By Tenzin McGrupp © 2002, 2010
I sit in Bryant Park and I watch all the Five o'clock People scurry off, released from their cubicles they rush away down Fifth Avenue, dozens, hundreds, thousands. A flashback of a scene from the Matrix. I am alive as I will ever be, yet everything around me is as distant as far as Saturn's moon are from the Oregon Coast, my detachment thrills and disturbs my child like eyes.
I could feel a rare summer breeze. I could hear the background cacophony, conflicting city sounds echoing and dancing, horns honking from Al Qaeda supporting cabbies, bus breaks screeching to a halt, express delivery trucks beeping as they back up. A snot nosed child laughs, then a pigeon shits on a tourist from Nebraska.
The traffic light changes. A swarmy mass of pedestrians converge while I am pushed as far out onto the fringe as I have ever been. My tense back up against the sharp wall of reality. I sigh with the thoughts of futility and irresponsibility dancing in front of me with intimidating ghosts of old memories and forgotten dreams.
The minutes accumulate and I stare out into nowhere. Something real and vibrant, traits I sought out incessantly, now limped it's way down the street into a vacant lot, scattered with broken glass from cheap wine bottles and burnt out light bulbs.
The illumination vanished and the walk down the street became fabricated. The three minute jaunt from the lobby to the subway whispers hollow wood sounds that seduce the walking cliches that walk right in front of me. Their insidious conformity shines in their visionless eyeballs.
A suit on a cell phone almost ran over a group of trust fund yentas with freshly painted manicured toes, the unoriginal ones carrying Gucci handbags with tiny yapping poodles given French sounding names by their malcontent owners. Tourists in shorts and 'I LOVE NY' T-shirts quickly pull out their digital cameras, their disposable cameras, their video cameras. Their desire to photograph a scene which now makes me nauseous.
A black homeless man jingles his Starbucks cup filled with pennies and dimes and a Canadian Quarter. A sad fat woman munches down on a Big Mac, as she gripped her crumpled McD's bag. A hungry construction worker sidesteps a woman with a baby carriage so he can get home in time to eat leftovers. A thirsty alcoholic shakes his way through the crowd, his mind wanders to the afterthoughts of a double scotch. An addictive smoker chain smokes in front of a group of retarded school children. An old man carries a briefcase that looked like the one my father used to have. A distressed Ukrainian taxi driver considers running over a group of pedestrians in the crosswalk. A gay man hums a show tune. A young woman glides by and I catch a whiff of her perfume, and it reminds me of an old girlfriend, that used to wear her hair in a French Twist when she painted. A content man whistles a song. An insane red head hopes that I'll notice that she's not wearing a bra and underwear. A lonely secretary contemplates suicide. She doesn't because she has no one to look after her three cats. A cynic sits and thinks out loud. Pigeons fly overhead, some may or may not carry the Monkeypox. A pickpocket slithers away with someone's $22.00 Metrocard, only to be hit by a speeding Mercedes from Connecticut. An angry man gets out of his convertible and spits on the thief.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer originally from New York City.
Showing posts with label Tenzin McGrupp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tenzin McGrupp. Show all posts
August 05, 2010
May 02, 2010
In Between Fighting Souls
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2010
Doomsday is near as soon as the politicians go honest.
Bad thoughts are more dangerous than
Wards, dungeons, and prisons.
While most of you sleep,
I lie awake and yawn.
My thoughts about the subtle flecks
Of emerald green in her sea blue eyes
Casually drifted away towards clarity.
My quagmire of a life resembles
A wretched Fox sitcom,
A Shakespeare play,
A black and white Woody Allen film.
Except that Joey Buttafucco is the lead actor
And stands forty-five pounds overweight.
My unspoken silence is a sullen, dangerous,
Listless lunacy that used to turn women on,
Those who where attracted to the
Orgasmic gentleness of crafty madness.
Cunning souls can be as scintillating as a slice of
Junior's cheesecake when digested with a
Side plate of untamed confusion.
Respect the scorns of time and
Rebuke the erroneous laws of nature, then
Perhaps my quiet dismay will disappear to
A titillating place where no traveler returns.
I mock the lost ones,
Cowards of them all.
Clueless ampersands as they stand on a crowded
Subway platform in between two genuine haughty artisans.
I've sweat heavily in my weary life,
Reflections of my ghostly inaction set against a
Riveted backdrop of flames and plumes of smoke.
Without a tongue, I speak with a bedeviled spirit
Ignoring the weakness that I could cure with a
Drop of arsenic,
Indeed, a foul murder just mere moments
Away from ambitious persons who dare to be more than
Blips on the radar screen.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer originally from New York City.
Doomsday is near as soon as the politicians go honest.
Bad thoughts are more dangerous than
Wards, dungeons, and prisons.
While most of you sleep,
I lie awake and yawn.
My thoughts about the subtle flecks
Of emerald green in her sea blue eyes
Casually drifted away towards clarity.
My quagmire of a life resembles
A wretched Fox sitcom,
A Shakespeare play,
A black and white Woody Allen film.
Except that Joey Buttafucco is the lead actor
And stands forty-five pounds overweight.
My unspoken silence is a sullen, dangerous,
Listless lunacy that used to turn women on,
Those who where attracted to the
Orgasmic gentleness of crafty madness.
Cunning souls can be as scintillating as a slice of
Junior's cheesecake when digested with a
Side plate of untamed confusion.
Respect the scorns of time and
Rebuke the erroneous laws of nature, then
Perhaps my quiet dismay will disappear to
A titillating place where no traveler returns.
I mock the lost ones,
Cowards of them all.
Clueless ampersands as they stand on a crowded
Subway platform in between two genuine haughty artisans.
I've sweat heavily in my weary life,
Reflections of my ghostly inaction set against a
Riveted backdrop of flames and plumes of smoke.
Without a tongue, I speak with a bedeviled spirit
Ignoring the weakness that I could cure with a
Drop of arsenic,
Indeed, a foul murder just mere moments
Away from ambitious persons who dare to be more than
Blips on the radar screen.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer originally from New York City.
April 03, 2010
Hip-Cat Jargon
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2010
I hailed a taxi driven by a guy with an authentic Cajun accent. He told me how he hitched across America on old Route 66 when he was my age.
"I was almost killed by a serial killer, but escaped at the last possible second," was the one line that stuck out the most.
The Cajun cabbie fixed motorcycles in his spare time, but never read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I suggested that he read the book but scoffed at the notion because he said he knew everything possible about motorcycles. I didn't argue. By the time we got to the airport, he had convinced me that I was foolish to fly to California because I'd miss out on all of the experiences of being a young man on the road.
"Sell your ticket and hitch a ride," he told me. "Like the real adventurers used to do."
I enjoyed the complexities of the big cities and the hustle and bustle instead of gazing out across the prairies at the hazy clouds listening to the thunder claps miles away. Since I was looking for a different path in life, my scattered visions of modest possibilities convinced me to drive out West and seek out adventures, just like Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, except without the gay sex and all that jive talk and hip-cat jargon.
I got a refund for my ticket minus the $100 change fee. I hopped aboard one of the free airport shuttle to the closest car rental agency and I secured a one-way rental. $300 for the week. Would it take me a week? Maybe more? I had no idea. I'd probably want to make a couple of spontaneous stops along the way. My new life in California would have to wait a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks. Who knows, maybe I wouldn't even end up there at all. My entire plans changed with one conversation.
"You miss out on all of that living when you're up in the air flying," the cabbie's words echoed throughout my brain.
In On the Road, Kerouac wrote about his sojourns navigating through America while he only ate apple pie with mountains of vanilla ice cream. I could eat that every day, although I preferred cherry pie with chocolate ice cream.
Kerouac and his raspy nature loved the dismal wilderness and simplicities of Middle America -- fantastic bloom of spring flowers, the anthology of life on the edge of fading towns, suspicious long walks by unfaithful wives, pool hall hustlers robbing johns in no-tell motels, country folk with warm backyards, endless railroad tracks without any trains, raging torrents draining out into the Mighty Mississippi, stained spittoons in saloons, tragic gestures of the death of rural America, rickety gates on termite-infested picket fences, nurses with horrible bedside manners, mud-caked pickup trucks full of tools, elm trees with lovers' initials carved into the trunk, the delegation of the seekers of the holy ghost, the outlaws in shambles riding that frantic rush of homemade speed, saw dust soaking up the swill of the lushes, chubby bankers stuffing their faces with Omaha steaks, and queers in purple scarves belting out Madonna songs at karaoke bars trying to drown out the dull roar of laid off factory workers wondering what to do when their unemployment runs out.
Time to get living.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer originally from New York City.
I hailed a taxi driven by a guy with an authentic Cajun accent. He told me how he hitched across America on old Route 66 when he was my age.
"I was almost killed by a serial killer, but escaped at the last possible second," was the one line that stuck out the most.
The Cajun cabbie fixed motorcycles in his spare time, but never read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I suggested that he read the book but scoffed at the notion because he said he knew everything possible about motorcycles. I didn't argue. By the time we got to the airport, he had convinced me that I was foolish to fly to California because I'd miss out on all of the experiences of being a young man on the road.
"Sell your ticket and hitch a ride," he told me. "Like the real adventurers used to do."
I enjoyed the complexities of the big cities and the hustle and bustle instead of gazing out across the prairies at the hazy clouds listening to the thunder claps miles away. Since I was looking for a different path in life, my scattered visions of modest possibilities convinced me to drive out West and seek out adventures, just like Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac, except without the gay sex and all that jive talk and hip-cat jargon.
I got a refund for my ticket minus the $100 change fee. I hopped aboard one of the free airport shuttle to the closest car rental agency and I secured a one-way rental. $300 for the week. Would it take me a week? Maybe more? I had no idea. I'd probably want to make a couple of spontaneous stops along the way. My new life in California would have to wait a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks. Who knows, maybe I wouldn't even end up there at all. My entire plans changed with one conversation.
"You miss out on all of that living when you're up in the air flying," the cabbie's words echoed throughout my brain.
In On the Road, Kerouac wrote about his sojourns navigating through America while he only ate apple pie with mountains of vanilla ice cream. I could eat that every day, although I preferred cherry pie with chocolate ice cream.
Kerouac and his raspy nature loved the dismal wilderness and simplicities of Middle America -- fantastic bloom of spring flowers, the anthology of life on the edge of fading towns, suspicious long walks by unfaithful wives, pool hall hustlers robbing johns in no-tell motels, country folk with warm backyards, endless railroad tracks without any trains, raging torrents draining out into the Mighty Mississippi, stained spittoons in saloons, tragic gestures of the death of rural America, rickety gates on termite-infested picket fences, nurses with horrible bedside manners, mud-caked pickup trucks full of tools, elm trees with lovers' initials carved into the trunk, the delegation of the seekers of the holy ghost, the outlaws in shambles riding that frantic rush of homemade speed, saw dust soaking up the swill of the lushes, chubby bankers stuffing their faces with Omaha steaks, and queers in purple scarves belting out Madonna songs at karaoke bars trying to drown out the dull roar of laid off factory workers wondering what to do when their unemployment runs out.
