Some of you remember my first column, way back when. The Adventures of an Asshole I called it. It was all about the biggest asshole we all know, and that some of you love. It was about my life, my trials, my tribulations. Most of all, the Adventures were a case study in what not to do with one's life.

    Enough people harassed me to come back once again that I decided to do so. But the question was: go on with the Adventures as before, or not?

    When I thought about writing about my life again, on a regular basis, column after column, I came to a very quick decision: fuck that. My life was interesting enough to read about when it sucked ass, or when strange shit was going on around me. Now that I'm mostly (with only one notable exception) getting exactly what I want out of life, though, it would make for a pretty fucking boring read.

    I'm not going to write about issues, either. I'm neither well-informed enough nor motivated enough to write about the real world and all its bullshit.

    Now that I've bored you with what I'm not going to write about, I hope you'll stick around for what I am going to write about. My work won't be about anyone in particular, or any particular situation. I may go on with one character or series of characters for several stories, or I may write about different people every time. It's pretty much up to my whims and whatever I feel like writing about. Some of it will be very experimental, and a lot of it will be fucked up. That much I can promise.

    I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide whether or not it's worth reading.

---

Rollercoaster Friday

    I can't remember what I did today. I'm trying to grab hold of it, trying to form some kind of coherent image out of my day, but it's just not happening. The last thing I remember is looking at my alarm clock, at those big, unfriendly green numbers. 10:24, they'd whispered.

    It's 11:46 now. It's Friday night, of all nights. Shit.

    It takes me a few seconds to realize what woke me up. After all the shit I drank right before I went to sleep (some part of my brain whispers: seven shots of Jager, a shitty self-made Tequila Sunrise, and two Guinness, which you chugged, yes chugged you self-destructive shithead) I should have been out cold at least until morning.

    So what the fuck? I'm suddenly feeling really . . . grumpy.

    Then I hear it: squeaky squeaky squeaky.

    Oh, man. Why the couch, Ben? Why the couch, for fuck's sake?

    I peep through my door, half drunk, hair all fucked up. I see tits bouncing up and down, and some chick with her face pointed at the ceiling, eyes shut tight, mouth open as if to drink in the air.

    Nice tits, but I wouldn't do her. She's got a jaw on her that would do Ah-nuld proud. But then again, Ben's never been one to turn down easy.

    Watching those decently perky pechas of hers go bouncy bouncy gives my viscera all kinds of ideas, though. Ol' Henry Johnson is stirring, despite the fact that the only really redeeming quality I'm seeing is those juggling juggies.

    Of course, it has been five days.

    Well, fuck it. I'm not gonna hang around here and listen to them. Dangle a piece of fish in front of a starving man, and you can torture him for a day. Cut a guy's dick off and set him up with free digs in the Playboy Mansion, and you torture him for a lifetime!

    So I get dressed. And insight strikes me; I can practically hear the *ding* and see the lightbulb go off over my head.

    Heh heh. Two can play this game, Ben, you inconsiderate fucker.

    Jeans, t-shirt, and a couple runs of my fingers through my hair, and I'm all set. I reek of booze, but they don't really give a fuck about that where I'm going. I check to make sure I've got all the really important things with me: keys, wallet, dick. Yep.

    I open the door and nonchalantly stroll out into the living room. I start laughing my ass off at the frantic motion, blankets swirling through the air, the sharp huuuuuh! as Ben withdraws. Roaches, man. Like fuckin' roaches when you turn the lights on. The image is so strong, I can't stop fucking laughing.

    "What's up?" Ben asks, breathing hard, covered in sweat, trying to sound, you know, cool. Nonchalant. That only makes me laugh harder.

    He introduces us. Her name, apparently, is Jenny. Not like I really give a fuck, but you know, I pretend to. I shake her hand, she looking very uncomfortable and flustered, I with a smirk on my face. I've got that sly I know something you don't know grin that makes people squirm. I love it.

    What I know, and what she doesn't, is that this is the only time she'll ever see the inside of this apartment. That's Ben's idiom. More power to him, I say.

    "I'm gonna take off, man," I tell him.

    "Cool, cool," he says, doing that hey, yeah, right on brother nod.

    "Well, have fun you crrrrazy kiddos! Nice meeting you, Jenny." And before I can bust up laughing again, I scoot out the door.

    Now's the part where having a fuckin' Indy car for a metabolism is really great: despite all the shit I drank, I'm damn near sober already. Sober enough, anyway, that the idea of driving my car across town to the club isn't one that seems overly daunting a task.

