"I think that stripper really liked me!"

This past week and weekend was a maelstrom of depravity. It started out easy going enough, but the devil is in the details. I'm giving my chemistry a rest for the next week... an opportunity to rest and replenish itself.

Easy:
Tuesday I was out until 12:30 at a fundraiser for battered women of Chicago. All proceeds help fund this local hiding spot.

Wednesday I was up smoking and drinking beer and playing cards until 1:30.

Thursday was a special night of me and that crazy girl Sarah avoiding the typical Chicago St Patrick's day riff raff for the dark confines of the Lincoln Tap Room and Lennox Lounge. At one point I walked back to the men's room and let a manic 23 year old girl cut ahead of me because the ladies room was locked. Three minutes later she approached me at the bar with Sarah and was grabbing at me and thanking me for my kindness. Sarah told me "I can't talk to people on cocaine." We drank a lot of vodka and toasted her graduation from beauty college. She mentioned that she'd spent the day hot waxing an overweight fag's back and chest for an upcoming "trip to Miami with friends." I'd spent the day tracking down a Chinese translation service. I was home by 3 a.m.

Hard:
Work was a bitch all day on Friday. I was so fuckin tired. I was useless. Friday night I had plans to meet up with my friend Matt and go to a party for a 27 year old girl I work with at a small place in Wicker Park. I got home around 5:30, and laid down around 6 p.m. I slept through the 8 p.m. alarm I'd set and woke up at 10:45 p.m. to my phone ringing. Matt had been trying to reach me since 9 p.m. He was at a bar, so he was alright, so I went back to sleep.

Easy:
I woke up around 9:30 a.m. on saturday and felt like a $1000 bill. The clarity! The energy! Full recharge. My friend Rick called me and drove his bike up to my place. Saturday was sunny/partly cloudy and 50 degrees (this is warm for March for Chicago). We started out with a smoke and a coffee. I kicked Rick's ass at a game of foosball. We discussed my idea for a cable access show called Foos the Boss.

Foos The Boss:
Shot with three cameras, the show chronicles "great unseen games in basements and single 31 year old's third story apartments." Each show consists of 30 minutes of intense foosball action and a weekly music pick (that will be mixed in to the final edit for full surround sound). Example: my first episode pick is Queens of the Stone Age: Rated R. Rick said that he'd have to go with Black Sabbath. All verbal intimidation and bad sportsmanship is recorded and encouraged.

What a winning idea.

Easy:
Rick and I rode bikes up to Evanston and around Northwestern University. Rick said that he knew a kid who went to Northwestern and became an asshole. I reminded Rick that because his friend had attended Northwestern, that he was now smarter than Rick, because he went to Northwestern. Rick agreed with that sound argument. I didn't see any good looking girls anywhere and all of the "men" looked like pussies. George Bush should draft the top 25% of each class of each of the Ivy league and elitest schools like Northwestern for his Iraq jerk off. He could justify it by calling for a need to "further cut the nation's next generation of intelligence to ensure the preservation of the Republican Party's re-electoral-ation."

Anyways, Rick and I rode back to my place, smoked, Rick lost at chess and then had to go home for his evening's plans. While he was loading his bike into the backseat of his car I got another idea for a cable access show. This one would involve watching people try to pack large objects into small spaces. There would be a timer in the lower right hand of the screen and no obscenities would be edited out.

Hard:
Last October I spent an evening in the suburbs with a crew of exceptional high school graduates ("stop bragging"). Saturday night I made a return visit to Mike's house of drugs, porn and wrecked lives. This time it was an occasion to celebrate "Dom's birthday." Dom might be 35, but then again, he might be 42. Last time we saw Dom he was working as "a driver" (in this crew "a driver" drives strippers to bachelor parties, and is the guy holding the cash, usually a foot-long metal mag-lite flashlight, and on occasion, a concealed handgun), this time Dom is a roommate at the house and a plumber.

We met up at a huge bar for suburban trash that featured a dead-on Journey cover band. The night's party included a dozen Italian stereotypes and half a dozen off-duty strippers. The bar sucked, so everyone went over to Mike's house. My friend Dave (my connection to this scene) didn't want to stay, so he offered to come pick me up in the morning. I only get to visit hell and the lost souls that lurk there every so often, so I elected to stay.

Dave's friend Mike is the consumate host (think Larry Flint without the wheelchair or the money), and for some reason has taken a liking to me... pushing sluts in my direction (always the bottom tier of the the sluts present... the top tier are always busy receiving attention), offering me Cuban cigars, handing me chemicals for free, showing me the newest additions to his automatic weapon collection. I told him that I liked his FUBU velvet warm up suit and wanted one for myself. He told me to get him my measurments.

The first conversation I got into was with this super fuckin cute Italian girl named Angela. She was about 5'2", small and curved. She seemed articulate and had a good sense of humor. I was starting to wonder what she was doing amongst this scene of drugged whores and losers, until she started talking about how she was a stewardess and then mentioned that she was also a dancer. And then she told me that she was a lesbian, and that she had no interest in men.

OK, moving on...

The next girl that I got to talking to a bit was this super fucking hot 5'10" blonde with a penthouse figure and totally tight aerobicized body and naturally beautiful face named Jennifer. She was into me for real for about 20 minutes, but then the chemicals washed away whatever lingering attraction was there.

There's a cottage industry set up for lonely men wondering HOW to land a hot woman or a model or cocktail waitress or a stripper. Let me give away the secret right now (this will also work on anyone in the service industry): If you want a hot woman or a model or a cocktail waitress or a stripper hang out with you, you have to have cocaine. That's it.

One recurring thing I found with each beautiful trashy woman I talked to is that they all had some serious bad luck and bad shit going on in their lives. They had 10 year old kids with diabetes... they had 14 year old sons sneaking little girls into the house... they were still rocking hard at 8 a.m. with scumbag men grabbing their bodies, porn on the TV, and available chemicals on the dining room table.

Although I was publicly welcomed by the house's owner Mike, I still felt a need to keep alert regarding the other men wandering around on chemicals (and the fact that there were maybe a dozen guns in the house), there was a special alpha male/aggresion thing in the air, and I felt the need to keep an eye on a couple of them. One was a car salesman who had this cocaine faggot thing going on when he showed up at 2:30 with two just off duty strippers, but then began demonstrating flying roundhouse kicks and giving me the evil eye. Fucking weird.

By 8:30 I'd placed two calls to Dave to come pick me up. I had to get out of there, I was totally spent and growing depressed, the sun was out, the air was stinking and thick with smoke... it was the waiting station to hell. Jennifer (the hot tall blonde) asked me where I was going with my jacket on. I told her that I was going to go home in the city. She was bouncing from a recent bump. Smiled, and was whisked away by a coked up 30 year old car salesman who turned on a low grade techno disc and wanted to grind.

I got the fuck out of there.