Time to get living.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer originally from New York City.
February 03, 2010
China Rider
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2010
"We're gonna drive all night," I said.
The first thing we needed to do was gas up. Most gas stations sell maps, both locally and regionally. We had nothing. No GPS. Not even a clue how to get out West. But I figured we'd start out with what was in front of us.
I found two maps. The first was a western Pennsylvania map that included a bit of West Virginia. The other map was a Mid-Eastern United States map that covered Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. I bought the second map. Those states was not our target destination but it helped to know what was along the way. I rarely worked outside of the West Coast. Plenty of NoCal to SoCal runs, at least two or three times a week. Sometimes I made runs over to Reno or down to Santa Fe, and occasionally a run to Las Vegas.
We didn't have much in the way of provisions, like sandwiches and beer. Since we were going to be driving all night, it seemed stupid to drink and drive. Not that either of us are adverse to such behavior. But we were technically working and on a tight schedule. We'd have to drive from Pittsburgh all the way to Denver without stopping unless it's for gas or to take a shit. We had a piss jar that would be used when the time came. The optimal plan would be to schedule shit breaks and/or meals during gas stops. Since I didn't have to shit, I stocked up on apple juice, cigarettes, and a bag of M & Ms. I usually roll my own cigarettes, but since I chain smoke when I drive, I knew it would be a pain in the ass to roll my own while driving. Shit, Earl had problems pulling his dick out of his underwear to piss, let alone try to roll me a cigarette in a moving car. Besides, the way we planned it out, we'd drive two or three hour shifts. The other person would take a nap then and we'd change back and forth until we got to Denver.
Earl and I just dropped off a couple of duffel bags in Philadelphia. We didn't ask what was in the bags. I had to assume it was powder. Heroin. Maybe cocaine. Meth perhaps. I didn't ask. That's why I always got hired. I never asked questions and never missed the deadline. We did the Chicago to Philly run for one of Uncle Louie's people that he knew from his time in the joint. For that favor, we got paid $2,000 and a suite in Atlantic City. We blew all the money in one night and got stuck in AC trying to figure out how the hell we were going to get back to California. That's when Earl called up Uncle Louie and asked him if he needed any drivers. Just so happened that one of Uncle Louie's clients needed safe delivery of a package from South Jersey to Pittsburgh. Earl didn't ask about the contents of the suitcase. I didn't want to know either, especially after I took one look at those serious-looking goombas. Cold-blooded killing motherfuckers. We kept our mouths shut and got the hell out of there. All I cared about is that it paid us $500, or enough gas money to get us to Colorado because Uncle Louie had something for us to transport from Denver to San Francisco. Once we finally made it safely home to San Francisco, we'd be flush with a taste of the product and a fat bonus for a prompt delivery. But all of that hinged on if we could get to Denver is less than 24 hours. Otherwise, someone else would get the run and we'd miss out on an easy payday.
I didn't trust Earl. It's not his fault. His ex-wife screwed him up pretty good and he'd often lose concentration. He'd let his mind wander about what his ex was doing at that precise moment. Sex. Drugs. Watching TV. Whatever. He'd always get depressed and fall into a funk. Sometimes it would him take hours to snap out of it. On the drive from Chicago to Philly, he got all twisted up and abruptly pulled over and call her. I had to do the rest of the drive by myself while he constantly texted her. I told the fuckin' moron that the cops can trace us whenever we called known acquaintances. He knew Uncle Louie's rules -- no calls from cellphones -- and he was breaking them. Earl promised that he wouldn't pull any of that bullshit, as long as I didn't rat him out. But I didn't trust him. This bitch put one helluva hex on Earl and he was strong enough to fight it off. If possible, I was going to ditch him in Denver and finish the run out West by myself.
I figure that I'd let Earl take the first shift. Three hours to Toledo as long as there wasn't any construction. The interstates were the fastest way to get where we were going. We were in a rush but didn't want to do anything stupid like get stopped for speeding. As far as I knew, Earl had a clean license. That's why he was a driver. Never arrested. Which shocked me because Earl was such a fuck up with the ladies. He was a decorated vet, so I was told. First Gulf War. Something like that. He killed a few of Saddam's Republican Guard with his bare hands, yet he can't handle his chick problems. All I know is that as long as he focused on the road in front of him, then we were fine. Once those thoughts of the ex seeped into his brain... then we were fucked.
We weren't riding dirty. I made Earl get rid of the few roaches in the ash tray. I told him to hold whatever he was carrying. Sometimes drivers used meth or coke to stay awake. He told me he was out of weed and only had a couple of poppers. Aside from that, the car was clean.
We left Pittsburgh before 9pm and rolled past Toledo around midnight. We found one of those combination rest stops/fast food joints on I-80. We grabbed burgers and fries and switched drivers. My goal was to at least drive to Gary, Indiana before we switched again. About an hour outside of Toledo, I got sick of the cold fries and tossed them out the window. Earl protested and said he would have ate them, no matter how cold. I told him tough shit and to do a better job with the radio. We were in no man's land and it was tough to find a decent classic rock station that came in clear.
I ate two Ritalins to stave off any tiredness. I only ate those pills when I drove. My sister's kid had a problem with paying attention in school. I told her that he was normal because that's what kids do -- they have short attention spans and would rather run around outside instead of sitting inside and listening to some dipshit teacher recite the alphabet to a classroom full of illegal aliens and retards. No wonder he's bored to death. I told my nephew that his teachers and parents were lying to him and trying to turn him into a soulless zombie. He believes me. He's a good kid. He knows what's up. He knows the system is full of shit. He was on to them way before we had that important chat. He agreed to pretend to take the Ritalin every day and stash the pills for me. In return, I would buy him video games. I needed the Ritalin to keep me awake when I drove and he needed to have an adolescence that was chemical-free and not become a lifelong slave to pill manufactured by evil pharmaceutical companies.
I made it to Gary in record time. The armpit of Indiana. I drafted behind an SUV the entire way and didn't see any cops. We only stopped to gas up and piss. Earl said that he could drive, but I was feeling good and wanted to keep driving while it was still dark. I figure I'd let him deal with the morning rush once we cleared Illinois.
After arguing for a half hour about the fundamental difference between country and western music, we sat in silence for most of Illinois. It was dark. I couldn't see the endless plains which was the bonus of driving through boring and flat part of the state in the middle of the night. We weren't missing anything. I sort of wished that I had satellite radio, but then I remember what Uncle Louie told us about the DEA being able to trace you through your receivers. Under no circumstances did he want you to drive with a GPS, satellite radio, or even a cell phone. He wanted you to go old school and only use payphones to make calls. He let me use a burner phone. I usually brought three with me. One for the way. One for way back. And one for an emergency. That's what the mob guys in New York do. Al Qaeda too. I bought the burners for cash in Chinatown. Most of the time I used it once then tossed it. That was the best way to prevent that you weren't being traced. It was pricey, but a small price to pay in order to be safe.
I couldn't believe the time we were making. We passed Davenport by sunrise and cruised into Iowa. We stopped to switch drivers at McDonalds. Earl ran inside for Egg McMuffins. He ate all three within the first fifteen miles of his shift. He must have been hungry. Me? The Ritalin killed my appetite. I drank apple juice and smoked cigarettes. That was it. We breezed through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and now Iowa making excellent time. We had to be in Denver by 9pm local time, but still had 800 plus miles to go. If my math was right, we could probably do that in 13 hours if we continued to drive straight through. That gave us a two hour cushion to factor in traffic and stops for gas and food, oh and just in case Earl had one of those ex-wife freakouts.
Earl boasted that he could get all the way cross Iowa without stopping. We had enough gas and I bet him $100 that he couldn't do it. He was up for the challenge and was going strong until we got halfway between Des Moines and Omaha and got caught up in a slow down due to a wreck. He had to shit. Badly. I had used the piss jar twice and emptied it out both times, but we didn't have anything for Earl to shit in. I told him that's what he gets for eating three Egg McMuffins. He was determined to win the bet and didn't stop once traffic picked up again. Earl held his urge to shit for almost another hour. We were 23 miles east of Council Bluffs when Earl finally gave up and pulled over to the side of the road. He didn't even bother pulling into a gas station. He dropped his pants and shit his brains out for five minutes. Luckily we had plenty of napkins from McDonalds so he had something to wipe his ass with. Once he finished his bowel movement, he told me that it was my turn to drive.
We had about 550 miles to go. That would take us about eight hours. It wasn't even noon and we picked up an extra hour with the time zone change once we passed into Mountain Time. We were still ahead of schedule. I drove for four hours before we had to stop and gas up in North Platte in the middle of nowhere special Nebraska. We switched drivers and I considered stopping at the Denny's to eat cherry pie, but I knew we still had four more hours of driving ahead of us.
Once we crossed the Colorado border, Earl said, "Awwww shit!"
I knew that he saw lights. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. He slowed down.
"I wasn't speeding... much. Awwwww. Shit!"
A state trooper blew by us and pulled over a speeding Mercedes instead. That was our only close call. By that point, the Ritalin wasn't working anymore. The scare sobered me up. I convinced Earl to drive the rest of the way. I took a nap and wanted to make sure he was dead tired by the time we got to Denver.
We reached the city limits a couple of hours ahead of schedule and celebrated with steaks and beer. I knew a diner on Colfax that served cheap steak and eggs. We chowed down and waited to meet up with one of Uncle Louie's people. They would call us and we'd have to drive to the pick up spot. In the meantime, we had to sit... and wait. Ninety minutes passed. Earl spent most of the time calling his ex on a pay phone in the diner. I knew I couldn't trust him.
I finally got the call. We were supposed to pick up a batch of LSD from one of Gaya's people, but I lied to Earl and told him that Uncle Louie was sending us to meet up with the German. Earl hated the German even though he knew that Uncle Louie and the German were old friends from the Brotherhood days. The German used to be a Nazi scientist, at least that's the rumor that Earl told me. Earl was half-Jewish and hated Nazis for a good reason. However, the German was too young to be a Nazi. What I did know, was that the German was a renown chemist and one of Uncle Louie's trusted cooks. I told Earl that the German whipped up a fresh batch of crank for Uncle Louie, so we had to buy the German two bottles of Jagermeister as a nice gesture. Sort of a thank you gift. Earl grumbled. I told him if he went inside the liquor store, then I'd deal with the German. He agreed.
I stopped at a liquor store and handed Earl the money. I sent him inside for the Jager and waited ninety seconds before I drove off. I had a good five to ten minute head start before Earl figured out what happened. I knew that Uncle Louie would understand why I ditched Earl. The delivery of Gaya's liquid sunshine was far more important than getting busted due to Earl's stupidity and compulsion to stalk his ex-wife.