    Some slight weaving and grieving later, I make my way to this stop light about a mile from the club. Next to me is some snot-nosed little faggot kid with a hunk of metal jabbed in his eyebrow, driving a Nissan 300ZX. This kid has neon in the undercarriage of his car. I shit you not. Dear god.

    He looks over at me and starts revving his engine. Giving me his white boy "You wanna go, bitch?" sneer.

    I smile at his goofy ass, and looking at him the whole time, run the fucking light. Jackass kid. Eat a freezer full of dick, you little piss-ant.

    I make the next light: red. I coast to a stop, and look at this poor kid coming up in my rearview. He pulls up next to me, scowling, his bottom lip hanging out so far he could fuckin' jump rope with it. I shrug and smile. He wags his finger at me, like I'm supposed to give a shit, and starts revving his engine again.

    I sigh and sit back in my seat, arm fully extended. I may as well be cruising down a country highway. Who gives a fuck, man? I mean, shit.

    The light turns green, and he lurches forward all squeeeeeee! and burning rubber and overstressed cam. And I? I calmly press down on the accelerator, going through the light just as easy as you please. A Sunday driver on Friday night.

    So by the third light this kid is ready to start pooping in his hand and throwing it at me. He rolls down his window; the REAL Slim Shady drifts out. He starts throwing some kind of sign language at me, yelling and shit. I shrug again, as if to say, What? What'd I do?

    So he gets this real ULTRA-serious look on his face and starts revving his engine again. Car lurching on its suspension, cylinders roaring wild and throaty. A beautiful sound, were it only coming from a car with more balls behind its roar.

    Green, and we go. And I leave the stupid bastard behind in no time at all. For while it may be Bond-O'd from here to next May, and while it may be all primer and bare sanded metal, the secret of my '68 Camaro is that its testicles are bigger than anything else out there.

    Dumb fucking kid. I laugh all the way to the next light- green, and the light after that- yellow. And then, the parking lot of my club, Lilith's Chamber. God knows why it's called that, but the drinks aren't watered down, and the clientele is unremittingly hot.

    I start walking to the entrance, when my buddy Homey the Clown starts yelling at me from about 20 yards back. Ebonics and such start the assault. I can only make out one word in five. It's not language, it's brain damage. He's got this look on his face that says, "I want to impress people. And I'll start by kicking your ass."

    After listening to this idiot for about ten seconds of pure torture, I say "Look, man. If I buy you a beer and hook you up with these girls I know, will you shut the fuck up?"

    He doesn't quite know how to take that. The possibility of free beer and free pussy is warring with his desire to be the alpha-male swingin-est dick around. I guess there's hope for the human race after all, though, because he grins and says "Lead the way, homey" or something similar.

    The guys at the door know me, so they don't even bother to ID me. I just hand them my ten and start to roll on in. But before I do, I lean over to Jim, this big beefy motherfucker of an hombre, and I say, "Better take a real good look at homeboy's ID, man. I know this guy, and he's definitely faking up."

    Jim just nods, then when Homey the Clown tries to walk in, he gets a meaty slab of a hand in his chest. "Let's see some ID, kid."

    A stream of ebonics and some exaggerated motions later, and Jim's looking at the kid's ID. After a few seconds, he raises his eyebrow. "I've seen better fakes, kid. Get lost."

    "What? Who you fuckin' playin', foo', I'm legit! Straight up twenny to tha one!" At least I think that's what he said.

    "Quit wasting my time. Get lost," Jim says.

    "Mothafucka, I'll-"

    Jim stands up. All six and a half feet and 300 plus pounds of him. "Motherfucker what?" he says calmly.

    Homey is at a loss for words. Jim looks at him like he's something he scraped off the bottom of his boot. "Get the fuck out of here before I get motivated."

    I start laughing my ass off again as I wade into the club. God, I'm a bastard.

    So in these good spirits and with that panty-dropping grin on my face, I start surveying the club for likely prospects. The lights of the club play this way and that, a chaos of bright colors, strobes, and blacklights. Bass rhythms pound out like the heartbeat of some great, lustful lion in rut. Music for the unabashedly sexual among us. Music to dry-hump, er, dance to.

    It's not long before I see two just fucking hot chicks dancing with each other in the center of the dance floor. They're quite obviously not here with anyone, and just as obviously not lesbos. A blond and a brunette . . . I weigh my options, trying to decide which one to take home. It's a tough call. Finally, with a shrug, I decide to get 'em both.

