come on and get going. Don’t we have a room somewhere? Couldn’t we just get a fucking hotel?

Reina is licking my neck. Slow and steady from shoulder to my ear, where she pauses and tells me that she’s not getting up until I at least try this. She knows I’ve heard a lot about what needles do to people. Tim told her all about it. And if I don’t ever want to do it again after this, she’ll understand, but I need to do this at least once.

In my head is the after school special about drugs. About how sooner or later everyone ends up doing this. At the door is Rashi, who isn’t happy. He may be one of the coolest convenience store clerks in the nation, but him walking in on us expecting to catch us fucking but instead seeing her on top of my lap with a needle won’t make us happier.

I could give all of that as an excuse. I could say that I was afraid that if I didn’t do it, that she’d have sat there taunting and seducing me until he came in. I could do that, but I won’t.

The truth is that I want to see what this is all about. I’ve never done it, and while this is mainly due to my fears about this kind of drug use, it’s also linked in a very solid way to the lack of experience I have in the field. If I don’t like it, I can disappear for a few days and not ever have to admit this to Tim or Karlie or anyone. Just take Reina to the airport and forget it ever happened. The marks are supposed to heal very quickly.

The truth is that in the end, I slid her right off of my lap so that she landed on the floor. Then I leaned forward and kissed her with an open mouth. The truth is that when she tasted herself on my lips, and tongue, that she became even more aroused than she was the first time. Her reaction to this, the smell in the room, the pressure of Rashi right outside….it all came together in some serious excitement. I haven’t felt this much danger elation since I was a kid walking the rails of an incomplete river bridge at a nearby highway construction project.

The truth is that I pushed my shirt sleeve up, and Reina used the strap of her purse to clamp the veins in my arm. She undid my trousers and laid my penis on my thigh. I’m only semi-hard now, the arousal of bringing her repeatedly is gone. I’m almost scared enough to be limp, but at the same time I’m excited enough to have some volume.

She’s kneeling in my lap, and slides the needle in. There’s a small sting, but not what I was expecting – which would’ve been a sharp sharp pain.

Reina puts her warm right cheek next to my penis. I can feel the warmth of each and every exhale all the way up to my bare lower stomach. She’s telling me that this will be a little intense. She’s telling me that it’s not uncommon for a guy to instantly get as hard and big as is physically possible as soon as the rush of the clamp releasing the drugs takes effect. This will be almost instant.

She’s depressing the plunger, and I can feel something thicker and colder than my blood in my arm. The plunger is all the way down now, and she’s sliding the needle back out of my arm. This hurts a bit worse than when the needle went in. There’s a tiny little blood spot where the needle has penetrated me. It starts to make a little mosquito bite almost immediately.

Reina lets the purse strap off, and for my body things change. Her prediction about my cock’s reaction to my first intravenous experience is dead on. I’m rock hard and throbbing. She’s rubbing little curls and her soft cheek against me, watching me carefully from where she’s kneeling between my legs on the floor.

I can’t see. There’s little stars everywhere I’d see light. My pulse is everywhere. My skin is absolute ecstasy. All over my body, my skin feels exactly the way my penis feels when I’ve had orgasms. I’m trembling, and warm. From a distance some three miles away inside my head I’m feeling a sigh of pure physical joy tremble throughout every sub-atomic particle in the nation.

There is zero explaining this. There is zero duplicating this. It’s my first shot of anything. I’m mainlining, checking points, slamming, whatever you want to call it, this is my first time. It’s better than any sex I’ve ever had, and this feeling is staying with me. It’s not fading at all.

Somewhere in the distance I can hear Rashi knocking.

“God that sounded and looked sooooo intense baby. I don’t wanna move you, but we need to go before your friend gets any more upset. Hang on while I get rid of this.”

She’s reaching between my legs and putting the empty syringe into an empty tampon wrapper conjured from who knows where. She’s flushing it down the stool. She does my pants for me, carefully tucking my sex into my underwear and then zipping the zipper shut.

She helps me to my feet. She’s telling me not to try to talk to the clerk when we leave. She’s walking me out of the bathroom. We’re walking together with her doing more steering than weight bearing.

Outside, Rashi is angry, but not livid. He’s staring at Reina, who looks like she’s just had a terribly pleasant time. Somewhere behind him, I see someone transparent walk through the glass that makes the side of the store a nice big security window. He asks her what’s wrong with me. She tells him that I passed out in the act, and that she’s driving me home.

This makes him calm down a bit, and he actually helps us to the car. Reina buckles me into the passenger seat. He tells her to thank me later for the stats and suggestions, but that I don’t need to ask to use the bathroom again for awhile. She closes the passenger door and goes to the driver side. She gets the door open and starts to talk to him for a few minutes.

There’s the chiming of my car’s computer, warning whoever may be listening that a door has turned into a screw top glass container. Reina and Rashi are talking small chit chat stuff, and then she’s back into the car. She puts a hand on my thigh, and stares at me intently.

“We’re taking you home. I have a promise to keep.” I’m starting to come back out of the daze of my first shot. Rashi is back in the store, and the ghost is behind him. He tries to make some kind of sign language to me, but I can’t figure out what it’s about yet. The sound of the rushing is gone from my ears, and the stars are subsiding, but I’m still not thinking so great just yet.

I’m still looking as we pull out of the parking lot. The ghost who walked through the window goes to the back of the store, near the restrooms. He waves at me, turns into fire, and disappears.

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