The pick up from Gaya's people was quick and seamless. When I got back on the highway, I popped two Ritalin. I had almost 1,300 miles to drive to get to San Francisco from Colorado. That would take me 20 hours if I didn't stop.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer originally from New York City.
"We're gonna drive all night," I said.
The first thing we needed to do was gas up. Most gas stations sell maps, both locally and regionally. We had nothing. No GPS. Not even a clue how to get out West. But I figured we'd start out with what was in front of us.
I found two maps. The first was a western Pennsylvania map that included a bit of West Virginia. The other map was a Mid-Eastern United States map that covered Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. I bought the second map. Those states was not our target destination but it helped to know what was along the way. I rarely worked outside of the West Coast. Plenty of NoCal to SoCal runs, at least two or three times a week. Sometimes I made runs over to Reno or down to Santa Fe, and occasionally a run to Las Vegas.
We didn't have much in the way of provisions, like sandwiches and beer. Since we were going to be driving all night, it seemed stupid to drink and drive. Not that either of us are adverse to such behavior. But we were technically working and on a tight schedule. We'd have to drive from Pittsburgh all the way to Denver without stopping unless it's for gas or to take a shit. We had a piss jar that would be used when the time came. The optimal plan would be to schedule shit breaks and/or meals during gas stops. Since I didn't have to shit, I stocked up on apple juice, cigarettes, and a bag of M & Ms. I usually roll my own cigarettes, but since I chain smoke when I drive, I knew it would be a pain in the ass to roll my own while driving. Shit, Earl had problems pulling his dick out of his underwear to piss, let alone try to roll me a cigarette in a moving car. Besides, the way we planned it out, we'd drive two or three hour shifts. The other person would take a nap then and we'd change back and forth until we got to Denver.
Earl and I just dropped off a couple of duffel bags in Philadelphia. We didn't ask what was in the bags. I had to assume it was powder. Heroin. Maybe cocaine. Meth perhaps. I didn't ask. That's why I always got hired. I never asked questions and never missed the deadline. We did the Chicago to Philly run for one of Uncle Louie's people that he knew from his time in the joint. For that favor, we got paid $2,000 and a suite in Atlantic City. We blew all the money in one night and got stuck in AC trying to figure out how the hell we were going to get back to California. That's when Earl called up Uncle Louie and asked him if he needed any drivers. Just so happened that one of Uncle Louie's clients needed safe delivery of a package from South Jersey to Pittsburgh. Earl didn't ask about the contents of the suitcase. I didn't want to know either, especially after I took one look at those serious-looking goombas. Cold-blooded killing motherfuckers. We kept our mouths shut and got the hell out of there. All I cared about is that it paid us $500, or enough gas money to get us to Colorado because Uncle Louie had something for us to transport from Denver to San Francisco. Once we finally made it safely home to San Francisco, we'd be flush with a taste of the product and a fat bonus for a prompt delivery. But all of that hinged on if we could get to Denver is less than 24 hours. Otherwise, someone else would get the run and we'd miss out on an easy payday.
I didn't trust Earl. It's not his fault. His ex-wife screwed him up pretty good and he'd often lose concentration. He'd let his mind wander about what his ex was doing at that precise moment. Sex. Drugs. Watching TV. Whatever. He'd always get depressed and fall into a funk. Sometimes it would him take hours to snap out of it. On the drive from Chicago to Philly, he got all twisted up and abruptly pulled over and call her. I had to do the rest of the drive by myself while he constantly texted her. I told the fuckin' moron that the cops can trace us whenever we called known acquaintances. He knew Uncle Louie's rules -- no calls from cellphones -- and he was breaking them. Earl promised that he wouldn't pull any of that bullshit, as long as I didn't rat him out. But I didn't trust him. This bitch put one helluva hex on Earl and he was strong enough to fight it off. If possible, I was going to ditch him in Denver and finish the run out West by myself.
I figure that I'd let Earl take the first shift. Three hours to Toledo as long as there wasn't any construction. The interstates were the fastest way to get where we were going. We were in a rush but didn't want to do anything stupid like get stopped for speeding. As far as I knew, Earl had a clean license. That's why he was a driver. Never arrested. Which shocked me because Earl was such a fuck up with the ladies. He was a decorated vet, so I was told. First Gulf War. Something like that. He killed a few of Saddam's Republican Guard with his bare hands, yet he can't handle his chick problems. All I know is that as long as he focused on the road in front of him, then we were fine. Once those thoughts of the ex seeped into his brain... then we were fucked.
We weren't riding dirty. I made Earl get rid of the few roaches in the ash tray. I told him to hold whatever he was carrying. Sometimes drivers used meth or coke to stay awake. He told me he was out of weed and only had a couple of poppers. Aside from that, the car was clean.
We left Pittsburgh before 9pm and rolled past Toledo around midnight. We found one of those combination rest stops/fast food joints on I-80. We grabbed burgers and fries and switched drivers. My goal was to at least drive to Gary, Indiana before we switched again. About an hour outside of Toledo, I got sick of the cold fries and tossed them out the window. Earl protested and said he would have ate them, no matter how cold. I told him tough shit and to do a better job with the radio. We were in no man's land and it was tough to find a decent classic rock station that came in clear.
I ate two Ritalins to stave off any tiredness. I only ate those pills when I drove. My sister's kid had a problem with paying attention in school. I told her that he was normal because that's what kids do -- they have short attention spans and would rather run around outside instead of sitting inside and listening to some dipshit teacher recite the alphabet to a classroom full of illegal aliens and retards. No wonder he's bored to death. I told my nephew that his teachers and parents were lying to him and trying to turn him into a soulless zombie. He believes me. He's a good kid. He knows what's up. He knows the system is full of shit. He was on to them way before we had that important chat. He agreed to pretend to take the Ritalin every day and stash the pills for me. In return, I would buy him video games. I needed the Ritalin to keep me awake when I drove and he needed to have an adolescence that was chemical-free and not become a lifelong slave to pill manufactured by evil pharmaceutical companies.
I made it to Gary in record time. The armpit of Indiana. I drafted behind an SUV the entire way and didn't see any cops. We only stopped to gas up and piss. Earl said that he could drive, but I was feeling good and wanted to keep driving while it was still dark. I figure I'd let him deal with the morning rush once we cleared Illinois.
After arguing for a half hour about the fundamental difference between country and western music, we sat in silence for most of Illinois. It was dark. I couldn't see the endless plains which was the bonus of driving through boring and flat part of the state in the middle of the night. We weren't missing anything. I sort of wished that I had satellite radio, but then I remember what Uncle Louie told us about the DEA being able to trace you through your receivers. Under no circumstances did he want you to drive with a GPS, satellite radio, or even a cell phone. He wanted you to go old school and only use payphones to make calls. He let me use a burner phone. I usually brought three with me. One for the way. One for way back. And one for an emergency. That's what the mob guys in New York do. Al Qaeda too. I bought the burners for cash in Chinatown. Most of the time I used it once then tossed it. That was the best way to prevent that you weren't being traced. It was pricey, but a small price to pay in order to be safe.
I couldn't believe the time we were making. We passed Davenport by sunrise and cruised into Iowa. We stopped to switch drivers at McDonalds. Earl ran inside for Egg McMuffins. He ate all three within the first fifteen miles of his shift. He must have been hungry. Me? The Ritalin killed my appetite. I drank apple juice and smoked cigarettes. That was it. We breezed through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and now Iowa making excellent time. We had to be in Denver by 9pm local time, but still had 800 plus miles to go. If my math was right, we could probably do that in 13 hours if we continued to drive straight through. That gave us a two hour cushion to factor in traffic and stops for gas and food, oh and just in case Earl had one of those ex-wife freakouts.
Earl boasted that he could get all the way cross Iowa without stopping. We had enough gas and I bet him $100 that he couldn't do it. He was up for the challenge and was going strong until we got halfway between Des Moines and Omaha and got caught up in a slow down due to a wreck. He had to shit. Badly. I had used the piss jar twice and emptied it out both times, but we didn't have anything for Earl to shit in. I told him that's what he gets for eating three Egg McMuffins. He was determined to win the bet and didn't stop once traffic picked up again. Earl held his urge to shit for almost another hour. We were 23 miles east of Council Bluffs when Earl finally gave up and pulled over to the side of the road. He didn't even bother pulling into a gas station. He dropped his pants and shit his brains out for five minutes. Luckily we had plenty of napkins from McDonalds so he had something to wipe his ass with. Once he finished his bowel movement, he told me that it was my turn to drive.
We had about 550 miles to go. That would take us about eight hours. It wasn't even noon and we picked up an extra hour with the time zone change once we passed into Mountain Time. We were still ahead of schedule. I drove for four hours before we had to stop and gas up in North Platte in the middle of nowhere special Nebraska. We switched drivers and I considered stopping at the Denny's to eat cherry pie, but I knew we still had four more hours of driving ahead of us.
Once we crossed the Colorado border, Earl said, "Awwww shit!"
I knew that he saw lights. Red. Blue. Red. Blue. He slowed down.
"I wasn't speeding... much. Awwwww. Shit!"
A state trooper blew by us and pulled over a speeding Mercedes instead. That was our only close call. By that point, the Ritalin wasn't working anymore. The scare sobered me up. I convinced Earl to drive the rest of the way. I took a nap and wanted to make sure he was dead tired by the time we got to Denver.
We reached the city limits a couple of hours ahead of schedule and celebrated with steaks and beer. I knew a diner on Colfax that served cheap steak and eggs. We chowed down and waited to meet up with one of Uncle Louie's people. They would call us and we'd have to drive to the pick up spot. In the meantime, we had to sit... and wait. Ninety minutes passed. Earl spent most of the time calling his ex on a pay phone in the diner. I knew I couldn't trust him.
I finally got the call. We were supposed to pick up a batch of LSD from one of Gaya's people, but I lied to Earl and told him that Uncle Louie was sending us to meet up with the German. Earl hated the German even though he knew that Uncle Louie and the German were old friends from the Brotherhood days. The German used to be a Nazi scientist, at least that's the rumor that Earl told me. Earl was half-Jewish and hated Nazis for a good reason. However, the German was too young to be a Nazi. What I did know, was that the German was a renown chemist and one of Uncle Louie's trusted cooks. I told Earl that the German whipped up a fresh batch of crank for Uncle Louie, so we had to buy the German two bottles of Jagermeister as a nice gesture. Sort of a thank you gift. Earl grumbled. I told him if he went inside the liquor store, then I'd deal with the German. He agreed.
I stopped at a liquor store and handed Earl the money. I sent him inside for the Jager and waited ninety seconds before I drove off. I had a good five to ten minute head start before Earl figured out what happened. I knew that Uncle Louie would understand why I ditched Earl. The delivery of Gaya's liquid sunshine was far more important than getting busted due to Earl's stupidity and compulsion to stalk his ex-wife.