    I make a bee-line for these two and nonchalantly kind of bounce my way over to them. I've got this smile on my face that says, "Not only am I cool, not only am I with it, but I've got nothing better to do tonight than . . . you." That look doesn't work on everyone, but just as I suspected, these two are either horny enough or dumb enough to fall for it. Either or. It doesn't matter to me, because soon after I'm the meat in a tit sandwich. Ohhhh, yeah.

    Blondie doesn't have much in the way of moves, but the brunette is a fucking wild woman. She gives me a run for my money. She's got moves on her that make me want to just give up etiquette and good form and throw her down right there. But the Game is the thing, and I play it patiently.

    A few songs and a half hour later, we go back to their table. They tell me their names, Jessica and Alicia, and I tell them mine. We bullshit for a while about something or other. I can't remember what it is, partly because of all the alcohol I buy for us, but mostly because it's mostly in one ear and out the other. All I remember is Jessica is the blond, a hairdresser or something, and Alicia is in college for nursing. I think she said nursing. Whatever.

    We go out and dance some more. I've decided that if I can't swing getting the both of them, I'll definitely have to go with Alicia. Jessica may be blond, and I do have a weakness for blonds, but with her wild-ass dance moves I know that Alicia would be a fucking beast in bed. She's just slightly hotter than Jessica, too.

    Time passes on the dance floor, a whole lot of time lost in running my hands over their bodies, grinding on each other, one after the other. I start kissing one of them, Alicia I think, and then the other, Jessica. Or maybe it was Jessica, then Alicia. It doesn't matter.

    We go back to the table. When Jessica goes to the bathroom, I'm kissing Alicia some more, my hand on her thigh. She's wearing this "bad little Catholic schoolgirl" outfit with thigh-high "Fuck Me" boots. My hand is moving in spirals ever sooo slowly toward her "danger zone." I find out that she's not wearing underwear, and she gasps when I capitalize on my discovery.

    I've got this one in the bag, is what I'm thinking.

    Unnnnnfortunately . . .

    Things are kind of hazy. Between the swirling lights, the hypnotic bass rhythms, the lust screaming its way out of every pore of my body, and of course, all the unaccounted-for alcohol I've drunk in the past hour or so, I'm not really completely "with it" right now. So I don't immediately recognize the woman screaming at me at the top of her lungs as my recent ex-girlfriend Traci.

    When I finally get my bearings, and when her tirade (of which I understood not one word) finally stops, I find only enough marbles left in my bag to say, "Whaa?"

    And she blurps out something like, "You fucker, five days! Five days, and you're already with someone else! Or were you fucking her the whole time we were dating?" She takes this opportunity to look over at lovely, lovely Alicia. "Don't love him!" she screams. "Don't fuck him! He'll fuck up your life, just like he fucked up mine!"

    This kind of histrionic bullshit is exactly why I dumped her in the first place. That, and there's only so many times a woman can ask you if you reaaaally love her before you just, kind of, don't anymore.

    Jessica is back from her business with the porcelain pedestals. "What's going on?" she asks.

    Now my ex- is completely freaked. "Two? TWO?!? You fucking PIG!"

    Now's the point where I point out to her that I don't exactly see her moping around her house pining away for me and boo-hooing into a box of Kleenex and a half-gallon of vanilla ice cream. People only come to the Chamber for one thing, and that's to find someone to fuck. I probably shouldn't say that so loud, and right in front of my two prospects for the evening, but then and there I'm that dangerous combination of drunk and pissed off.

    Now shit gets weird, because she hauls back and fists me right in the face. And not a gentle, open handed Hollywood slap, all sound and no fury. No, I rock back into the fucking table and spill drinks all over Jess and Alicia, such is the force of this blow.

    And I feel something warm running down my cheek, and see something red drip-dripping from Traci's hand. I lift a hand to my face, feeling a painful new hole where once was unbroken, smooth as baby's ass skin. I look at my fingers after dabbing in this pain and see red.

    The next few seconds are a blur. If you asked me now, I couldn't tell you what happened. All I know is that I heard a wet pop like a turkey being ripped in half, and when the blur resolved back into a state of semi-normalcy, Traci was on the floor five feet away, wheezing and convulsing with Alicia the aspiring nurse bent over her with all-too-evident concern.

    "She can't breathe!" Alicia screamed.

    Oh, fuck. What the fuck just happened?

    "I can't believe you fucking hit her!" Jessica cries. Of course, she's standing on my right side. So when I turn to her, dazed and holding my right fist in the air like I don't know who it belongs to, like it's some kind of dangerous radioactive thing that would kill me if it could, when I turn to her and look at her, she sees the hole in my face and screams.

