A Random Bender in Seattle
I was bored, not knowing what to do with my time, so I settled down in my bus and read Oscar Zeta Costa’s “Autobiography of a Brown buffalo”, a great book by the Chicano lawyer who gained fame through representing and carousing with Hunter S. Thompson. The overall effect of the book on me was to create an overwhelming urge to drink.
I decided to head to downtown Seattle and see what I could see. I thought bus fare was a buck and a quarter and asked a woman at a Pony Express Postal Service if she could give me change for a dollar. She refused She nearly spit at me as she belched out “ I don’t give change!” She said it like she was saying “I don’t suck strangers cocks.” As if I were asking the old white cow to give me a blowjob. I just wanted change for a buck. The cab driver at the counter looked as shocked as I felt at her reaction. She must have thought I was going to go play some demented video games or visit the peepshows.
I got change at a Mexican restaurant. The Mexican lady was nice about it.The cabbie came out of Pony Express and asked me if I still needed change.Turns out I didn’t need the quarters until later when I visited the Peep Shows on First Avenue and played some demented video games at Wizards of the Coast because bus fare was just a $1. Why had I thought it was $1.25.
I caught a bus to the U-district and made sure to get a transfer. Bus transfers are such fantastic things. Useful for an all day trip around the city and all for a measly dollar! I was good and drunk when I got on the bus. A tall black man in a short white coat sat next to me. He broke bus etiquette by holding out his hand. “Hi. I’m Tim.” I knew something was coming after that.
“I used to go to church to pick up pussy,” he told me. “I used to come home with these nervous, prudish girls white girls and just fuck em. But then I got sucked into the religion.”
This was where I thought the pitch would come. He was going to tell me about God. “I became a Christian and a cult in California. It was run by a Hollywood agent named Christopher who came to Seattle to scout talent. Man, that guy used to fuck us all with his big cock. I even let him fuck me!”
Maybe this was a gay pickup. I was too drunk to be bothered by his weird confession, but I liked the lesson. He had joined a church to get fucked and then gotten fucked. I made a mental note to my self to stay away from religious girls. Next up when Tim got off the bus (with no solicitation at all, by the way, just the odd confession) was a crack whore in torn fishnet stockings and a silver dress.She too, sat next to me and broke bus etiquette.
“This is a crazy fucking bus,” she whispered. “All the people that ride this bus are fucking nuts!”
She smiled big gnarly tooth crackwhore smile. “That’s why we’re both here, right?”
Maybe they smelled the booze on me. I laughed anyway. We both laughed. “I’m Mary Jane.”
Not a surprising name but I had thought she’d be Twinkie for some reason.
Behind us were two big black guys. They were laughing and joking with each other. Telling stories. In front of us was a short white guy, and a large fat Indian woman with a tiny red bindi on her giant fat face.
My new friend, Mary Jane the crack whore, got off the bus with me and grabbed my arm. “I’ll buy you a beer,” she said. I hadn’t seen that coming.
We wandered into Earl’s on the Avenue. Earl’s is a sports bar. Mary Jane bought me a beer. Next to us a very drunk red faced guy was arguing with a priest – both sitting at the bar. “God damn” and “Dammit to hell” were the only phrases I caught. Mary Jane and I were cracking up. No pun intended.
Mary Jane had a wine spritzer which is a perfect cheap whore drink and I had a Pabst Blue Ribbon which is a perfect drink for a cheap whore to buy you. We moved to a table when I bought the next round. I was hammered. I decided to piss on the floor, under the table. I thought I could do it without getting up. I unzipped and pissed.
“What the fuck?” Apparently, I got some on Mary Jane. The sound of my stream of piss hitting the brass table legs made a musical sound that caused the priest and his drunken friend to turn around. Mary Jane, much to her credit, started singing “Like a Virgin” to cover up the sound once she’d figured out what I was doing. We giggled together as a yellow stream wound its way across the uneven bar floor.
We moved to another table and the foul mouthed guy from the bar came and joined us. He was on the bottom end of a thirty-day bender and he kept popping xanex and putting them back with full glasses of red wine. 46-years-old and proudly told us he had never worked a day in his life because he had a trust fund. A fucking trustafarian.
“I got a DUI last year,” he told us. “I fucking worked the system though. I got off with two weeks of intense relapse prevention instead of two years of treatment. It was my third one.” He seemed proud of it. “I laugh every time I drink a beer. I’m a fucking alcoholic, what the hell else am I supposed to do?”
“I’m a whore,” Mary Jane said, which didn’t surprise anyone. “I used to have a pussy made of gold. These days, maybe it’s made of nickel though.”
“You ain’t that bad,” Nate said. He wasn’t a nice man, so he was obviously hammered.
“I can make any man come in less than ten minutes,” Mary Jane said. “I still got that going for me.”
The trustafarian bought the rounds after that. He was actually chatting her up.
I was ready to go. I used my transfer to catch a bus to 1st Avenue. At Pike Place Market I heard two little English boys talking with their babysitter “Rose, it must be nice to not have to go to school and be able to sit around and do whatever you want all day” the smaller of the two said to her, to which the other replied “Not me, I want an education, I don’t want to have to sit on the street and beg people for money saying “Please give me money because I need a prostitute.”
I swear. That was what they said. I heard it.
I dropped a dollar into a bum’s guitar case as he played some old timey bluegrass. It made me feel good – so I gave him a buck. I spent 50 cents in a peep show, but couldn’t really focus on the girl behind the glass. Maybe I spent more than fifty cents…I don’t remember.
The next thing I knew, I was in a Bingo Hall.
I screamed out “Bingo!” as the numbers on my card danced in front of me. None of the oldsters were amused. My last number came up on the screen but the caller hadn’t called it yet. I screamed out “Bingo!!” again and the woman next to me yelled. Keep going, “He doesn’t have it!”
“But all my numbers are covered,” I said.
“He’s got to call the number before you can say Bingo. Those are the rules.” More dirty looks from the serious Bingo players. The paymaster grudgingly laid $40 in front of me after checking my card very carefully.
I still had the $40 when I got home. I passed out on the floor. I woke up in a puddle of wine and Chinese food. I’d forgotten about Chinese food. It came back to me suddenly. I started to wish I’d never read anything by Oscar Zeta Acosta. .
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