The pick up from Gaya's people was quick and seamless. When I got back on the highway, I popped two Ritalin. I had almost 1,300 miles to drive to get to San Francisco from Colorado. That would take me 20 hours if I didn't stop.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer originally from New York City.
June 05, 2008
Truckin' Flashback: Fukuoka, Phishy City
y Tenzin McGrupp © 2002
14 June 2000
Holly walks through our car on the bullet train with a grin on her face. “I lost my boyfriend,” as she shrugs her shoulders, “He got out at the last stop, went to go buy something on the platform, and the doors closed on him, and the train left without him.” Poor Holly, her boyfriend got off and never made it back on the bullet train to Fukuoka.
Our train arrives at Hakata Station in Fukuoka exactly one minute early than scheduled. Fukuoka is Japan’s largest and most populated southern city. A majestic port city, it is closer to Seoul, South Korea than it is to Tokyo, which gives Fukuoka a more international flavor, especially with a fair amount of American military around, the locals are more used to GAI-JIN. Señor and I walk through the busy Hakata Station and we find a crowd gathered around a stage with a live musical performance by a band and these tiny kimono wearing dancers. As we pause to check out the scene, I am aroused by the flavorful smells of baked goods. I turn around frantically, trying to seek out the origin of the smells, the aromas, the tantalizing treats that are making my already hungry stomach growl for more attention.
I find the bakery a few steps away called TANDOR. Upon entering the bakery you are walk among rows of baskets of baked goods, all various sizes and shapes, of fresh baked breads and pasties and cookies. The large brick bread making ovens are located right behind the check out counter, where all the workers are tiny Japanese girls who wear the most adorable white and red uniforms and lovely white gloves cover their tiny hands. They greet you with big smiles and sing a nice happy song to you as the customers pay. I have no idea what they are saying but it makes me smile anyway. I buy a loaf of garlic bread, a few rolls, a couple of chocolate doughnuts and three containers of orange juice. The portions are so small in Japan, that I have to buy almost double the amount of food that is presented to me. I lug my overstuffed backpack and my baked goods to the counter and the check out girl smiles and is overly enthusiastic about my sale. I bow my head and say, “Arigato!” And she smiles back and bows.
Señor and I walk out of Hakata Station and find our way to the subway, as I catch my first glimpse of downtown Fukuoka. It’s very sunny and warm, and this is the most sun I have seen since I arrived in Japan a week ago. I bask it up for a few moments before we walk into the subway and take a ride to the area of town where Phish is playing. We were suggested a hotel by the information desk at the train station, and like every city we traveled to on this trip, we never once made a reservation, we would just show up and take our chances finding lodging. Risky, but that's how we were doing this trip. As we exited off subway and started walking in the wrong direction, I stop to ask a local where our hotel was, he tells me I am going the wrong way and gives me the correct directions in perfect English! The Fukuoka locals are definitely more friendly down here in Sourthern Japan, and alot more willing to help with directions, as compared to the serious brush offs we were getting in Tokyo.
The hotel is overbooked, we unhappily find out upon arrival. But the manager recommends a cheaper place just a few blocks away. He even calls to make reservations for us! As I make small talk with the nice fellow, I find out that he’s not only well versed in English, but fluent in French as well. He worked at the Japanese Embassy in Paris for a decade, and I chat with him briefly in French, before thanking him and making our way to the next hotel. I’m pleasantly surprised by the friendly, curious energy and the laid back, Sunny California attitude of the locals. I’m really enjoying the vibe in Fukuoka and start to hope the vibe finds it’s way to the show later that night.
We check into our small rooms, shown to us by a very small and round elderly lady at the front desk who had been expecting us. I drop off my stuff, write a few lines, take a quick shower, make a quick inventory of my narcotics, Yen and tickets and head back to Hakata Station to meet Beano. He had separated from us in Tokyo and went to check out the mountains for a few days and skipped the Nagoya show. We are all excited to reunite, and when we finally find him, we’re all pumped and start to focus on Phish! On our way back to the hotel, Beano tells us stories about staying in a RYOKIN, a Japanese style hotel and a funny story about his bus ride from the hotel to the JR train station. We drop off his gear and head right for DRUM LOGOS, just a few blocks away, the venue where Phish should be starting up in less than 2 hours.
For the first time all trip, I kinda get us lost and Beano and Señor don’t have a clue because they have instinctively been following me the entire trip. I didn't want to tell them we were lost, so I just keep walking. I’m starting to feel the beginning effects of the shroomies I took before I left the hotel, and I hope I don't start booming too early, while I'm lost. I’m very confused because the street signs are all in Japanese and the map I have isn't very good, so I finally stop on one corner and confess to Beano and Señor, “Guys, I can’t find the venue.”
As they look at the map, I notice Mike Gordon (Bass player for Phish) walking down the adjacent street, and I quickly say, “Well we can always follow Mike to the show.”
And I pull them off in that direction. We keep following Mike about 20 yards behind, until I see a few phisheads loitering about, then I know I’m going in the right direction, onward to Drum Logos. In Japan, they let you into the show by ticket number so we had low numbers and scurry right inside and get a good spot for the general admission show. It's larger than the last venue in Nagoya, but smaller than the Zepp in Tokyo. Señor meets two Deadheads living in Southern Japan and it's their only show of the tour. I meet a couple of kids from the Navy (they barely shaved) and they ask me for some LSD. I tell them I’m not holding and they explain to me how they get drug tested, but not for acid. Interesting. Good to know my tax dollars are being spent on random psychedelic experimentation for our soldiers throughout the world. G.I. Joe keeps asking me if they are going to play WILSON and I keep telling him (and showing him the setlist from the Nagoya show) that they played it last night.
I notice this show might have the most Americans in attendance. Most of them I haven't seen on tour. They is a lot of military personnel and Yanks working in Southern Japan which accounted for the new American faces. Zobo is with Aki and Kimi and they find us and sit down. I also see Dan and Marie from San Francisco and all three girls named Heather on tour, as the lights go down and the boys start out dark and I fire up the hashish and toke with Beano.
Carini is one of my favorite Phish songs to hear and I love the frantic and dark Phish to begin the night. Cities was fun because Zobo was making me laugh the entire song and Trey changed some of the lyrics to: “It's only the noodles... It's only the noodles” Gumbo was well placed and unexpected, and Heavy Things is a Japanese favorite and makes the crowd go a little crazy. A edgy Split Open & Melt closed the heavy, contumacious and dark set. When the lights came back on, Beano and I made a beeline for the Beer Line as I scribbled down the setlist:
SET 1: CARINI, The Curtain, CITIES, GUMBO, LLAMA, FEE, HEAVY THINGS, Split Open & Melt
A Japanese kid in line behind me recognizes me and says with a warm smile, “Tokyo show?”
I nod and agree, trying to remember who he was then I recall he had been wearing a Dog Faced Boy T-shirt at the Zepp show, and I then I exclaim, “Zepp Tokyo. Great show! Seiko!”
He gets excited and laughs and I chuckle as I am slowly becoming a celebrity, being recognized left and right by random Japanese tour rats. We make our back to Señor and he’s smoking with Aki and Kimi and they are getting very shitty. I turn to Aki and say, “2001.”
His eyes get all wide, “Really?”
“Yeah bro, it will make my whole tour.”
Aki agrees and passes me some homegrown Osaka cannabis. Before the second set starts I put the vibe out. 2001, 2001, 2001. I keep thinking it aloud. 2001, 2001...
The set begins with Back on the Train > Twist > Jam. The Jam was a very odd spacey jam which then segued into Walk Away. Our lost member of Phish, Page was smoking during this tune. I almost forgot about Page this tour. He was just chilling back, grooving and waiting for his moment. Slowly Walk Away jammed into 2001! I turned to Aki and he just nods his head and gives me a huge smile! I nod back and get lost into the spacey grooves and loops of 2001. Phish peaked at this point and closed the set to the satisfied and funked out crowd. The Twist was 18 minutes long! And I finally got my Japan 2001.
Trey walked onsatge for the encore and someone yelled, “SLEEP”. Trey laughs and jokingly says, “We haven’t played that this tour. We were going to play another song, but we’ll play that. Two songs. We’ll play two songs!” as he holds up two fingers.
The crowd erupts as Phish accommodated a rare request from a Japhan in the front row. I’m not a big fan of Coil, but I focus on Page the entire song, and just watch him play for the last 15 minutes of the show. Page is on a different planet tonight and he does me right, as I finish up jotting down the setlist:
Set 2: Back on the Train > TWIST AROUND > JAM > Walk Away > 2001
Encore: Sleep > COIL
Happy, smiling, elated, over joyed, full of the Fukuoka vibe, we wander out of Drum Logos, only to find Asselope Greg selling one of his Antelope T-shirts.
“McGrupp, buy one. $20,” he yells to me.
“I’ll buy two of those overpriced shirts for 2000 Yen,” as he pretends to ignore my offer, “Well fuck off!" What an Asselope!
We look for a veggie friendly restaurant to eat in for Beano and settle for a Yakatori place on the corner. Every time someone enters and leaves the restaurant, the chef bangs a drum that is located above the bar and yells something out loud. It’s too funny. I can’t get enough of it. I’m booming just a little bit, so I still have the giggles, and I don't know what to eat so I just point to stuff on the grill and they serve it to me. Great eats, which are basically just veggies, chicken, beef and stuff grilled on sticks. Nothing special, but it sets us all right. We have a couple of beers and I’m not tripping anymore as my previous altered state enters into drunk mode. We leave the restaurant, as they bang the drum, and we laugh and take pictures before we stumble off towards our hotel.
At night the local restaurants, bars and hotels leave their recyclable goods on the street for a pick up and Señor and I find a few empty kegs and we start tossing them around and about the empty street. I pick up one over my head as Señor takes a picture. Yeah typical stupid, drunk Americans, doing stupid stuff overseas. We are what we are, drunk wandering the streets of Fukuoka at night.
Editor's Note: This was the first ever submission to Truckin' which I originally wrote under my pen name Tenzin McGrupp.
14 June 2000
Holly walks through our car on the bullet train with a grin on her face. “I lost my boyfriend,” as she shrugs her shoulders, “He got out at the last stop, went to go buy something on the platform, and the doors closed on him, and the train left without him.” Poor Holly, her boyfriend got off and never made it back on the bullet train to Fukuoka.
Our train arrives at Hakata Station in Fukuoka exactly one minute early than scheduled. Fukuoka is Japan’s largest and most populated southern city. A majestic port city, it is closer to Seoul, South Korea than it is to Tokyo, which gives Fukuoka a more international flavor, especially with a fair amount of American military around, the locals are more used to GAI-JIN. Señor and I walk through the busy Hakata Station and we find a crowd gathered around a stage with a live musical performance by a band and these tiny kimono wearing dancers. As we pause to check out the scene, I am aroused by the flavorful smells of baked goods. I turn around frantically, trying to seek out the origin of the smells, the aromas, the tantalizing treats that are making my already hungry stomach growl for more attention.
