Transcribed from tapes: the terminal disease clerk took orders by the turnstile, finding the story in the story and logging in the disease workers all night long.  At five in the morning he got off and headed to a tavern as the sun was coming up.  Direct confrontation with the terminal virus word is a bit confusing to those who are not properly prepared.  poor fuckers never had a chance; the technical sergeant takes off his helmet and slams it on the table the near moronic mumbling of discontent.  Waging war is semantically impossible without overtones of homosexuality.  Heavy handed, the second wave fell in line with the technical sergeant at the lead.  The thing you have to watch out for are the warblers —the distractions coming in at the sides, sound is their most effective weapon, primordial hangover he called it drunkenly raising a glass.  And some of you may think this suspect, but take my advice sound's where it all started.  In the beginning was the word and the word spoke.  The sergeant stoops and cups his hands to light a cigarette.  Then there is sex or not enough of it, both is equally dangerous —biology is not something to scoff at.  sexuality is the best cover an agent can ever use.  Rockets come searing in overhead ripping flesh and scoffing at the notion of eternity, out here you don't have time to talk, the thoughts are things, they are no longer words...keep your radios tuned boys its getting ugly.  Another rocket sears in severed limbs fly out the explosion and olive drab body parts litter the scene. 
	Watch out for the bloody words, sharp words that hang in the air like knives and when uttered returned to slit the throat of their speaker and if every word you have spoken returned to act upon yourself would you survive the experience?   Me no way I'm outta here.  Situation getting sticky, humid like vaporous blood hanging on in the air.  Still acrid smell of urine and small children playing in a asphalt playground ringed on all sides by immense brick walls with basketball hoops hung half way up each of the sides.     Realize that that which we are taught from childhood to distrust is in fact a pawn of something far more immense and much much more dangerous.  The governments and nations of the world are incidental pawns of there own control systems and then beyond them there are even more and so on like looking two mirrors facing each other and going on to infinity.  The monster of power is faceless there is no one person or group that controls everything they are all parts of a immense and multi-headed monster that is constantly biting itself and attacking it own heads until some day it will destroy itself.  The end of time leaves space and word alone together
	we're taking heavy fire!  The sergeant calls for back up, the captain says love one another and cryptically hangs up the phone. The Spanish soldier selling chiclettes say no good no bueno, pictures worth not even half a thousand words.  Wouldn't give you ten words, worthless gringo words don’t mean shit. no good no bueno, not worth the blood their written in. The blood of all peoples not yours, not your shoes, by god keep your slave labor camps a closed-mouthed secret.   Gotta keep that in house, dis-credit all news agencies by routinely feeding them false information.  News doesn’t happen events happen, and the department of television information broadcasting inc. a subdivision of indoctrination inc. decides what gets out and what remains forever sealed in baby pissshitguts.  No that's not true. No comment. No need for comment, the preceding has been since proved to be untrue, cut to shots of smart bombs. Couldn’t get fifty words for those now gringo -over exposure- nobody buying.   Same old stinking shit.  No Good. No Bueno.
	Gringo go home in thousand languages in a million words, why don’t you crawl back in your cave get your tail so far between your legs it goes half way up your ass?  Lead me to the holy spigot and we’ll show you the bidet of death, constructed by gringos, for gringos, to flush out gringos, to show them all what you do behind closed doors.  Can’t close them all —we have our technicians as well and they’re getting to be better than yours. We got the money rolling in —even offered you the picture words but you don’t want them. No Good.   Can’t use those, too strong.  No fair, crying boy heads home for cave to lick his dirty balls clean.
	I gotta picture for you I on vacation in your country go to hear senator’s speak but all door are closed, all sealed.  So i gotta fiber optic and feed it in from the roof show all senators mad with sexual lust and blood thirsty, clamoring for war and stealing souls and bodies and driving them off wherever they see fit.
	The technician is retro actively of course —the papers said the man was mentally ill.  ‘my cod!’ screamed a church lady in the front row, ‘satan has garbled the lords message, this isn’t what he meant for you to hear, no it was not all like that, there was to be understanding.’ she is parading her old cunt bones whining at the justices —tissue conducts signals, animals communicate through the use of visual, acoustic , chemical, tactile and electrical signals.  Our laboratory is an abundant and well preserved feed back loop to understand and interpret Eusocial behavior. negative feedback inhibition to make you shiver Gringo.  Make you shiver good.
	Repetition unsuccessful.  The radiologist was called in to examine the patient —blisters and burns indicate high probability of skin mutation, what would you say Dr. Waiben?   Crested and on the nod? Diminutively, yes definitely.
	Information potential exists —its an unsettling thought, dependency —and what happens when things start to think? How do you draw the lines then?
