God’s Addiction — chapter 1
Taste the Candy
(more chapters soon. if you like this beginning, email me at lopezislandbob@gmail.com)
“Motherfucker.” The word bounced in my brain and I realized I had spoken aloud. With emphasis. Without knowing what it meant.
“Give it up, asshole!” The command accompanied a sharp pain in my side. Much later, I understood that Angus had kicked me for the third or fourth or fifth time.
My body ached all over, a fact made obvious when it was rotated on the ground by coarse hands guided by a huge fleshy individual, soon to be known as Mack. Mack’s shoe sole forced my head down hard and I saw stars, mingled with the skyscrapers soaring above the gritty sidewalk. Something somewhere said I should be angry but I could not fathom why.
“He ain’t got it,” Mack said. “No ID, no keys, nothin’. Looks like he was rolled before we got here.”
“Shit!” Angus said to Mack. He ran fingers through his thick red hair. To me he said, “Get the blow by midnight, asshole. You know where to find us. Don’t care if you got ripped off. We had a deal.”
“Aaaayyyiii!” I yelled.
Looking along my prone body, I saw that Mack was pulling a bloody knife out of my thigh. For one painful moment that knife looked like the exclamation mark I’m sure Mack intended it to be. “We mean business,” he said, his fat lips sneering. “Next time it’s your heart.”
Angus pushed Mack backward a few feet. Oddly, in my mind there was wonder at the smaller man’s ability to move the sheer mass of Mack’s body. And not just simple amazement, but quantifiable curiosity. Kilograms, velocity squared, kinetic energy — words surfaced in my head like fish coming up for food flakes. I had no idea where the hell they came from. Along with the shove, Angus spoke: “Dickwad! How’s he s’posed to get the blow if he’s in the fuckin’ hospital?”
“Sorry,” Mack murmured, his clean-shaven face red with anger or embarrassment or both. He cleared greasy black hair from his eyes with a flip of the head.
What I now know to be a siren wailed distantly and grew louder. “Motherfucker,” Angus said. “Let’s get out of here.” Motherfucker. There was that word again. I thought it might be my name. I closed my eyes and focused on the pain centers randomly situated throughout my body. I sent them blue-white energy and apologized to my cells that I’d gotten them into this trouble.
Then I passed out.
I awoke in a bed with tubes in my nose and arm, and wires taped to my chest. I still hurt like hell, but I could tell my body was repairing the damage. I opened my eyes.
“Well hello,” a pretty woman in green said, coming to my bedside. She smiled. “I’m Patty. What’s your name?”
“Motherfucker?” I wondered.
The smile flat-lined. Patty squinted at me, then walked to the door. “He’s awake,” she said to someone in the hall. “All yours.”
* * *
They couldn’t hold me more than a few days. My doctor kept muttering to himself and later called in cronies to be awed how the knife wound had healed — almost no scarring. Apparently my fingerprints were not on file, as related to me by Officer Benjamin, who had taken the handoff from Patty. There were no relevant missing-persons reports. Any stabbing had to be investigated, but even with my DNA, which I’d freely given, nothing came up. Not even my name, which I was pretty sure by then was not Motherfucker.
I saw the hospital psychiatrist — the word ‘shrink’ bubbled up from somewhere — a Dr. Humphill.
“So Doc,” I said at the start of the session, “is it ‘hump-hill’ or ‘hump-phil’.” I knew it was hump-hill from the staff, but I was learning that whoever I was, I wasn’t always nice.
“Let’s talk about you, John,” he said. I’d learned I was John Doe until proven otherwise. I almost told Humphill My Name is Motherfucker, but I really did want to get out of that hospital. “You remember words, obviously,” Humphill went on, “but not your name. What is the last event you can recall? Or the last person you met, whom you knew?”
Dr. Humphill had thin sandy hair, piercing eyes, a sharp nose, and a manicured beard that I supposed hid a receding chin. His appearance made me smile, in a peculiar way, as if, perhaps, looking at a featherless duck. “Mack stabbed me with a knife,” I said. “No big deal though.”