I find the bakery a few steps away called TANDOR. Upon entering the bakery you are walk among rows of baskets of baked goods, all various sizes and shapes, of fresh baked breads and pasties and cookies. The large brick bread making ovens are located right behind the check out counter, where all the workers are tiny Japanese girls who wear the most adorable white and red uniforms and lovely white gloves cover their tiny hands. They greet you with big smiles and sing a nice happy song to you as the customers pay. I have no idea what they are saying but it makes me smile anyway. I buy a loaf of garlic bread, a few rolls, a couple of chocolate doughnuts and three containers of orange juice. The portions are so small in Japan, that I have to buy almost double the amount of food that is presented to me. I lug my overstuffed backpack and my baked goods to the counter and the check out girl smiles and is overly enthusiastic about my sale. I bow my head and say, “Arigato!” And she smiles back and bows.
Señor and I walk out of Hakata Station and find our way to the subway, as I catch my first glimpse of downtown Fukuoka. It’s very sunny and warm, and this is the most sun I have seen since I arrived in Japan a week ago. I bask it up for a few moments before we walk into the subway and take a ride to the area of town where Phish is playing. We were suggested a hotel by the information desk at the train station, and like every city we traveled to on this trip, we never once made a reservation, we would just show up and take our chances finding lodging. Risky, but that's how we were doing this trip. As we exited off subway and started walking in the wrong direction, I stop to ask a local where our hotel was, he tells me I am going the wrong way and gives me the correct directions in perfect English! The Fukuoka locals are definitely more friendly down here in Sourthern Japan, and alot more willing to help with directions, as compared to the serious brush offs we were getting in Tokyo.
The hotel is overbooked, we unhappily find out upon arrival. But the manager recommends a cheaper place just a few blocks away. He even calls to make reservations for us! As I make small talk with the nice fellow, I find out that he’s not only well versed in English, but fluent in French as well. He worked at the Japanese Embassy in Paris for a decade, and I chat with him briefly in French, before thanking him and making our way to the next hotel. I’m pleasantly surprised by the friendly, curious energy and the laid back, Sunny California attitude of the locals. I’m really enjoying the vibe in Fukuoka and start to hope the vibe finds it’s way to the show later that night.
We check into our small rooms, shown to us by a very small and round elderly lady at the front desk who had been expecting us. I drop off my stuff, write a few lines, take a quick shower, make a quick inventory of my narcotics, Yen and tickets and head back to Hakata Station to meet Beano. He had separated from us in Tokyo and went to check out the mountains for a few days and skipped the Nagoya show. We are all excited to reunite, and when we finally find him, we’re all pumped and start to focus on Phish! On our way back to the hotel, Beano tells us stories about staying in a RYOKIN, a Japanese style hotel and a funny story about his bus ride from the hotel to the JR train station. We drop off his gear and head right for DRUM LOGOS, just a few blocks away, the venue where Phish should be starting up in less than 2 hours.
For the first time all trip, I kinda get us lost and Beano and Señor don’t have a clue because they have instinctively been following me the entire trip. I didn't want to tell them we were lost, so I just keep walking. I’m starting to feel the beginning effects of the shroomies I took before I left the hotel, and I hope I don't start booming too early, while I'm lost. I’m very confused because the street signs are all in Japanese and the map I have isn't very good, so I finally stop on one corner and confess to Beano and Señor, “Guys, I can’t find the venue.”
As they look at the map, I notice Mike Gordon (Bass player for Phish) walking down the adjacent street, and I quickly say, “Well we can always follow Mike to the show.”
And I pull them off in that direction. We keep following Mike about 20 yards behind, until I see a few phisheads loitering about, then I know I’m going in the right direction, onward to Drum Logos. In Japan, they let you into the show by ticket number so we had low numbers and scurry right inside and get a good spot for the general admission show. It's larger than the last venue in Nagoya, but smaller than the Zepp in Tokyo. Señor meets two Deadheads living in Southern Japan and it's their only show of the tour. I meet a couple of kids from the Navy (they barely shaved) and they ask me for some LSD. I tell them I’m not holding and they explain to me how they get drug tested, but not for acid. Interesting. Good to know my tax dollars are being spent on random psychedelic experimentation for our soldiers throughout the world. G.I. Joe keeps asking me if they are going to play WILSON and I keep telling him (and showing him the setlist from the Nagoya show) that they played it last night.
I notice this show might have the most Americans in attendance. Most of them I haven't seen on tour. They is a lot of military personnel and Yanks working in Southern Japan which accounted for the new American faces. Zobo is with Aki and Kimi and they find us and sit down. I also see Dan and Marie from San Francisco and all three girls named Heather on tour, as the lights go down and the boys start out dark and I fire up the hashish and toke with Beano.
Carini is one of my favorite Phish songs to hear and I love the frantic and dark Phish to begin the night. Cities was fun because Zobo was making me laugh the entire song and Trey changed some of the lyrics to: “It's only the noodles... It's only the noodles” Gumbo was well placed and unexpected, and Heavy Things is a Japanese favorite and makes the crowd go a little crazy. A edgy Split Open & Melt closed the heavy, contumacious and dark set. When the lights came back on, Beano and I made a beeline for the Beer Line as I scribbled down the setlist:
SET 1: CARINI, The Curtain, CITIES, GUMBO, LLAMA, FEE, HEAVY THINGS, Split Open & Melt
A Japanese kid in line behind me recognizes me and says with a warm smile, “Tokyo show?”
I nod and agree, trying to remember who he was then I recall he had been wearing a Dog Faced Boy T-shirt at the Zepp show, and I then I exclaim, “Zepp Tokyo. Great show! Seiko!”
He gets excited and laughs and I chuckle as I am slowly becoming a celebrity, being recognized left and right by random Japanese tour rats. We make our back to Señor and he’s smoking with Aki and Kimi and they are getting very shitty. I turn to Aki and say, “2001.”
His eyes get all wide, “Really?”
“Yeah bro, it will make my whole tour.”
Aki agrees and passes me some homegrown Osaka cannabis. Before the second set starts I put the vibe out. 2001, 2001, 2001. I keep thinking it aloud. 2001, 2001...
The set begins with Back on the Train > Twist > Jam. The Jam was a very odd spacey jam which then segued into Walk Away. Our lost member of Phish, Page was smoking during this tune. I almost forgot about Page this tour. He was just chilling back, grooving and waiting for his moment. Slowly Walk Away jammed into 2001! I turned to Aki and he just nods his head and gives me a huge smile! I nod back and get lost into the spacey grooves and loops of 2001. Phish peaked at this point and closed the set to the satisfied and funked out crowd. The Twist was 18 minutes long! And I finally got my Japan 2001.
Trey walked onsatge for the encore and someone yelled, “SLEEP”. Trey laughs and jokingly says, “We haven’t played that this tour. We were going to play another song, but we’ll play that. Two songs. We’ll play two songs!” as he holds up two fingers.
The crowd erupts as Phish accommodated a rare request from a Japhan in the front row. I’m not a big fan of Coil, but I focus on Page the entire song, and just watch him play for the last 15 minutes of the show. Page is on a different planet tonight and he does me right, as I finish up jotting down the setlist:
Set 2: Back on the Train > TWIST AROUND > JAM > Walk Away > 2001
Encore: Sleep > COIL
Happy, smiling, elated, over joyed, full of the Fukuoka vibe, we wander out of Drum Logos, only to find Asselope Greg selling one of his Antelope T-shirts.
“McGrupp, buy one. $20,” he yells to me.
“I’ll buy two of those overpriced shirts for 2000 Yen,” as he pretends to ignore my offer, “Well fuck off!" What an Asselope!
We look for a veggie friendly restaurant to eat in for Beano and settle for a Yakatori place on the corner. Every time someone enters and leaves the restaurant, the chef bangs a drum that is located above the bar and yells something out loud. It’s too funny. I can’t get enough of it. I’m booming just a little bit, so I still have the giggles, and I don't know what to eat so I just point to stuff on the grill and they serve it to me. Great eats, which are basically just veggies, chicken, beef and stuff grilled on sticks. Nothing special, but it sets us all right. We have a couple of beers and I’m not tripping anymore as my previous altered state enters into drunk mode. We leave the restaurant, as they bang the drum, and we laugh and take pictures before we stumble off towards our hotel.
At night the local restaurants, bars and hotels leave their recyclable goods on the street for a pick up and Señor and I find a few empty kegs and we start tossing them around and about the empty street. I pick up one over my head as Señor takes a picture. Yeah typical stupid, drunk Americans, doing stupid stuff overseas. We are what we are, drunk wandering the streets of Fukuoka at night.
Editor's Note: This was the first ever submission to Truckin' which I originally wrote under my pen name Tenzin McGrupp.
July 26, 2006
Memories in a Box
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2006
I needed a couple of pictures for a post that I was writing for a article. During my search through my past, I sorted through two banker's boxes filled with pictures dating back from college. During a three hour period, I was bombarded with flashbacks. I was in hundreds of pictures. Some I recall taking and other memories are a blur.
The ones that hit home the most were from the ex-girlfriends. The ones in college seemed a distant memory, but seeing images of the girls and women I dated in my 20s was a lot for me to handle. That was in an age before digital cameras and I have dozens and dozens of those white envelops from the film developing joint filled with old memories.
Sabine was the French artist. We took pictures one afternoon about 10 years ago. I worked on Wall Street at the time, and we were in the middle of the last spurt of our relationship. We dated on and off for a few years and those pictures represented the last time we were happy together. It was the dead of winter and she met me for lunch on Saturday on one of the coldest days of the 1996. She had never seen my office, so I took her upstairs and she finally got a visualization of "the trenches" that I often spoke of. We headed downstairs for lunch and she was bundled up in a thick woolen green hat with a matching scarf as we walked the near empty streets of Lower Manhattan. French women are fanatically infatuated with scarves and the one Sabine wore stood out. I know it was ten years ago, but I'm still awestruck by the vibrations of that shade of green scarf she wore. I can barely recall the contours of her face or what she used to smell like, but that scarf continued to make an impression on me.
We asked a tourist to take our photo as we sat in the square right in front of what used to be the World Trade Center. I also snapped random pics of the Twin Towers. That was a difficult set of photos to get through. Not only did Sabine break my heart and shatter it into several thousand jagged edges, but I was reminded by the horrible acts of 9.11. People jumped from 100 stories up to their death and landed a few spots from where we were happily sitting. I plunged into a pool of sadness and despair after sorting through those pictures of Sabine.