    The fucking club goes into chaos. People formerly concerned with little more than alcohol and sex, not necessarily in that order of priority, suddenly become spectators in the Grand Show of personal tragedy going on before them. I, standing erect yet completely out of it, weaving dangerously from side to side over the impact of what I've done, and my ex-, a psycho bitch if ever there was one but no one I'd ever wished actual harm, lying in a heap on the floor and quite possibly dying . . .

    I do the only sensible thing a man in my position could do. I run my fucking ass off. Out the door, down the street, as far as my lungs and legs will carry me. The Chamber, Jessica and Alicia, and most of all Traci . . . I put them all behind me as fast as I fucking can. I'm a madman, barrelling down the street and weaving from side to side, blood streaming from my face in rivulets curved by the wind of my passage down the street at a brisk fourteen miles per hour, by my reckoning.

    Moments later, out of breath and out of energy, I halt behind a Burger King dumpster and lose everything in my stomach. Between the physical effort involved in my mad dash, the war that was going on in my guts anyway for all the mixed liquors and whatnot, and the enormity of the shit that just went down, I retch and retch until I'm sure that I'll soon start ralphing up my own intestines.

    I sit down behind the dumpster. And I start to cry, God help me. I can't believe what I just fucking did. I can't believe I hit her.

    But then, the cold bastard part of my brain reminds me of the gaping hole in my face. I try to reason that one out: what the fuck is that hole doing there, anyway? A ring, or something, must have caught the skin. Jesus. I bet I look like shit right now.

    Selfish bastard, wondering about your looks, while Traci is dying on the floor of that shitty scag of a club. What a shit you are. You're going to jail, you dick. And you'll deserve every inch Bubba gives you.

    I wander the streets for a while, once I get enough composure to start shuffling feet around. I've no particular destination in mind, I just need to move.

    I get an overwhelming urge to destroy myself. Just drink enough alcohol that they find my well-preserved corpse next to a puddle of my own puke and a broken bottle of Johnny Walker. I know no bar will let me in with a pint of blood on my face, so I walk to the nearest gas station and go into the shit-stench hole excuse of a restroom they have at this Amoco.

    The mirror tells a grim tale: it's not just a simple hole. I've got a gash on my face two inches long, so straight it looks like an incision. And I remember that diamonds are supposed to be the hardest shit in existence, and that they use them to drill great holes in the rocks of the earth, and my face tells me that if diamonds can cut through rock, then just look what they do to the face of a piece of shit like yourself.

    I clean up as best I can. Most of the bleeding is already crusted over. I'll have a scar to mark the occasion, if I survive the night. Which I've no intention of doing. Oh, no, none.

    Amoco doesn't have nearly the resources for my purposes. Albertson's is where it's at. I stagger into the store, the bright fluorescents burning into my soul, my only purpose in life the freezer section where my ticket out is.

    Nah, I'm not really going to drink myself to death. I don't even think it's possible for me to do so, anyway. But if I can escape from this fucked-up night in any way, I will. So I grab a twelve-pack of MGD, sure to put me under if I drink it fast enough.

    I have to wait around in this echoing palace of consumerism for like hours it seems before anyone deigns to check me out. Some fat girl with an overly-friendly visage for one in the morning. She checks me out while she checks me out, if you catch me. I purposefully turn to the right so she can get a good look at the bruised fruit left side of my face, and that puts her off the scent right quick.

    I pay for the beer and wander out into the parking lot. And I begin searching for a place to consume my liquid escape.

    Somehow and sometime later, I find myself in a baseball park behind some high school or other. The only light comes from the street lights a hundred yards off, and of course the moon, its face looking down on me and my pathetic bevy of drinks with contempt. As well it should. By the fourth beer, I'm not feeling any better about my situation.

    Midway through the eighth, I hear footsteps. I whirl around, thinking, Oh fuck, cheezit the cops! -but no. It's a woman. A willowy whisp of a woman with a dancer's figure. I can't see or make out any of her features. She may as well be a black hole cut out of the night, some dark shade come to claim me for the bullshit I've done in my life, especially tonight.

    "Who are you?" I ask.

    She laughs. "I'm Erica."

    She sits down next to me, among the bleachers and the empty bottles. "Got one of those for me?"

    I grunt noncommittally, in a way that humans for millions of years have known to interpret as, "Sure, I don't give a fuck one way or the other. Hey, whoa, yeah."

    She cracks open the beer and takes a long swig. "Nice night."

    I laugh, the sad, sick laugh of a damned man. "Yeah."