Humphill remained expressionless. “So I heard. I mean before that. Before your unfortunate incident” — the barest twist came and went in a flash on one side of Humphill’s mouth — “that left you bleeding on the sidewalk.” A tad of sarcasm from the good doctor?
I tried to recall…anything. I got flashes that didn’t make sense. Hundreds of people in a big room listening to someone — me? — on a podium. A little boy, possibly me, standing in sand, holding five small lizards by their tails. “Nothing meaningful,” I said.
“Why don’t you let me decide that, John. Do you remember taking drugs?”
Flashing on powders, pills, a party. An encounter with a pretty woman that made me tingle inside with the memory. “No,” I said. “Nothing like that.” I just wanted to be released, and I knew from overheard conversations that drug use and firearms would likely slow down the process.
“Because, John, they found several substances in your blood. I say substances. They couldn’t identify what they are, but they’re organic. Possibly new drugs. Any idea what I’m talking about?”
I shrugged. “None at all, Dr. Humphill,” I said, trying to sound innocent. And I found I knew exactly what to say and how to say it to maneuver the good doctor into reporting me fit for release, despite my lack of identity. The doctors scheduled me to be back on the street after a few more days of observation — with my promise to see Humphill on a regular basis.
A lovely young woman wearing a green jacket wheeled a cart into my room later in the day. It was filled with little flat plastic boxes with pictures on them. “So, John,” she asked, “Would you like to watch a movie?”
“What are movies?”
She pursed her magnificent lips and pointed with a head movement to the hanging television. “Like a TV show but more focused. You’ll like them.”
Later, after seeing The Tourist, I dubbed her Angelina — a blond Angelina Jolie — despite what her volunteer ID badge claimed.
I asked Angelina what she’d suggest next, and she put Sleepless in Seattle into the box under the TV. She gave me a “remote” and showed me what buttons to push. A few hours later she wheeled her cart in again and sat in a chair, smiling. “Well?”
So I asked her, “What’s tiramisu?”
“Um,” she began, then, “Why? They didn’t give you that for lunch.”
“You know: Sam says, ‘What is tiramisu?’ and Jay says, ‘You’ll find out.’ and Sam says, ‘What is it?’ and Jay says, ‘You’ll see.’ and Sam says, ‘Some woman is gonna want me to do it to her and I’m not gonna know what it is!’ So, what the heck is tiramisu? It sounds important.”
“Christmas!” Angelina said. “Good memory! Do you remember the whole movie?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
She sighed and frowned at me, shaking her head. “No. People do not normally recall a movie perfectly.” A skeptical look: “So what’s the last line?”
So I said, “They just got in the elevator and Annie says, ‘Sam.’ She pauses, then, ‘It’s nice to meet you.’ Then the door closes.” Angelina looked at me weird, so I thought she must have meant the song at the end instead of the talking. I sang the last part, trying to get the rhythm right —
Fame if you win it,
Comes and goes in a minute.
Where’s the real stuff in life to cling to?
Love is the answer,
Someone to love is the answer.
Once you’ve found her, build your world around her.
Make someone happy,
Make just one someone happy,
And you will be happy, too.
“Durante,” Angelina said, looking somehow happy and sad at the same time.
“So I guess I’m not normal, huh?” I said.
She took my hand in hers and I felt tingling, like the memory I hadn’t shared with Humphill. What I later learned was my fuck stick, started making a tent under the sheet. “Sweetie,” she said to the tent, “you are as normal as you need to be.”
This time she left me with three movies. I watched them back to back. When I was done, I called a nurse and asked where Angelina was, using her tag name of course — but her shift was over. “Where the fuck is she then? I need some more fucking movies.” The word “fuck” seemed extremely useful for the English language, and very common from what I had seen in Bad Santa, but the nurse turned red in the face and left without a word. I pushed the call button a few times and another nurse came in. She appeared ready for trouble. I glanced at her name tag. “Please, Cindy, I just need some more movies and I guess I said something wrong to the other nurse.”
“No kidding,” she said angrily. “Be right back.”