Lene was my roommate in Seattle. She had purple hair, loved Thai food, and listened to indie Seattle bands like the Supersuckers. We starting sleeping with each other, unknown to the entire house of seven other housemates. After midnight, I'd sneak through her window in the basement apartment and escape before sunrise. When I moved back to NYC, she was in the middle of switching jobs. She was a political activist of sorts and took two or three weeks off to drive cross country with me. She made that epic roadtrip where we drove from Seattle through Wyoming and St. Louis then down to New Orleans, Biloxi, Hilton Head, Savannah and DC before reaching NYC. I smiled when I glimpsed at a photo of her collecting seashells in her shoes as we walked along the beach in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Sookie sat on my bed in my old studio plugging away and writing something on her laptop. She had no idea that I took her photo. That one in particular is black and white and ads a timeless quality to. Very few people I have met in my life could ignite the creative spark in me like Sookie did.
The photo of Angela was taken somewhere in California in the parking lot of a Phish show. She was holding up a veggie burrito in tin foil trying to sell it for $3. She spent the morning and rolled her own, hoping to sell enough to earn money to help cover gas expenses. Her hair was tied up in a Librarian's bun and eight or nine piercings were visible on her left ear. I forgot she used to wear so many earings. At the time the photo was taken, I never thought I could be more in love with someone.
Of course there were pictures from epic overseas trips that I took which included following Phish in Japan and going to Iceland with Senor. I had pics from fraternity formals, drives down the Pacific Coast Highway, from my porch in Seattle, and random pics of partying with friends in Brooklyn.
It was an emotional three hours digging through those boxes, opening up old wounds and falling in love again with the life I used to lead. And the places I used to live. And the friends I used to party with. And the women I used to sleep with.
Since I've been living out of my suitcase/backpack for the last 18 months traveling all over, the only material items I have are what I can carry with me... and those are very few. The rest of my life... my past... has been boxed up and tossed in the corner stored with old CDs, books, and paintings. I don't take those boxes of memories on the road with me because it's too much for me to carry. The emotional weight of all those photographs combined would equal forty thousand elephants. No person is strong enough to walk through life with such a cumbersome burden on their shoulders.
It is what is was. The past is the past and does not exist anymore, unless I allow those fleeting memories to linger in the present.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
I needed a couple of pictures for a post that I was writing for a article. During my search through my past, I sorted through two banker's boxes filled with pictures dating back from college. During a three hour period, I was bombarded with flashbacks. I was in hundreds of pictures. Some I recall taking and other memories are a blur.
The ones that hit home the most were from the ex-girlfriends. The ones in college seemed a distant memory, but seeing images of the girls and women I dated in my 20s was a lot for me to handle. That was in an age before digital cameras and I have dozens and dozens of those white envelops from the film developing joint filled with old memories.
Sabine was the French artist. We took pictures one afternoon about 10 years ago. I worked on Wall Street at the time, and we were in the middle of the last spurt of our relationship. We dated on and off for a few years and those pictures represented the last time we were happy together. It was the dead of winter and she met me for lunch on Saturday on one of the coldest days of the 1996. She had never seen my office, so I took her upstairs and she finally got a visualization of "the trenches" that I often spoke of. We headed downstairs for lunch and she was bundled up in a thick woolen green hat with a matching scarf as we walked the near empty streets of Lower Manhattan. French women are fanatically infatuated with scarves and the one Sabine wore stood out. I know it was ten years ago, but I'm still awestruck by the vibrations of that shade of green scarf she wore. I can barely recall the contours of her face or what she used to smell like, but that scarf continued to make an impression on me.
We asked a tourist to take our photo as we sat in the square right in front of what used to be the World Trade Center. I also snapped random pics of the Twin Towers. That was a difficult set of photos to get through. Not only did Sabine break my heart and shatter it into several thousand jagged edges, but I was reminded by the horrible acts of 9.11. People jumped from 100 stories up to their death and landed a few spots from where we were happily sitting. I plunged into a pool of sadness and despair after sorting through those pictures of Sabine.
Lene was my roommate in Seattle. She had purple hair, loved Thai food, and listened to indie Seattle bands like the Supersuckers. We starting sleeping with each other, unknown to the entire house of seven other housemates. After midnight, I'd sneak through her window in the basement apartment and escape before sunrise. When I moved back to NYC, she was in the middle of switching jobs. She was a political activist of sorts and took two or three weeks off to drive cross country with me. She made that epic roadtrip where we drove from Seattle through Wyoming and St. Louis then down to New Orleans, Biloxi, Hilton Head, Savannah and DC before reaching NYC. I smiled when I glimpsed at a photo of her collecting seashells in her shoes as we walked along the beach in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Sookie sat on my bed in my old studio plugging away and writing something on her laptop. She had no idea that I took her photo. That one in particular is black and white and ads a timeless quality to. Very few people I have met in my life could ignite the creative spark in me like Sookie did.
The photo of Angela was taken somewhere in California in the parking lot of a Phish show. She was holding up a veggie burrito in tin foil trying to sell it for $3. She spent the morning and rolled her own, hoping to sell enough to earn money to help cover gas expenses. Her hair was tied up in a Librarian's bun and eight or nine piercings were visible on her left ear. I forgot she used to wear so many earings. At the time the photo was taken, I never thought I could be more in love with someone.
Of course there were pictures from epic overseas trips that I took which included following Phish in Japan and going to Iceland with Senor. I had pics from fraternity formals, drives down the Pacific Coast Highway, from my porch in Seattle, and random pics of partying with friends in Brooklyn.
It was an emotional three hours digging through those boxes, opening up old wounds and falling in love again with the life I used to lead. And the places I used to live. And the friends I used to party with. And the women I used to sleep with.
Since I've been living out of my suitcase/backpack for the last 18 months traveling all over, the only material items I have are what I can carry with me... and those are very few. The rest of my life... my past... has been boxed up and tossed in the corner stored with old CDs, books, and paintings. I don't take those boxes of memories on the road with me because it's too much for me to carry. The emotional weight of all those photographs combined would equal forty thousand elephants. No person is strong enough to walk through life with such a cumbersome burden on their shoulders.
It is what is was. The past is the past and does not exist anymore, unless I allow those fleeting memories to linger in the present.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
June 21, 2006
Late Night Donuts
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2006
"Oh my God, I can't feel my lips," Nicky screamed as we drove past the Laurel Canyon Country Store. "That's some awesome blow."
Good thing she drove up through the hills as Beck blasted on her iPod. We safely navigated the winding Mulholland Drive and drove over to Lake Hollywood. Yeah, there's an actual lake in L.A., the one that was featured in the film Chinatown.
As we drove close to the infamous Hollywood sign landmark, an old hippie woman hitch hiked as she struggled up the hill.
"Gonna stop?" I said.
I goaded Nicky into picking up the sketchy woman who stuck out her thumb out. She wore a purple dress and had on too much Native American jewelry.
"Hell no. She'd probably carjack us and smoke all our weed."
Nicky took me to Kings Road Cafe for brunch. Most of the places you'd eat lunch in L.A. are super crowded and not by people on their lunch hour. Instead, lunches are populated with well-off slackers, trophy wives, out of work actors, and troubled writers. Those are the people who are actually free to sit out on the sidewalk and bullshit about nothing for two hours as they get served overpriced food and semi-decent coffee.
A woman who sat down next to us on the patio looked like Diane Lane. In Hollyweird, you have to check twice because that person who looks like some famous more often than not is someone famous. That instance, it wasn't her. Diane Lane never would had carried around a fake Hermes handbag. After a closer examination of the stitching, Nicky determined it was a knock-off. The real deal goes for $8,000. The Diane Lane look-a-like sipped on passion fruit iced tea and kept a close watch on her fake designer bag.
The meals I had been eating in L.A. were not substantial. Even eating $200 worth of sushi wasn't filling. I've been craving a big meal. They are hard to come by out here. A bagel, a slice of good pizza. Anything.
* * * * *
"You're ruining my life!" Nicky screamed at the old man in the Lexus who cut her off. "Fucking douche bag!"
She did her best to calm down, but it wasn't working. In between puffs of a bowl she continued to berate the horrible L.A. drivers. The funny thing is that she lived in L.A. most of her life and she still grew angry by retarded SUV drivers on cell phones.
We met Joe Speaker and his cousin at 14 Below in Santa Monica, a typical dive bar that featured bands and smelled like spilled beer and patchouli. Despite the trashiness of 14 Below, they booked solid bands from time to time like Leo Nocentilli and Tea Leaf Green. Most of the trendoids in the joint were there to see Supercreep at Midnight. We had to endure the atrocious sounds from two terrible bands before they took the stage. We sat at the bar drinking heavily and watched Joe Speaker teeter between bouts of self-loathing and sheer excitement that he was out in a bar in L.A. and only steps away from sexually lascivious sixteen year olds, who were holding a private party next door.
"Oh my fuckin' God! I went to college with the singer in that band!"
A blonde in a pair of $200 jeans broke into a horrible cover of AC/DC's Shook Me All Night Long as Nicky shook her head. The second band was awful. Their lead singer wore a pink cowboy hat and was at least 45 years old. She looked like Roseanne Barr on trucker's speed and wore spandex pants. They were an 80s cover band and kept playing random songs from Journey. After each song ended, I'd scream, "Play more Journey!"
The Irish bartender was not amused with my cat calls.
"Please don't encourage them," he said with a stern look ready to kick my ass.
Even he'd had enough of their awful renditions of Journey songs. They played two U2 covers, too. Joe Speaker was piss drunk and would shout out curses about his soon-to-be ex-wife.
"She's a fucking liar!" he shrieked at one point drowning out the melodies of the Journey cover band.
The place had a decent amount of female talent. There's always a small percentage of jaw-dropping hotness in the women that populate L.A. Joe Speaker was enamored with one woman sitting at the end of the bar. She looked like Jennifer Connelly and I had to walk up over to her to make sure it wasn't. The rest of the bar was packed with an interesting mix of music industry hipster types and pothead friends of the bands that were playing. One fucktard wore a plaid blazer, designer jeans, and a pair of $400 aviator sunglasses inside while he sipped on a vodka and Red Bull. I wanted to punch him out on principle alone.
Nicky and I swapped turns all night long hitting up the bathroom for a toot or two as we fought through the crowd to get to the bathroom. I was too drunk to drive home, so Nicky took the wheel after we waited ten minutes for valet to bring us the car. On our inebriated drive back home to Beverly Hills, we continued ripping gaggers while Wu Tang Clan's Shame on a Nigga echoed from her car speakers.
"Let's get donuts," I muttered.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
"Oh my God, I can't feel my lips," Nicky screamed as we drove past the Laurel Canyon Country Store. "That's some awesome blow."
Good thing she drove up through the hills as Beck blasted on her iPod. We safely navigated the winding Mulholland Drive and drove over to Lake Hollywood. Yeah, there's an actual lake in L.A., the one that was featured in the film Chinatown.