	HOW THE PLAGUE BEGAN:
 	The wish to preserve -not worth saving what already is- in this scenario.  The word,  the loss of body situated at the origins of recorded sound -the temporal metaphysical and esthetic possibilities.
	<insert sounds of truck on dirt road>  
	Old man yelling.  Get off of my laaawwwnnn!   Sits down to oil his gun some more and then half turns in his chair to face the camera and says "i haven't left the porch since i got this CDRom PEOPLE version 3.0.   Updated and expanded human potential at your fingertips.  Its the only thing i need —got no use for the stinking gringos anymore—  camera pans out and down revealing a yard strewn with shotgun-blasted bodies of young children.  We see wife, face half torn off, crawling towards a pistol <shotgun blast stage left> her head disappears entirely.   Old man: "human potential, the new CDRom makes wives unnecessary." cue logo: on sale now at a sanatorium near you....
	I'm going to finally send you the orgy papers this time  -been fixing to get 'round to that for some time"  <heavy southern drawl>  don't think he's the type to do it though but i been wrong once or twice a'fore.    Don't want people showing up on my lawn though that's never good.  get off of my lllaaaawwwwnnnnn! <shotgun blast again, distant screaming sounds of deaths final agonies eeking out blood gurgling windpipes> Fucking Gringos! Go home in a thousand languages!
	  Experience as much of the human potential as possible, retain the container and forward the frog to the fun sun freaks of eastern Tibet —all is well with alkaline, and acidity is on the skids with death rooted out leaving only chicken shit shoveled scrapped and scraped like lemon lime Gatorade poured from a fuck buck of love.  Stop talking to yourself —listen to the virus talk to you.  All that you consider to be a accident was carefully orchestrated for your benefit by a benevolent cocksucking god from the twenty-third dimension to just plain old irritate the fuck out of you like a bad rectal itch.  Stupid gringo got no cure for the ass itch i show you some pictures, yes very dirty, little girls you like??????
	<<<<<commander in chief of the NATO forces in Europe is fucking small refugee boy in the ass, the boy cries for his mother the general is laughing, your mother’s down the hall boy ,she’s busy with the president of France right now.  But maybe later you’d like to lick his come off her dead face.  Ban those words tear them right out snip snip.  Can’t say that, its disgusting.  War is a snuff film for the rich.  <<<<We gotta step up the bombing chief the public’s losing innarest in us screams the chief of staff running in circles jerking off and slapping his ass until it turns a bright purple and with all seriousness General Jesse Helms pauses to reflect:  I remember a time when life was good no one got in our way, why in Europe under Patton i musta raped twenty thirty little boys and a handful of nuns too. He smiles lost in memory...
	But God hath given us these trying times....
	Yes it is bit hard to get cunt these days isn’t it, mumbles the chief of state as he strokes his wife’s cock....Yes dear start a war, get me some cute refugee boys, i so love snapping their necks when I'm coming, she growls affectionately.
	That's it gentlemen were going to war!  The president stands and ejaculates on a map of the world KOSOVO it is he says as his thick oatmeal consistency sperm all but covers the former republic of Yugoslavia.
	You like?  You like, no?  Too bad.  You can’t have those words, too strong.  I get power, you give me power, I steal power from you, to expensive to buy it.  I get power and you get pictures and maybe I tell you how to cure rectal itch? Eh? Eh? Eh?



In the beginning was the word and the word was made flesh by a cacophonous blast out of heaven's pearly cum-stained ass creating the father, the son, and the holy spigot which lies in a secluded garden on the cliffs overlooking the Sargasso sea.  The spigot is buried in a volcano designed by Czech ostriches in the eleventh hour of creation to drain all human excrement off the continent of Europe and into the Sargasso sea all lumpy with turd so thick Jesus "conny" Christ in drag is walking along to the amazement of the gullible, floating gently from turd to turd.  The piss blood of a million cunts and cocks line the shores giving the whole place a radioactive iridescent red glow not to mention a awful stench.  Mr. Rogers and Captain Kangaroo are standing on the bluffs watching the spectacle and scanning with hawk eyes for sweet tight asses in which they can stab their hungry cocks.  The father caught the son sitting in the middle of the garden sucking on an apple and he became enraged and hog tied the boy and penetrated every orifice in his body with a peeled and sculpted cucumber cock; the boy was left a whimpering, quivering lump of fleshy jello from which spawned humankind.
