UNITED

I think you’ve had it backwards all this time. You wanted to enter history. Wrong approach, Leon. What you really want is out.

—Don DeLillo, Libra

Where does all the time go?  It seems like just yesterday I was out on the patio sipping a Bloody and noshing on designer tacos with my business manager, Juan Perez. After hashing out our plans for the next six months—Algiers, Minsk, Ho Chi Minh City—we were discussing the finer points of Pierre Boulle and all those damn dirty apes. 

The sun was shining, Stained Class was on the turntable, and the kitty cats were dry-humping in the dirt. We were even talking about going on a tandem juice fast, just for the fuck of it. Life was good. Real good.

And now?  My business manager is in Men’s Central for public urination while jaywalking, and I’m hitchhiking through East Dogdick, Nevada, with all my belongings stuffed into a triple-XL Cannibal Corpse longsleeve tied to a hockey stick. I’ve got a screaming headache, three loose teeth and some kind of skin thing happening on the inside of my left elbow. I don’t know, a rash or something. But way grosser, like I’ve got a bad feeling insects might be living under my skin, making babies and defecating and so forth. Also, I’m on drugs.

But I remember my business manager’s arrest vividly. We were crossing Grand Avenue—against the light, but well within the confines of the crosswalk—when he decided to blow a piss in the middle of the street. I’m talking this is downtown Los Angeles. In broad daylight. After like 300 beers. And of course a cop car pulls around the corner mid-deluge and blocks traffic like this is the crime of the century and the entire neighborhood should be shut down immediately and we better call in a helicopter in case this dude runs for it.

“Okay, buddy. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but put your hands behind your back.”

“Can I put it away first?”

“Negative.”

“Seriously?”

They hauled him away with his pecker hanging out of his zipper like a sad, drunken turkey neck. This was Friday afternoon, which means a mandatory weekend in the can. Just think of all the fun he’s having now. Staring at the ceiling. Taking a dump in front of 20 of his closest friends. Avoiding eye contact.

Do you mind if I smoke while you fuck me?

Do you mind if I snore while you fuck me?

How did I end up in Nevada?  I took a bus. After my business manager’s arrest I was so distraught that I went home to take a nap. And, okay, feed the cats. When I woke up, I decided that the best way to show solidarity with my incarcerated confidante was to live life to the fullest and do a few of his favorite things. So I went out and got a mani-pedi. I bought a pair of white jeans, the most expensive ones I could find. I ate three cheeseburgers at three different overpriced “gastropubs.”  I went to the titty bar and spent about 200 bucks in just over an hour. On the way home, I stopped at Mickey D’s for a 20-piece nugget and spent the rest of the night reading conspiracy-theory books and jacking off.

It’s how he would have wanted it. 

This bullshit originally appeared in the June 2013 issue of Decibel magazine.