As we drove close to the infamous Hollywood sign landmark, an old hippie woman hitch hiked as she struggled up the hill.
"Gonna stop?" I said.
I goaded Nicky into picking up the sketchy woman who stuck out her thumb out. She wore a purple dress and had on too much Native American jewelry.
"Hell no. She'd probably carjack us and smoke all our weed."
Nicky took me to Kings Road Cafe for brunch. Most of the places you'd eat lunch in L.A. are super crowded and not by people on their lunch hour. Instead, lunches are populated with well-off slackers, trophy wives, out of work actors, and troubled writers. Those are the people who are actually free to sit out on the sidewalk and bullshit about nothing for two hours as they get served overpriced food and semi-decent coffee.
A woman who sat down next to us on the patio looked like Diane Lane. In Hollyweird, you have to check twice because that person who looks like some famous more often than not is someone famous. That instance, it wasn't her. Diane Lane never would had carried around a fake Hermes handbag. After a closer examination of the stitching, Nicky determined it was a knock-off. The real deal goes for $8,000. The Diane Lane look-a-like sipped on passion fruit iced tea and kept a close watch on her fake designer bag.
The meals I had been eating in L.A. were not substantial. Even eating $200 worth of sushi wasn't filling. I've been craving a big meal. They are hard to come by out here. A bagel, a slice of good pizza. Anything.
"You're ruining my life!" Nicky screamed at the old man in the Lexus who cut her off. "Fucking douche bag!"
She did her best to calm down, but it wasn't working. In between puffs of a bowl she continued to berate the horrible L.A. drivers. The funny thing is that she lived in L.A. most of her life and she still grew angry by retarded SUV drivers on cell phones.
We met Joe Speaker and his cousin at 14 Below in Santa Monica, a typical dive bar that featured bands and smelled like spilled beer and patchouli. Despite the trashiness of 14 Below, they booked solid bands from time to time like Leo Nocentilli and Tea Leaf Green. Most of the trendoids in the joint were there to see Supercreep at Midnight. We had to endure the atrocious sounds from two terrible bands before they took the stage. We sat at the bar drinking heavily and watched Joe Speaker teeter between bouts of self-loathing and sheer excitement that he was out in a bar in L.A. and only steps away from sexually lascivious sixteen year olds, who were holding a private party next door.
"Oh my fuckin' God! I went to college with the singer in that band!"
A blonde in a pair of $200 jeans broke into a horrible cover of AC/DC's Shook Me All Night Long as Nicky shook her head. The second band was awful. Their lead singer wore a pink cowboy hat and was at least 45 years old. She looked like Roseanne Barr on trucker's speed and wore spandex pants. They were an 80s cover band and kept playing random songs from Journey. After each song ended, I'd scream, "Play more Journey!"
The Irish bartender was not amused with my cat calls.
"Please don't encourage them," he said with a stern look ready to kick my ass.
Even he'd had enough of their awful renditions of Journey songs. They played two U2 covers, too. Joe Speaker was piss drunk and would shout out curses about his soon-to-be ex-wife.
"She's a fucking liar!" he shrieked at one point drowning out the melodies of the Journey cover band.
The place had a decent amount of female talent. There's always a small percentage of jaw-dropping hotness in the women that populate L.A. Joe Speaker was enamored with one woman sitting at the end of the bar. She looked like Jennifer Connelly and I had to walk up over to her to make sure it wasn't. The rest of the bar was packed with an interesting mix of music industry hipster types and pothead friends of the bands that were playing. One fucktard wore a plaid blazer, designer jeans, and a pair of $400 aviator sunglasses inside while he sipped on a vodka and Red Bull. I wanted to punch him out on principle alone.
Nicky and I swapped turns all night long hitting up the bathroom for a toot or two as we fought through the crowd to get to the bathroom. I was too drunk to drive home, so Nicky took the wheel after we waited ten minutes for valet to bring us the car. On our inebriated drive back home to Beverly Hills, we continued ripping gaggers while Wu Tang Clan's Shame on a Nigga echoed from her car speakers.
"Let's get donuts," I muttered.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
May 27, 2006
Kentucky Waffle House
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2006
The 5 AM hour is the demarcation line, no matter what city or town you are in. If you can get past that period of time and survive to see the sunrise, you accomplished a feat similar to climbing Mt. Everest. No matter what you are enduring at the ungodliest of hours, whether it's an all night bender or a night of suicidal insomnia, the rancorous cult of vampire-like miscreants scamper off as dawn approaches.
After a night of gambling and liquor consumption, Daddy and I wandered over to Waffle House which was about two blocks from our hotel in Covington, Kentucky. We were told by our cab driver that the Waffle House was considered the dirtiest in the area and had been cited for several health code violations. That Waffle House was the late night magnet for the lowest strata of society which included raccoon-eyed meth dealers, repugnant hookers, Glock-packing pimps, drunken frat boys, and several deranged members of the local homeless population.
My friend Lori (who went to law school in Covington) warned me, "That's were people disappear from. You know, like so-and-so was last seen at the Waffle House before going missing for three weeks. Then the police find their rotting and raped corpse floating in the Ohio River."
Alas, you can't keep a drunk fat man away from hashbrowns and pecan waffles, despite the dangerous circumstances.
When we walked into Waffle House, two trigger-happy cops sat in the front booth closest to the bathroom. Two hookers drenched in cheap cologne sat at the lunch counter next to their pimp with more bling than Ice-T and Mr. T combined. A white cab driver who looked like the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island sat in the corner booth and read a newspaper as he sipped on coffee. A tall homeless guy with a large black duffle bag sat at the far end to the counter muttering to himself as he slid a few napkins and a spoon into his pocket.
We sat down in one of the open booths as I let out a sigh of relief. Seeing the cops nearby in the sketchiest Waffle House in the South was reassuring. I peeked at the sticky menu that was drenched in dry maple syrup and Hepatitis B. Waffle House menus are encased in plastic lamination that dates back to the Nixon White House years. Daddy knew exactly what he wanted, while I couldn't decide between breakfast or a cheeseburger.
Our pear-shaped waitress shuffled over like an American POW on the Bataan Death March. The worn out look on her face and disheveled uniform was an indication that she’d worked at least a ten hour shift. Her apron was streaked with tons of condiment stains and she could not have been older than 19 or 20 at the most. Daddy tried to sweet talk her right away. She was in no mood for chit-chat and barely looked up from her yellow notepad.
"What's your name?"
"Tracey," she said in a backwards drawl that you only thought you heard in the movies. "Whaty'all like to order?"
"Tracey. Nice. How are you doing sweetie? Lemme ask, does a nice girl like yourself have a man?"
"Yeah. He's at home watchin' our kids."
"How many do you have?"
"Two and another on the way. Whaty'all like to order?"
"Does your man treat you well? He should. You're very pretty. What time do you get off?"
She looked up and smiled as bright as someone could with three missing teeth. I glanced at her left forearm. She had a poorly designed tattoo in aqua ink that read, "Total Bitch!"
"I want a triple plate of hashbrowns. Scattered. Smothered. Covered. Chunked. Diced. Topped. Peppered. But no mushrooms. Make sure there are no mushrooms in there, honeypie. And a pecan waffle to sweeten my Waffle House experience."
Nine minutes later, the pear-shaped waitress brought over a large plate heaping with hashbrowns. I had never seen a bigger serving of potatoes that was the size of a baby otter. His plate of hashbrowns was steaming hot with cheese, onions, tomatoes, jalapenos, ham, and Bert's Chili piled on top in an orgy of food. Daddy picked up a bottle of hot sauce and shook out ten or eleven huge droplets as they dissolved into the mountain of food.
Another waitresses began to mop the floor near by. Her rail thin body pathetically clutched a mop of dirty water as she made small circles onto the floor. She looked like a tweaker who has been up snorting crystal meth with her biker boyfriend for three days straight. When she turned her head, you could see two tattoos behind her ears and prison tattoos all over her arms. She had two hearts behind her right ear and two cherries behind the other. Both were in fading blue ink.
"Hey honeypie," Daddy said as he shoved his hashbrowns into his mouth. "What time you get off?"
"7 AM," she mumbled. "What's it to you?"
"You wanna go to a party later?"
She ignored him and kept up her enthusiastic mopping as Daddy shoveled two bites of his pecan waffle into his mouth.
"So do you got a fella?"
I knew that I was returning to Hollyweird the next weekend, so I came up with an idea to pitch some suits a new reality series where Daddy and I travel around America eating in Waffle Houses and Denny's at 5 AM after we drink beer and huff airplane glue in the parking lot. It can also be a ground breaking documentary film. Degenerate cinema. I might even pitch the idea to European venture capitalists. Those Germans with film almost anything.
The pear-shaped waitress brought us our check and Daddy tried to hit on her one last time. Exhausted and grimy Waffle House waitresses in their third trimester with gang tattoos and who are missing three teeth are the last women on Earth I'd try to pick up. Yet, Daddy was relentless.
"Fat chicks give the best head. Plus pregnant women are super horny."
Even as he paid the bill and made his way to the door, he never gave up.
"Which one of you ladies want to experience the Vanilla Gorilla?" as he grabbed his crotch.
The Sunday sun slowly crept above the Kentucky hills as we stumbled out of the filthiest Waffle House in the South. Folks were getting up to go to church, as we capped off another nebulous night of drinking and gambling.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
The 5 AM hour is the demarcation line, no matter what city or town you are in. If you can get past that period of time and survive to see the sunrise, you accomplished a feat similar to climbing Mt. Everest. No matter what you are enduring at the ungodliest of hours, whether it's an all night bender or a night of suicidal insomnia, the rancorous cult of vampire-like miscreants scamper off as dawn approaches.
After a night of gambling and liquor consumption, Daddy and I wandered over to Waffle House which was about two blocks from our hotel in Covington, Kentucky. We were told by our cab driver that the Waffle House was considered the dirtiest in the area and had been cited for several health code violations. That Waffle House was the late night magnet for the lowest strata of society which included raccoon-eyed meth dealers, repugnant hookers, Glock-packing pimps, drunken frat boys, and several deranged members of the local homeless population.
My friend Lori (who went to law school in Covington) warned me, "That's were people disappear from. You know, like so-and-so was last seen at the Waffle House before going missing for three weeks. Then the police find their rotting and raped corpse floating in the Ohio River."
Alas, you can't keep a drunk fat man away from hashbrowns and pecan waffles, despite the dangerous circumstances.
When we walked into Waffle House, two trigger-happy cops sat in the front booth closest to the bathroom. Two hookers drenched in cheap cologne sat at the lunch counter next to their pimp with more bling than Ice-T and Mr. T combined. A white cab driver who looked like the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island sat in the corner booth and read a newspaper as he sipped on coffee. A tall homeless guy with a large black duffle bag sat at the far end to the counter muttering to himself as he slid a few napkins and a spoon into his pocket.