	The piss gut rotting flesh smell, air taunt necked and jerking at the nose, the captain's eyes role back into his head as is guts are blasted out his ass by a giggling man headed tape worm of extraordinary wit who was prone to quoting Joyce and Bugs Bunny in the same sentence in a way that reminded listeners of Buster Keaton in some strange drugstore hurricane kind of a way.  The skatolic odor was rich and the worm refused to bath.  Owing to the peculiar nature of its origin the soldiers did not disturb the worm preferring instead to watch the captain writhe in agony pulling his legs back behind his ear to attempt to lick the matted blood soaked pubic hair over the torn orangish flesh that hung in ribbons over a large hole that had once been a simple anus.  The upshot of it all was that the worm ate less rations than the captain so the men were basically satisfied with the arrangement and they followed the worm wiggling through the jungle as it did impersonations of Fred Astaire...
	Blasted rot gut con-artist with ten huge molars running across the front of his mouth in a clump owing to his mother's industrial accident with the cunt acid from the hyperdrill, drilled right on through back to china.  The asshole couldn't even close the damn thing and the lower mandible just kind of hung there like a tire swing.  
	The giggling Hyenas are dressed in black and high on amphetamines looking to turn you inside out.
	Tongue-tied porn queens scream obscenities at passersby "I'll suck your dick until your eyeballs pop out your ass..."










Every diner has its own subtle quality which distinguishes it from all the nearly identical establishments of its kind, this particular joint had enormous lazy houseflies crawling up the wall behind me which set it off in League with other infamous places I have eaten such as Ben’s Broasted Chicken an establishment that I had been to years ago.  I was headed up to the Tahoe area by way of the back road, 395, a rickety operation that shoots you straight up the length of california always keeping the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada just to the left.  About three quarters of the way to Tahoe you pass through the blink-and-you-miss-it town of Bishop where among other things there is a roadside dive called Ben’s which serves Broasted chicken and corn on the cob for two dollars a plate.  There were no other options no menu no choices no confusion, no arguing with the cook just broasted chicken and corn.  I remember going in primarily because I wanted to know just what one did to a chicken to make it broasted.  After that all I remember is the enormous lazy flies that crawled up the column next to my table.  I still can’t recollect exactly what the chicken tasted or even looked like, the corn sticks out as being over cooked and mushy and of course the flies were lazy and didn’t move when you swatted them which led me to believe that in fact they were never swatted at.  Indeed Ben’s was probably a kind of legend in fly circles, one to another word passed down the line and traveled all through the Eastern Desert of california, if you were a fly Ben’s was the place to be.  I asked to meet the infamous Ben proprietor and presumably the genius behind the broasting, but unfortunately he was out of town.  Instead the cook gave us a tour of the kitchen and that only served to make my experience at Ben’s a singular one.  I was passing through Bishop several years after that and I tried to locate Ben’s Broasted Chicken so that Amy could share the wonder of broasted chicken with me, but the place was gone, no building nothing, even some locals in town acted like they had no idea what I was talking about.  One old woman gave us that peculiar look that small town people always give to city folk as if to say you have no business poking around here asking questions, but I kept at her until she confessed that Ben’s was something she had never heard of, and what's more she informed us that she had lived in Bishop her whole life.  I started to wonder if maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing and Amy, who was in love with my eccentricities as much as my banality, I am certain though that here was the definitive proof she had always wanted to know for sure that I was totally nuts.  We snacked on bread from Shatz’s Bakery and drove up to Mammoth with me recounting the same story of Ben’s Broasted chicken that I had laid on her before Bishop, doubtlessly boring her to sleep which was just as well because my mind was pre occupied with broasted chicken not the inner depths of the female soul which was what Amy seemed to want to talk about all the time.
	I recanted the story of Ben’s to Dean over double cheeseburgers.  I still don’t let little things like fat lazy flies bother me, who ever heard of a fly that ate anything more than crumbs?  They were doing no harm and the burgers were dripping greasy and quite yummy, as Amy would have said if she had been there.  Every time I get to thinking about or talking about Ben’s Broasted Chicken strange things begin to happen, first the place disappears and then to reach across a span of maybe five years Ben’s came crashing into the present and my mouth dropped open full of half chewed cheese burger when who should come strolling in the door of this diner, but Clay Napier the very man who had been with me on that virgin trip to the land of broasted chicken.  Actually the weirdness factor way have been slightly over played on my part as I did know that Clay was in Colorado somewhere, but it’s a big state and then even in Denver how many diners how many nights what are the odds?  All of this can in someway be accounted for by the initial mystery that set it all in motion… what is broasted chicken?  I no longer care (I also have made it a point never to consult a cookbook) I prefer the mystery to which broasted chicken has attended, at least for me.
	Clay Napier was an ancient friend, not in a chronological sense but in the sense that we would always be friends regardless of the time between meetings we never had more then twenty or so awkward moments of catching up and then things fell naturally into place as if we had been together everyday for years.  I waited until the waitress had seated him and then casually sauntered up while he was reading the menu and sat down across the booth from him.  I cleared my throat and as I did so and he put down the menu to see who was disturbing him.  I watched in slow motion as his face went from blank irritation to recognition, and then surprise.  We smiled at each other for a moment and then nonplussed, as if it were perfectly natural that we should come upon each other five years and two states away from our last meeting, Clay slid out of the booth and we embraced for moment before the volume of words began to flow forth.