Cindy returned with the cart full of boxes that contained the mirror-like DVDs. I asked how many I could have. “Take ’em all,” she growled. “This ain’t no public library. Just watch your mouth.” Her mood lifted just a hair. “An’ these is all like ancient flicks. All we gots here.”
I asked her to put a DVD in the box under the TV. “Put it in yourself,” she said, harshly again. “You ain’t no invalid no more.” As the night passed, I watched movie after movie. Angelina sure was right. I learned plenty!
For awhile I thought I must be an alien like Garry Shandling in What Planet Are You From. His shvantz would buzz every time a pretty woman passed by. With me it was more of a throb and the little guy would poke his head up under the sheet. Pretty soon though I figured out that was normal.
“Why’d you give me Bad Santa?” I asked Angelina when she showed up the next day.
“Fucked-up movie, huh?”
“See,” I said, “I tried talking like that to a night nurse. She got upset.”
Angelina laughed pretty loud. It took her a moment to be able to talk. “I’m sorry,” she said. “One of my favorites. I just thought you’d get a good laugh.”
“Yeah. Fuckin’ hilarious.”
She came over to the bed. “Want a massage?” she asked.
“You gonna make me cry?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like that movie At First Sight.”
She hadn’t seen it. Angelina’s massage was wonderful. I didn’t cry. Why would I? “Louis,” I said, turning over, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Angelina’s eyes lit up. “Last line of Casablanca!” She looked down her nose at me. “So if you’re such a hotshot, what’s the first line?”
I tried to speak with the tone the news narrator had: “With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately toward the freedom of the Americas.”
“Fuck,” she said. “You’re fucking amazing.”
Angelina came back the night before my release, dressed in tight jeans and a tee shirt instead of the green jacket and beige pants she wore on duty. Big Al started making a tent right away. “Hi,” I said, looking at her past the tent.
Her wide smile showed off white even teeth as she pulled a chair up next to the bed. “I hear you’re leaving tomorrow. I’m off duty. Just came to say goodbye.”
“Yeah.” I laughed. “They’re giving me a hundred bucks and a map to a homeless shelter.”
“Thought I’d give you a going-away present,” she said. She looked me straight in the eyes as she slipped a hand under the sheet.
I’d gathered from several movies that something pretty interesting happened between a man and a woman, usually in a bed. I had to close my eyes. “Shut up,” Angelina said coarsely as I started making sounds like Meg Ryan in that deli scene in When Harry Met Sally. “You’ll get Nurse Ratched in here.” She stopped. “Don’t stop,” I said weakly.
“Sorry John,” she said. “Just showing you what to do. I like you, but I’ve already got a boyfriend. If it gets messy, tell Nurse Ratched you had a wet dream.”
My mouth was open and my heart was pounding. She left before I could ask what a wet dream was. With Angelina fresh in my mind, I finished what she’d started. Wow! I was dumbfounded. What kind of sadistic god had erased that from my memory?
* * *
Hospital policy stated one had to get taken down to the exit in a wheelchair. So there I was on a sunny day, my leg with no sign of a scar, stepping easily onto the hot landing. I thanked the orderly. It’s customary to tip those who help you, I’d learned from several flicks. They’d given me my hundred bucks in twenties. I held one up. “Is this all right?”
The orderly raised his hand and shook his head. “I can’t take tips,” he said. “And if you want to have any dough at the end of the day, keep it in your pocket. Don’t give nobody nothin’ ‘cept for food.” He turned and wheeled the chair back into the building, leaving me alone. I walked down the ramp and out to Soto Street.
It felt fabulous strolling down the sidewalk. Something told me this was far better than what my life had been before my mind got fucked. Still, deep inside was a disconnected distant screaming. It wasn’t a sound or even a feeling — more like a psychic funny-bone being struck over and over. Or a million beehives half-way across the galaxy.
I breathed in and felt the aliveness of my body — what more could I ask for? My stomach growled. Okay, food would be nice. Halfway down the block was a Salvadoran restaurant, whatever that meant. I stood at the window trying to decipher the menu, when I was grabbed from behind and shoved through the door.
