Putting the Mean Back in Meaningless (Part 2)

They told me it was BYOB. So because it's what Jesus would do, I secured the last bottle of merlot from my last trip to the continent along with a huge corkscrew bottle opener concealed in my beltline like a weapon. I jammed the wine in my front pocket and wandered around like it was perfectly normal, daring anyone to question my reasoning.

We were greeted at the balcony by Chris after passing an unconscious hippy with a plastic rubbish container bound around his neck, dripping vomit from his chin and looking ready to be tossed curbside for a morning pickup. The sharpie marking on his hand read, "don't ever do this again, it could have been much worse. -CC"

In a t-shirt and tie he hugged me with obvious love, demanding to know where I had been and babbling on about another 80s party. I told him I'd been hiding from lawyers in Nogales Mexico for obvious reasons. But never mind, here I was now full of righteous anger with a bottle of red wine that I would either open when I was seized by inspiration, or use as a weapon. At this point it didn't matter. It would be hard to resist tossing it down to street level unopened just to see the explosion.

Chris' tie and t-shirt set off one of Alvarez' people immediately like a police siren in a bat cave. That sort of unkempt metrosexuality was more than the redneck could handle in one gulp at the first onset of a Friday evening. But I told him not to worry about it. Shut up and blend in, or someone would surely find the means to toss him to the street where the urchins would empty his pockets and make off into the night with his slippers. The metrosexuals were as ruthless as any gang and always waiting to make an example of an enemy.

"But he's gay!" the boy spat at me, his lips blubbering with cottonmouth terror and pure ignorance.

I slapped him hard across the lips twice. Left and right with grim determination that I would only have to make this point once. "What do you mean by that? You're upset that he's limiting himself to one sexual preference? Unlike you, so obviously highly evolved in your own bisexuality?"

"But I'm not-"

I growled at him from my gut in complete frustration, pulling the corkscrew from my pants and ready to spear him in the hand and uncork a metacarpal when Chris grabbed me from behind, wanting to know the story behind the wine in my pants and leading me off to the dark side of the roof.

"Look who's here," he said to Christa who I had evidently not seen since December. She was busy with a crowd of Japanese businessmen obviously negotiating some kind of merger for Jewish/Japanese control of Oahu.

I let her have it for her newly bleached blonde hair, recalling the last time I'd seen her when she couldn't stop berating me for shaving my own skull. And told her she ought remedy it at once before some right wing WASP coalition descended with barbed-wire bats and chainsaws and tried to adopt her as their poster child. I wasn't here for the fashion show, but fair was fair. I never claimed to take criticism gracefully. An eye for an eye.

Evidently it was someones birthday, and the boss had given her the keys to the office. I surveyed the roof area looking to the left just as someone made contact with a huge pi�ata shaped like a dogfish. The pink eyesore exploded right in front of me like a roach bomb and the air was snuffed in a deluge of flying vials of designer drugs and pez dispensers. The frenzied mob scrambled like eels from all corners of the deck squealing in feverish glee hoping to get their hands on the worst of it, trampling awful holes in the illiterate along the way and not bothering to pause for things like good form, safety or reason.

I dodged several waves of crazies and reached the parapet wall, wiping someone else�s blood from my forehead where I spotted a known and foul import/export tycoon camped out nursing a surgically enhanced hip, with a black steel cane and what I assumed was his wife. I slapped him on the shoulder and shook arms demanding to know her name. Right away his eyes went glassy and evasive at the question and she giggled and blushed.

"You son of a bitch!" I barked, grabbing him by the collar insistent to know where were his wife and kids, how much had he paid for this Thai prostitute, and what the hell was he doing pinned to this wall. The hooker howled in protest but the tycoon grinned at her, shaking his head to let me go. I told him it was a wise choice to keep her silent, if I could remember in the morning I would report him directly to the right people, after all I told him, our children went to the same school. I wandered off to the toilet listening to him asking a small crowd if I had any children and how did I afford to send them to Waldorf?

"He does it by extorting guys like you!" I heard someone shout. It was Jack the Mormon who had arrived late. As I turned I saw him grab the hooker in his huge sunburned meat hooks and plant a kiss on her face, harshly smearing her lipstick then lumbering off in the other direction, leaving her clueless and forlorn.

In the toilet my phone rang. It was someone from the student loan society named Guido. He wanted to know my current address. I laughed at him asking if he had the right number but drunk beyond reason and incapable of real deceit. He assured me that I just confirmed my own identity and where could he send my statements. I told him it would be paid in full at once, grabbing a business card from one of the architects from the rubbish. I had him send a one-time payment option directly to Smith Street and we would take care of this thing right now. In the heart of my lie, I noticed I had inadvertently pissed down my own leg from crotch to boot heel like a fool. I cursed absently and kicked through the crowd of women assembled at the door.

Alvarez was waiting, sobering up and sipping at some kind of carbonated pink cup. I confessed my dilemma to him at once. He laughed and dumped the drink in my crotch, drawing an immediate gasp from the crowd. I believe for effect, he slapped me in the face and folded his arms. It was quick thinking though and I appreciate that. Problem solved.

Somewhere on the dance floor Major Tom (Coming Home) by Peter Schilling started playing. I decided this must be the moment to open the wine before it bore a hole in my pocket. I demanded Alvarez sing the chorus with me but he looked at me with all the grim understanding of seven dwarves in the way of an avalanche and turned the other way in shame.

I struck out for the center of the commotion, jamming the corkscrew in and opening the bottle in under 3 seconds, a personal best. No one near me understood the reason for the wine. Was it new years or some obscure eastern holiday? But they went along like dumb beasts, and while they nodded, dancing along stupefied, I topped off their mai tais with several ounces of vintage red until the smart ones started shrinking back in horror and I was forced to toast myself straight from the bottle.

Gagging on the rotten wine I made a mad rush to the ledge where the Tycoon was still camped out immobile with his prostitute. I barked a horrible garbled Japanese battle cry and smashed the bottle over his surgically repaired hip, showering us all with wine. He crumpled to the floor at once, grimacing in pain asking why had this happened to him as his hooker pounced on him, a weeping and jumbled mass of misplaced emotions.

"I hate that question. Just accept your fate." He writhed on the ground more in humiliation than actual pain but I felt a little bit bad for him. "Hmm. For the record I just wanted to see if you could move off that wall. You make a horrible wallflower by the way, but a fine step-stool for anyone brave enough to think they can fly."

The last words he could get out before surrendering to a monsoon of wretched sobbing was something along the lines of how I smelled like urine. But I cut him off with a wave, telling him to take his hussy home and go feed his kids.

Because I've seen it all, it's all bad, and it never ever gets better. We learned this the hard way making a dumb pilgrimage to Lulu's for nachos and heartburn where I passed out at the table only to be woke by my phone at an empty table where they had left me. A cruel joke to play on such a good and humble person especially this far past last call. I staggered outside where the pack had assembled, laughing like hyenas at my expense. Jack the Mormon crammed me into his car like cream filling and returned me to Chinatown where I collapsed in the $5 parking, a prisoner of Friday night and my own horrible filth.