	“My god what are you doing here?” 
	“I was going to ask you the very same question —I thought you were up in the mountains or was it in flagstaff?”
	“Ya I was in Flagstaff until I graduated, now I’m actually living up in Boulder, but my girlfriend lives down here… she’s working right now so I was catching a late dinner… why are you in Denver last thing I heard you had gone back to school or something to that effect…?!”
	I racked my brain; where would he have gotten such foolish ideas?  Who was behind this?  “Uh, no I haven’t gotten around to that yet, who told you that one?”
	“I forget maybe Robert.”  Robert K Statmore an upright human being if there ever was one, it had been years since I had even thought of Bob, except when I went camping and realized with a fresh new sense of shame that I still had the tent I borrowed one weekend almost four years ago.
	“How is Bob?”
	“Dunno, haven’t talked to any of those guys in a couple of years, I been out here doing odd jobs, I was working for a mining firm doing archeological impact studies, you know making sure they weren’t trampling on our people.”  Our people was an old and very elaborate joke that had developed over the years, a sort of half joke actually as Clay and I were serious about some of it.  Our people were the native American’s whose blood ran through both our bodies, in Clay it was the Cherokee, and in mine it was (I think) Ogalala, but either way it wasn’t much, not even enough to claim it for scholarship purposes.  The both of us were middle European mutts, half breeds, the results of some horny individuals who had no qualms about fucking across international boundaries, but the point of “our people” was not so much about us, it was a continuous good natured way to needle the third point in our boyhood triangle of friendship.  That third point was named Jim Stout and was proudly and definitely Irish.  When we all got drunk conversation used to end up with Jim threatening to give us small pox blankets and us half-heartedly trying to scalp him while he slept.  It’s funny now looking back how teenagers can turn genocide and torture into a source of humor and competition.  We were a lot smarter back then.  I smiled at Clay’s comment and was lost for moment in a nostalgic reflection over my boyhood.  I saw Clay as I will always see him when he’s not around, he’s sitting in that diner smiling that old half crooked curve, and to this day his nasal voice echoes about in my ears whenever I think of him.  He had slow manner of speech where you leaned in close so as not to miss a word.  He often didn’t say much just shrugged or gave you a look, but the words that did fall out were carefully measured like a recipe and to miss one of them would ruin the flavor of what he was trying to say.  And then there were The Looks, you have to know someone for a while before you can communicate with them on a subverbal level with just looks, but with Clay that time was double the norm.  He had looks, which he held out in silence that could mean more than complex and overly verbose sentence.  When he was feeling thoughtful and didn’t have an opinion he would stroke his chin with a bemused expression which only over time did I realize was not in fact an ironic mockery of Allen Ginsburg, but really the genuine article of inner reflection being measure out and stirred up.  I have always thought in the time since Clay and I were fast boyhood friends that I would have liked to smoke pot with him.  I remember the first time I got high I thought what wonderful qualities this little plant would bring out in my friend Clay, but he was gone by then, off in Arizona going to school and continuing down the boisterous outdoor life that we had all lead during high school.  Nearly every weekend we headed out to Joshua Tree the local rock climbing hang out and Clay had patiently taught Jim and I how to climb until one day we were both better than him.  Or at least to be fair that’s how I remember it.  Every summer we had made glorious excursions through the Sierra Nevada, backpacking over the palisades, Mineral King, Sequoia, Yosemite and other mountains with names that I have surrendered to inaccessible regions of memory.  We all came from adventurous sort of families.
Jim was the first to go his separate way, he ended up at brown University for four years and then Clay went to NAU and I went, well I went here.  And then there and now back here.  Crisscrossing paths occasionally with each of them making plans for trips we knew we would never go on.  The last time I saw Jim, he had met me for a drink at the Little Knight and Tony had presided over our hour and a half meeting like a surgeon trying to revive the dead.  I hadn’t seen Jim since and I didn’t know where he was and apparently neither did Clay.
	“What are you doing tonight you want to come get a drink?”
	“Ya I’m with a friend of mine,” I motioned to Dean the he should come over, he didn’t know Clay and I hadn’t really said anything when he walked in I just dropped my story and walked over to a strangers table, for all Dean knew I was making arms deals with the CIA.  I introduce them and Dean went back to our both retrieved our burgers and we all sat down to dinner.  “We were over a Tangz, but the gay scene got old so we ducked out… his sister and her friend are still there, but we left them the keys anyway.  You got a ride?”