I turned to see a curly-haired young woman wearing a very short skirt and tight top, like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. She hustled me along toward the tables. “I think we’re safe,” she said, looking repeatedly over her shoulder. I let her push me forward, and turned my palms up. “Whatever,” I said.
She looked exactly like Jane Adams who played Joy in Happiness. I decided to call her Happy. “I’m calling you Happy,” I said. “I’m John.”
She ignored me and pushed me down into a booth. “I just hope Mack or Angus didn’t see us come in here. God, I’m glad I got to you first.”
So Happy knew Angus and Mack. The importance of that fact sank beneath my simple wonder at the sensational smile spreading across her face. Joy was never really happy in Happiness. “You’re happy,” I said.
“So you said. And the hospital calls you John Doe. Want to know your real name?”
Why would I? That was in the past, mixed up somehow with Angus and Mack. I shook my head. “Uh-uh.” Happy was quite attractive in a non-descript way. “Did we ever…” I made the fist motion Billy Crystal did when he asked Meg Ryan the same question on the airplane in When Harry Met Sally.
“You mean sex,” Happy said. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Is that a yes?”
“What do you think?”
The waitress appeared with menus. “Anything to drink?”
“You got booze?” Happy asked.
“Sure.”
“I’ll have an Anus Burner.”
“How much Tabasco?”
“Plenty.”
The waitress turned to me. “And you, sir?”
“Martini please,” I said. “Shaken, not stirred.”
The waitress smiled. “Sure thing James.”
When she’d left, Happy looked at me and I looked at her and we just gazed. It was sexy, like the beach scene in From Here to Eternity. I couldn’t remember a damn thing about her, but I knew I knew her. In the distance the bees were stirring. I ignored them.
The drinks came, and I asked Happy to decide for me about the food, having no idea what anything here tasted like. She picked pupusas with curtido for appetizers and a double order of ceviche de camarones. As the waitress walked away, I sipped my Martini. “Glaaaaa!” I said, spitting the liquid on the floor. “What the hell! People drink this?”
My body chemistry must have changed from before my event. The Martini tasted like what Linda Blair’s puke-up in The Exorcist looked like. I grimaced and stuck out my tongue. I was about to chastise Happy along with the rest of the human race when big fat Mack came lumbering through the door toward us.
* * *
Animal Planet — the hippopotamus running for the waterhole — shit! There was a scene where six lions attacked a hippo and he just shook ’em off and kept going. These recollections provided no solace as Mack waded through the crowded restaurant toward our booth.
Happy stood and charged gallantly to the defense and was bowled out of the way by an arm that must have weighed as much as she did. Then Hippo Man came to a stop — amazingly — two feet from the table. He glared at me. “Get up, fuckface.” I stood, the top of my head about level with his chin. The dirty folds of his neck were dripping with sweat.
“Who you calling fuckface, fuckface,” I said. Apparently my incident had burned out most of the fear cells in my brain.
He grabbed my neck with both his hands and lifted me several inches off the floor. I tried to kick him in the nuts like Felicity Shagwell did to Fat Bastard in The Spy Who Shagged Me. But Mack was even bigger than Fat and the geometry just didn’t work. For the first time in my short new memory, I got mad. Who was this barbarian with no other mode than open aggression? I don’t know how I knew what to do, but I grabbed his two ears in my hands and glared into his eyes.
Hippo Man’s lips parted slightly, his eyes glazed, and he pulled me in for a big fat kiss on my cheek. He dropped me and let out a wail that could have been pure pain or pure pleasure. That mass of muscle and blubber twirled as if in a ballet, then slid to the floor, landing on his beanbag buttocks. He sat for a moment with a look of bliss on his face. Then his eyes rolled up and he flopped back, laying on the floor with arms and legs out like a big fleshy X. “Ahhhhhhhh,” he said, but that was only a prelude. The moanings, groanings and writhings that followed made the sex scenes in Basic Instinct look tame.
“What the hell was that?” Happy pulled on my arm, as if to wring answers from it. We had beaten a hasty retreat, giving up on the pupusas, and were hurrying down the street lest Hippo Man come to his senses.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.