    I look over at her, trying to get a glimpse of her face-

    -I jerk awake. It's daylight out, and I have no fucking clue where I am. I'm in a bed of some sort, that much I can tell. Mussed sheets.

    I've got the hangover from hell. The abrupt sitting up I did upon waking in this unfamiliar land did no favors for my pain. Eleven thousand sadistic midgets are dancing in my skull, sledgehammers working with a rhythmic thud, thud, thud . . .

    The pain in my cheek is pretty incredible. Not nearly enough to mask the pain in my head, just a dance partner for the midgets. Fucking ouch.

    And then-

    Oh shit-

    In the bed next to me is a naked woman, and I have no idea who it is. I look over the edge of the bed and see used condoms, handcuffs, discarded bits of clothing . . .

    Oh fuck! Oh fuck fuck fuck!

    She stirs and wakes. She turns over-

    Well, shit on me. At least she's attractive. But still-

    She blinks away sleep, smiles as she stretches. "Mmmmmmm . . ." she says as she stretches. At the end of her stretch, arms go around me, and I suddenly feel very, very uncomfortable.

    "How are you feeling?" she asks.

    Fuck. "My head hurts. And my cheek."

    She smiles and slowly, methodically kisses my forehead, then my cheek. I wince at the contact with my cheek, but she seems not to notice.

    She smiles at me. "Last night was . . . wow."

    I do my best to fake a smile, but it must have come out all wrong, because she asks the question that I'd been dreading since I first saw her lying next to me:

    "Was it good for you?"

    Oh, fucking goddammit.

    For some reason, I could not lie to this girl. I tried, God help me, I really did. But it came out all fucked up. I was like, "Ummm, well, yeah, of course. I mean, yeah!"

    She gets all suspicious at this point. "Wait, what's going on? Are you saying that it wasn't good? Is that what you're saying?"

    Fuck. "Nnnooo . . ."

    "Then what's going on?" she asks.

    "Nothing, everything's cool, um, umm . . ." I want to say her name, but O fucking shit, I draw a complete blank. I know she told me, even before I blacked out, but that info is straight gone from my head.

    This woman is nothing if not quick on the uptake. "What the fuck is going on? Say my name! Say my name!" she growls, narrowing her eyes dangerously.

    Ah, fuck me. It's not like I can even stall for time on a question like that.

    Bite the bullet, you sad fucker.

    "I don't remember."

    Now this is apparently the wrong answer. I know this because the next forty-five seconds are a blur of heavy shit being hurled at my throbbing head, screamed and sobbed obscenities, and me being chased naked through the house of a kitchen-knife-wielding and very pissed off naked woman. Dodging around furniture and walls, running through the house . . . screaming like a little girl, I am. My ankle folds at one point and I plunge headlong into her trashcan, sending shit flying everywhere, then get back on my feet and high-speed hobble back to her room.

    I leap on the other side of her bed and hold a pillow up for protection, because it's all I can do at this point. Apparently, the site of me curled up in this pathetic position is enough to temporarily sate her rage, because she drops the knife and says, "Get your shit and get the fuck out. I never want to see you again."

    I start to say "I'm sorry-"

    "GET THE FUCK OUT!!!" she screams.

    So moments later, I'm pulling on my clothes on her front lawn, hobbling down the street on my suddenly bad ankle, cheek stinging with the wind, head throbbing from my hangover. And at this point I remember Traci, and the myriad of other shit that went down last night, and I start to wig out again.

    I call the hospital and ask if anyone by her name has been admitted, and if so what their condition is. I get a confused voice on the other end of the phone that says no, no one by that name was admitted here. Are you okay? Which only confuses me as well.

    I call the police and ask them if they had a report of a woman being attacked at the Chamber last night. They, confused, tell me that no, nothing strange happened at the Chamber last night, and who is this?

    I'm confused as all fucking hell-

    When suddenly I remember:

    I didn't hit Traci at all, though I thought really long and hard about it. The whole thing played out so vivid, I could almost swear it'd actually happened that way-

    But no, I'd just left the club without a word. And after that- a blur.

    I vaguely remember the Amoco, the Albertson's, the baseball field. Meeting her-

    Oh fuck!

    And I finally wake up enough to realize my ultimate, ULTIMATE fuckup, and I suddenly know why Erica, yes that's her name, Erica, oh fuck, why she fucking freaked like that.

    Oh Christ, it's all coming back to me now, oh fuck, all of it-

    Because all that shit, all of it: Ben and Jenny, Homey the Clown, Jessica and Alicia, Traci and the fist, the Amoco, the Albertson's, the baseball field . . . all of it . . .

    Fuck me. That was last Friday!