	He did and that settled it.  The three of us took off to a club/bar where Clay’s girlfriend Anna was working, on the way I filled Clay in on five years as best a could (he had heard stories it seemed —good to know that people talk about you when you’re not around).  I left out a few things that I wanted to tell him, but as I said Clay and I are ancient and until I knew where he was at now I had no reason, based on the old Clay to think the one driving now would care about.  I left out my gnosticism and the year or so that I spent trying to meet god.  Not that I was embarrassed about that stuff, nor ashamed, but rather that they were between me and the handful of people that were aware of what was going on, to go beyond that circle would cost them their flavor, the unique character of insanity that marked them.  It turned out that Clay had done about half of the things we always suspected he would do, like college, the master degree, the outdoorsy life, the move to Colorado… but there were things that I never would have thought to hear that Clay was doing.  Back in the day, in fact how I met Clay was through the church youth group, and as I say we were both indoctrinated with the Presbyterian God, but to be honest I was mainly there because there were really cute girls (if I had know then what I know now I would have been down the street at the Mormon tabernacle).  I grew out of religion around seventeen when I read a book on brainwashing and realized that even if all this malarkey they were feeding us was true, I knew nothing of it other than what I had been told.  The same tactics are used by the US military, Indian gurus, Charlie Manson and nearly every other belief centered organization in the world.  I got very angry with myself for being duped by these charlatan tricks that seemingly anyone could have employed by reading a textbook on conditioning psychology.  I was smarter than that I realized, but unfortunately all my friends were not seeing my insights and what's more they seemed genuinely concerned about me for thinking such things.  Subtle reminders were dropped hear and there over a dinner or later after we graduated, a beer, things that had the subtle subtext that good religious people can convey through even the most mundane conversation.  At least that’s what I thought at the time and I embarked on this quest to convert them all to my new religion, to undermine the system from within.  I gave them books, got them to smoke pot (well Jim anyway) got them to have some sex, in fact Dean and I even dragged Jim to meet a porn star once at some strip club, but then end up backing out when we learned that their was no alcohol allowed.  I was the propaganda of hedonism.  I always thought that Clay would come round, would wake up as I naively referred to my reactionary religion, but I was wrong.  In fact Clay was quitting his job in a month to go back to California and work at the summer camp that we went to in high school.
	Now since then I had as I said carried hedonism as far (actually a little further) as it would go and there waiting for me at the end was God and this time he wasn’t wearing the gilded robes of human flesh he was much more of a supernatural being than anything I had ever read has prepared me for and he was much subtler in its existence than I had assumed.  He hated Presbyterians and hedonists with equal fervor.  He looked like Hitler in Drag and had a nasty habit of sniffing opium tinctures at the most improbable of moments.  He was related directly to the incident with the little gnomes on ether that were mentioned earlier and how do you relate that to anyone else?  I hadn’t the foggiest and I realized that I was cut off, limited as much as freed by experience because I was so painfully aware of the limitations of being human I was limited.  I was limited to trying to understand Clay when I should have been knowing.  This thought ran like a subtle subtext through the conversation.  Dean took over for me and started telling Clay about people, parties and things that I new Clay wouldn’t relate to, but I let him because I could see Clay shifting in his seat and having to realize that the other half exists and that was exactly what I had been trying to do.  I tried every trick in the book back in my more clever days and I had forgotten about the one thing that doesn’t get into psychology textbooks: people.  The best evidence for god is man, always has been always will be, any two bit strand of sporific DNA floating through the universe could have made the rest, but man now there is an odd one.  Where did this thing come from and what the hell is wrong with it?  Who would have made such a thing?  I hold that what made us had a hell of a sense of humor and not much else going on upstairs.
	When I snapped out of it they were talking about books.  Dean was lamenting the recent demise of William S Burroughs and Clay was arguing that Burroughs was too obscure in his style to ever be the creative genius that people thought him to be.  This I decide would be great time to go the bathroom and I excused myself; there is nothing Dean can talk about with the insane fever of dementia quite like William Burroughs.  I had watched Dean discover and then devour William Burroughs the way some people get over imported chocolates.  He savored each knew book with a delicacy that I reserved for other authors, I recognized immediately that whatever his merits or faults he had at least reached Dean and Dean was a tough nut to crack, I could never do it.  He had lent me some books and then wham in I went to the world of the totally bizarre.  Burroughs tunneled himself into my brain like cancer and ate it all up, then is found another and moved on to devour that author consuming that men and women who wrote as intrinsically part of what they were saying.  I have always read that way being more interest in the whole scope of authors life rather than moving from book to book the way some people do.  Whether it was Robert Wilson or Tom Clancy it was always the same way.
	When I came back from the bathroom I could tell that things had gone awry which was just as well because I didn’t really want to talk philosophies I wanted to speed things up.  I went up the bar and asked the bartender to point out Anna for me.  He did and I knew that things between me and Clay would never be the same again.  She was an absolute work of art with delicate pale skin like a Grecian urn and a face with high cheekbones that just kind hung amid a mass of perfect blond ringlets.  She could have been a model, but she wasn’t she was Clay’s girlfriend and I was smitten.  I have notorious bad habit of sweeping my friends girlfriend out from their arms and into my own consequently my friends don’t usually call for while when they meet someone.  I was awash in cynicism from my earlier musings and I figured if Clay and I were destined to part then I might as well do it with a bang.  I went up and introduced myself.  Anna “had a smile that swerved, a smile that curved, a smile that swerved all over the road.”  If ever there was a girl that Mark Sandman described with those lines it was Anna.  She had a body that hugged the road like BMW and she laughed with the honest mirth that comes only those who know.  I struggled over that sentence for some time trying to put it without sounding like mystic, but the simple truth is if you don’t know what I mean by that then don’t worry you don’t know and if you don’t know you’ll never learn.
	Anna talked like a little demurring French pastry and once shy and bold with the dancing musical quality that seems to emanate mainly in the voices of women I find attractive and no one else.  When you’re in the presence of a magical voice such as that all you want to do is listen, any other distraction becomes an immediate irritation and all you want is to stop it and get back the sweet music.  Thus by the time a came back to the table with Anna I was already in the mood to do whatever she wanted whenever and wherever she wanted to do it (of course, and therein lies the rub, ten minutes from now it was very possible I would be smitten to another water nymph). 	
	Clay looked visibly disturbed that I had gotten to Anna before he introduced us and being aware of my past he was already uncomfortable with the idea.  The song was right is you want to be happy for the rest of your life you got to get yourself an ugly wife or in this case girlfriend, because if you’re dating the most beautiful girl in the room you have to continually maintain your Alpha Male presence or the other will swoop in and feed on your weakness.  Women who find that statement offensive have never been the most beautiful girl in the room and the rest of them are evil because they know what power they have and they use it.  Anna was the center of attention at out little table and she new it and she liked it from what I could tell because she announced before long that she was going to see if she could get off early and we were all to come with her to an exclusive party for some ban that none of use had ever heard of.  But like I said whatever, whenever wherever and I could tell Dean was not going to put up a fight.  She left and Clay wisely used this time to go to the restroom as it was not a good idea to leave the girl with the other dogs.
Dean and I talked it over and decided that we would each do our best to keep the other from sleeping with Anna, but in our quixotic logic we both agreed that the best way to do this was to each keep the other from the crime by committing it ourselves.  We could have subtitled our logic with the slogan keep others out of trouble by getting yourself into it first or as one other put it, how I found the goddess and what I did to her then” to which I would only add and how she loved it.  As they say good lovers are not born they’re made, like Mafioso bosses its all in the luck of the draw, but once you learn you will never look at life the same again.  You will understand from experience.  The question we were debating when Clay returned was whether or not good a Christian could possibly be capable of satisfying the goddess.  We were in the neighborhood of a no when we had to seamlessly shift gears and make Clay believe that we were not talking about his girlfriend the minute he left the table, but of course he knew wouldn’t you?
	I managed to suck down one more gin and tonic before the forces of control let Anna loose upon us and we all headed off in her car to this after-hours party that was supposedly in the swanky downtown area that Dean and I had been touring earlier.  When we got there it turned out to be in the bar of a rather posh high rise hotel.  The entire area was blocked off, but a couple of words between the security guards and Anna and we were all whisked in with nod here and there.  Now only was it indeed a part for some band, but this musical flavor of the month had some rather famous friends.  And suddenly Clay’s nightmare deepened because now he didn’t have to worry about Dean or I; there was new competition like Johnny Depp who was sitting by himself in the corner of the bar.  Nor were Dean and I necessarily smitten on Anna anymore when there were an abundance of women that we would have recognized if we bothered to keep up on the fashion industry.  Being from LA Dean, Clay and I were not overly impressed with celebrities anymore, you only run into a couple and then you start to realize that your own friends are infinitely more interesting.  But one thing about celebrity parties that I never get tired of is the free food and booze and the wonderful abundance of substance abuse.  How do you know if you live in LA?  You can’t remember if cocaine is illegal or not.  We made a beeline for the bar and left Clay with Anna who we figured was after all his problem not ours.  We watched the vultures feeding as the celebrities divided and conquered among the groupies, admirers and hangers on.  Its really hard to compete with a guy that’s internationally recognized as a sex symbol so we contented ourselves with the company of a guy who we thought might be the lead singer of the Black Crowes and who might have just been another emaciated scraggly haired kid that looked like the lead singer of the Black Crowes.  In either case we chatted sporadically over the course of a half-hour or so before he offered us a joint.  We graciously accepted and got up thinking we were to follow him outside when he lit it right there in the middle of the bar and with a minimum of discretion passed it to Dean who shrugged and smoked it.
“Be careful,” the dark locks leaned in closer as if to impart some clandestine knowledge, “this shits pretty hard core.”
	I laughed in his face but managed to make it look like I was only coughing.  Dean shook his hand and said thanks man don’t worry its cool or some other such dopehead lingo.  From the minute the smoke hit my lungs it was very obvious that something more powerful than what I was used to was at work here.  My toes got tingly and my hands heavy.  Maybe thirty seconds after I inhaled I was catapulted into another universe that bore absolutely no resemblance to the one before it.  Dean’s face went ashen and I thought thank god because I was going to need company on this one.
	Ten minutes later I found myself discussing the literary merits of Dorothy Allison with Winona Ryder and her brother who I thought was her boyfriend.  What I said I have no idea but I did later make it a point to read bastard out of Carolina and I was some disappointed when Winona Ryder was not in the movie.  She seemed like she genuinely wanted to play that role and in my chaotic state I sensed that she would.  Not everything that comes to you one drugs is brilliant not is all of it ‘just the drug.’  No matter what the prejudice the drug warriors have against chemicals the important thing that they ignore is that the chemicals are interacting with the human mind.  Something happens when you smoke pot that not only feels good but also over time changes the entire way in which your brain processes information whether or not that is good thing is an individual judgement call.  At this particular point that alternative brain function felt that it would only be just and fitting for Winona Ryder to play the lead in a movie version of Bastard out of Carolina.
	Dean I soon noticed was actually talking the Johnny Depp.  They seemed quite engrossed in conversation and I slid my way out from Winona and her brother and tried to cross the room without running, but I was so paranoid that I inadvertently missed the fact that Anna was calling my name behind me.  Her voice blended in with the cacophonous swirl of background noise that surged and breathed in my ears as if it were a living thing.
	Thus when she grabbed me from behind I almost punched her in the face I was so shocked.  And I was way to out of it to try to cover up it up; she fairly jumped back from me and then let out a little yelp such that everyone in the room turned there heads.  This was my worst nightmare.  In my gamble to cross the crowded room this was the scenario that was too far fetched to actually happen so I disregarded it and sure enough I was frozen like a deer in the headlights, caught before a roomful of glaring eyes.  Anna came to my rescue and gentle grabbed me by the waist and led me off into the hallway where Clay was waiting.  They were leaving it turned out and if we were to have a ride home now was the time.  I mumbled something about good to see you nice to meet you and ducked back into the party.  This time I successfully navigated the room, but Depp had left and Dean was huddled in the corner looking a bit too much like cornered wounded animal.
	I dropped in next to him and shook him a bit.
	“How are you doing?”
	“I don’t know what that shit was, but I would really like some more.”
	“Ya.” I scanned the room for the scraggly haired kid but didn’t see him.  It was pushing two in the morning, but the bar shoed no signs of caring and it wasn’t long before a waitress brought us more drinks.  The staff seemed to be the most star struck people in the bar, they all walked about half gawking and half averting their eyes they way people do around so called celebrities.  I’ve always treated celebrities with the subtle scorn that lonely men reserve for hookers, a caustic indifference held out on a stick of sarcasm and belittlement.  I figured that if I were famous that would be more interesting then simple worship.  We watched the room in silence for the better part of an hour.  Dean told me later that he saw them all completely naked and thought that so much time had passed the place had turned into an orgy.  I was musing over what life would be like if the struggle to survive were eliminated.  Dangerous fantasies because you realize that whatever hardships might accompany having lots of money there was always the freedom to do whatever you wanted whenever you wanted.  That most rich and famous people do not take advantage of that fact and work themselves to bones making more and more movies or albums as the case may be is the singular most depressing thing about them.  At a quarter to three last call went out and low and behold Black Crowes guy slid seemingly out of nowhere into the both and offered up the remainder of the joint.
	“You guys are holding up okay, the last time I shared this shit this girl freaked out and thought it was laced with something and tried to beat me up.”
	“I hate it when that happens.”  Dean took the rather small remnants of a joint and inhaled deeply.  “My ex-wife tried to beat me up the first time I did mushrooms.  I was really out of it and she came home all pissed off about something and she had never done mushrooms so she had no idea where I was and he started yelling at me on the stairs.  I just kind of stood there and looked at her totally unable to comprehend what she was saying then she pushed me down the stairs and kicked me.  Then my sister through her out of the house.”
Both Crowes and I were laughing by the time Dean finished his little yarn.  Crowes seemed impressed more that Dean had been married than anything else or maybe that was all of the story that he actually heard seeing how most of the joint had disappeared without us participating. 
“What was that like man, I mean being married.”
“Well I don’t really know we were only married two months when that happened I decided after that it was better if we went our separate ways.”
	“Ya but what was it like to stand at the alter and look at that person and think ya I want to spend the rest of my life with this person.  I mean what does that feel like?”  He put a particular emphasis on fee as if this would someone affect Dean’s response.
Dean sat for moment in silence staring at his hands.  “I don’t know, uh I never really had that go through my head.  It was just a kind of little thing that got out of control.  She asked me once after knowing her for like three weeks if I wanted to get married and I said sure because I thought she was joking and then next thing I knew she was dress shopping with my mom.  It just happened so fast I didn’t have time to stop it.”
	This seemed to have a profound impact on Crowes and he withdrew slightly in what I thought was a kind of meditative slouch.  Dean and I exchanged a look after a few minutes and then with still no response we shook the kid.
	Still nothing.  Hmmmm.
	“You want to get something for last call?”
	“Ya that would probably be good.”  I got up and went to the bar.  I got three drinks and set one in front of Crowes who appeared to have settled off into a comfortable coma.
	“Oh hey, Clay and Anna left.”  I delivered the news as though it were no big deal and then saying it aloud I realized the gravity of the situation.  We were fucked up out of our minds surrounded by people we didn’t know with no way out
	“Oh really!  How the fuck did that happen?”
“Uh well they wanted to go I didn’t and you were talking to Johnny Depp so I just kind of ditched them.”
	“How exactly were you planning on getting home?”
	“I didn’t really think that far in advance…”
	“Ya I can see that.”
	An idea nacently sprang forth in both our minds.  I slide around the booth and prodded at Crowes a few time to make sure he was out for good and then I dug through his pockets to find his valet card.  He didn’t have one so we figured he must have come in one of the limousines we had seen on our way in.  Between the two of us we dragged him out of the booth and with an arm over each shoulder we carried him outside.  It was then as we staggered to keep him from falling over that I noticed another joint in his breast pocket.  I ferreted it away while Dean tried to enlist the help of the valets in locating our ride.  In a few minutes an affable Tom Waites looking character pulled up in a black limousine and offered to drive us all home.  We took him up on it and the three of us kind of pitched Crowe through the door.  The driver, whose name was Jake Anderson, kept the divider window down and I did my best to guide him to marks house.  I had him tuning about in a haphazard way that my autopilot intuition told me would end us up at Marks house.  If you had drawn out our course on a map it would have looked like a staircase and we would have been falling down it like paraplegics thrown from their wheelchairs.
Eventually I managed to find the house but I felt bad because I had made the guy drive around for the better part of half and hour so I offered him the joint with a warning that it would probably be better not to smoke it and drive.  He thanked me and asked if we wanted to cruise for while and smoke it with him.  Dean ran inside and got Mark and Betty and we all took off to ride around Denver.  Jake took us up the freeway toward Boulder and we pulled over atop a hill.  We sat there for the rest of the night slowly smoking the joint in ten-minute spurts.  Any longer and we were all so high that we forgot about the joint and it went out.  Around six the sun rose over the eastern Colorado plain.  It was a magnificent fiery red and orange spectacle.  Jake told us stories about driving around the rich and famous, my favorite was the time he had driven Axl Rose’s legendary dolphin decaled limo from Hollywood out to palm Springs for the sole purpose of having a taco at some Mexican place that he really wanted to eat at.  Apparently although he didn’t say it outright Jake had driven somebody our here all the way from LA for this concert which if we were to believe him was a political bigwig event that everybody who was anybody was at.  There were more parties at other hotels that we had missed out on.  Jake assured us that they were more of the dame with the didactic tone of the kings lap dog —always superior and never actually participating.  Still he was awfully nice and as the night wore on he seemed to want to join our cross-country journey.  Several times the conversation seemed headed toward a pregnant pause where if we wanted to we could have invited him along.  We didn’t.
We did however take him to breakfast at a roadside diner that he suggested.  After a hearty meal of eggs and bacon I was ready to call it a night and pass out.  Jake dropped us off at the house around eight and I went to sleep assuming as I always do that I would wake up sober again the next morning.  I didn’t and neither did anyone else.  It was well past ten o’clock at night before any of us felt normal again.  We spent the day sleeping it off or stumbling about the house in a mesmerized trance.  To this day no other drug has fucked me up as completely or for as long as that stuff that Crowe gave us.  He claimed it wasn’t laced with anything and he identified it only as Hawaiian Redhair a potent strain to be sure, but not that potent.  Maybe it was the altitude, maybe it was us.  Quein Sabe.