We sat down in one of the open booths as I let out a sigh of relief. Seeing the cops nearby in the sketchiest Waffle House in the South was reassuring. I peeked at the sticky menu that was drenched in dry maple syrup and Hepatitis B. Waffle House menus are encased in plastic lamination that dates back to the Nixon White House years. Daddy knew exactly what he wanted, while I couldn't decide between breakfast or a cheeseburger.
Our pear-shaped waitress shuffled over like an American POW on the Bataan Death March. The worn out look on her face and disheveled uniform was an indication that she’d worked at least a ten hour shift. Her apron was streaked with tons of condiment stains and she could not have been older than 19 or 20 at the most. Daddy tried to sweet talk her right away. She was in no mood for chit-chat and barely looked up from her yellow notepad.
"What's your name?"
"Tracey," she said in a backwards drawl that you only thought you heard in the movies. "Whaty'all like to order?"
"Tracey. Nice. How are you doing sweetie? Lemme ask, does a nice girl like yourself have a man?"
"Yeah. He's at home watchin' our kids."
"How many do you have?"
"Two and another on the way. Whaty'all like to order?"
"Does your man treat you well? He should. You're very pretty. What time do you get off?"
She looked up and smiled as bright as someone could with three missing teeth. I glanced at her left forearm. She had a poorly designed tattoo in aqua ink that read, "Total Bitch!"
"I want a triple plate of hashbrowns. Scattered. Smothered. Covered. Chunked. Diced. Topped. Peppered. But no mushrooms. Make sure there are no mushrooms in there, honeypie. And a pecan waffle to sweeten my Waffle House experience."
Nine minutes later, the pear-shaped waitress brought over a large plate heaping with hashbrowns. I had never seen a bigger serving of potatoes that was the size of a baby otter. His plate of hashbrowns was steaming hot with cheese, onions, tomatoes, jalapenos, ham, and Bert's Chili piled on top in an orgy of food. Daddy picked up a bottle of hot sauce and shook out ten or eleven huge droplets as they dissolved into the mountain of food.
Another waitresses began to mop the floor near by. Her rail thin body pathetically clutched a mop of dirty water as she made small circles onto the floor. She looked like a tweaker who has been up snorting crystal meth with her biker boyfriend for three days straight. When she turned her head, you could see two tattoos behind her ears and prison tattoos all over her arms. She had two hearts behind her right ear and two cherries behind the other. Both were in fading blue ink.
"Hey honeypie," Daddy said as he shoved his hashbrowns into his mouth. "What time you get off?"
"7 AM," she mumbled. "What's it to you?"
"You wanna go to a party later?"
She ignored him and kept up her enthusiastic mopping as Daddy shoveled two bites of his pecan waffle into his mouth.
"So do you got a fella?"
I knew that I was returning to Hollyweird the next weekend, so I came up with an idea to pitch some suits a new reality series where Daddy and I travel around America eating in Waffle Houses and Denny's at 5 AM after we drink beer and huff airplane glue in the parking lot. It can also be a ground breaking documentary film. Degenerate cinema. I might even pitch the idea to European venture capitalists. Those Germans with film almost anything.
The pear-shaped waitress brought us our check and Daddy tried to hit on her one last time. Exhausted and grimy Waffle House waitresses in their third trimester with gang tattoos and who are missing three teeth are the last women on Earth I'd try to pick up. Yet, Daddy was relentless.
"Fat chicks give the best head. Plus pregnant women are super horny."
Even as he paid the bill and made his way to the door, he never gave up.
"Which one of you ladies want to experience the Vanilla Gorilla?" as he grabbed his crotch.
The Sunday sun slowly crept above the Kentucky hills as we stumbled out of the filthiest Waffle House in the South. Folks were getting up to go to church, as we capped off another nebulous night of drinking and gambling.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
April 29, 2006
Bloggers and Bunnies Part II: Where's AlCantHang?
Bloggers and Bunnies Part II: Where's AlCantHang?
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2006Joe Speaker tipped the bartender $20 for a Jack and coke and a Vodka tonic. The bartender smiled an informed us that we were a part of the Platinum Club, which meant that he'd hook us with drinks whenever we returned. He also gave us a book of Playboy matches.
As I stood at the stone bar, I surveyed the scene and didn't see to many people outside. The Grotto was in front of us. To the left was a row of folding tables that had various items for the charity silent auction. Behind that was a raised terrace and the Mansion stood behind it all. I spotted a large white tent in the distance with a DJ booth in front.
We were one of the first shuttles to arrive and there were no naked women milling around the Grotto and Hef was nowhere to be found. We almost had the entire place to ourselves, but we were still missing AlCantHang who had split from the group and took a limo to the Mansion with poker pros Steve Dannenmann and Hoyt Corkins.
I spotted Scott from Card Player Magazine and his girlfriend near the terrace area and wandered over there to shoot the shit. Since we both cover poker tournaments, we've never actually seen each other outside of a casino. I was shocked that Scott actually had clothing that didn't have a Card Player logo on it. His girlfriend had to pay $350 to get in. When she told her parents, they agreed to pay for the price tag. They said, "It's a once in a lifetime opportunity!" which was a phrase that I heard uttered a lot. For my parents' generation, the Playboy Mansion represented an urbane sophisticated status. It was not the lair of some sleazy porn-guru from the Valley, rather the retreat of a successful businessman who enjoyed the company of women. Lots of them. Aged 18-25.
I looked around and took a deep breath. I stood in the backyard of Hugh Heffner's palace. He set the standards for the term "stud" over the past four decades. In many ways an invite to the Playboy Mansion was more prestigious that an invite to the White House, with the exception of the Slick Willy years, when Bill Clinton and his hooked penis meticulously jizzed all over chubby interns. With his pants around his ankles, Clinton ran rampant through the same hallways where Richard Nixon used to mutter drunk ramblings at the portrait of Abe Lincoln during the Christmas bombing campaign of Cambodia. Besides from Clinton's two terms, life at the White House was superbly lame compared to the Mansion. Yeah if I could pick two worthy souls who deserved to live at the Mansion after Hef died, it would be Bill Clinton and/or AlCantHang. Those two know how to throw a party.
BG figured out that we were standing right in front of the kitchen, so we were in prime spot for all the hors d'oeuvres. They had a variation of food such as fried wontons, crab cakes, several kinds of sushi, beef with spicy horse raddish sauce, and chicken satay. The beef was pretty tasty and I filled up on sushi as bloggers took turns returning to the bar for refills.
AlCantHang was still AWOL. He called (actually it was loud slurring) to say that his limo was turned away from the Mansion. Hoyt Corkins ordered the driver to take them to the nearest bar, which happened to be the swanky Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I told him that they could get into the Mansion but had to check in at UCLA's parking lot.
I looked around and muttered, "Where were all the naked women?"
There were none.
I spotted a few good looking women and as more poker players slowly started trickling in for the charity poker tournament, but no Bunnies. Chad found a bar in the tent where the tournament would be played. Since it was on a slight slant, about 70 tilted poker tables filled the gigantic tent with a few gaming tables on the backside. We made a beeline for the bar and walked out a different entrance. We were on the otherside of the tent and saw a few tables set up and the infamous trampoline pushed to the side. Several ducks and peacocks sat on rocks in the pond in the darkness. You had to squint to see them. That's when I spotted the red light in the far corner by some trees.
I stumbled upon the aviary and zoo. A large parrot and cockatoo sat on a perch and I followed the stone steps down a spiral path near a few more cages. The spider monkeys were all the way in the back corner up near the top of the 30 foot high cage. No one was around and I figured that it would be a good spot to get lit. After a brief session, I found the other bloggers and showed them my discovery.
Originally we were told that there would be no photography. I usually carry around two cameras, my small digital camera and a larger professional one that I've taken pics for magazines and such. I left both behind and followed instructions. We soon found out that everyone had a camera except us. CJ and Bobby Bracelet decided to head back to the cars at UCLA to get theirs. While they were gone, I showed the rest of the bloggers the monkey cages.
AlCantHang finally arrived and he told us the most hilarious story involving Daniel Negreanu. He had been drinking with Hoyt Corkins and Steve Dannenmann who kept yelling at Negreanu from inside the limo. They questioned his sexuality and flipped him the bird. When Negreanu passed by us near the Grotto, Al stopped him. When Negreanu realized Al was part of the crew who verbally harassed him a few minutes earlier, he stormed away as we all laughed.
"Negreanu, you're a douchebag!" Al screamed at the top of his lungs.
At that point, the best looking women were some of the guests. Still no Bunnies and no Hef when CJ and Bobby Bracelet returned with the cameras. They shared the shuttle bus with Shannon Elizabeth who did not recall me cracking her A-A during the WSOP last year with J-J. She was kind enough to snap a few photos though.
The cocktail hour was winding down, and for the first time all night, the eight of us bloggers were together at the Playboy Mansion. We toasted to Spaceman who was our inside man who scored us the invite. Then we headed back to the bar before we figured out how the hell we were going to cover a poker event without a media table, internet access, and a sufficient power source. I didn't care much. I didn't bring my laptop, just my notebook and voice recorder and started to interview random bloggers and guests as the players slowly made their way to the tournament tables.
Before we wandered inside, I turned to AlCantHang and said, "Let's go do some shots."
As the late arriving players rushed past us, he didn't say anything and walked to the stone bar. Just as Babe Ruth called out a home run in the 1932 World Series, AlCantHang made a similar motion towards the bartenders. He raised two fingers and by the time we arrived at the bar, two double shots of SoCo had been poured for us.
Yes, even at the Playboy Mansion, the bartenders know what AlCantHang drinks.
... to be continued.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
March 20, 2006
Let's Do Lunch
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2006
The 11 AM sunlight ripped through the blinds and illuminated the entire room with a radioactive glow that burned the eyelids off my face. That was my daily alarm... a high concentration of natural light piercing my retinas. If I was able to conquer the insomnia for a rare night, I never slept in too late because the solar rays prevented me from falling back to sleep. My first glimpses each day were traces of a large palm tree shooting up out of the ground and towering over the garage across the alley. That was the first reminder that I was in Los Angeles. I'd wander outside for a minute and shrug my shoulders at the warm temperatures.
"This is what winter in LA feels like," I’d mutter out loud to the anorexic chick who lived upstairs.
She always smiled when I tried to speak to her. The dark-haired twenty-something with oversized sunglasses sat on a piece of Target-bought lawn furniture and chain smoked while she yapped on the phone to no one in particular. At odd hours, she'd be found sitting outside Nicky's kitchen window. Sometimes sipping tepid coffee, but always chain smoking, she discussed every minor detail of her last audition for a sitcom at Fox or the last blind date she went on with a vegan indie label record exec from Malibu who drove a Ferrari. Decked out in pink flipflops and grey sweat pants, she spent more time on the phone sitting in the piece of shit lawn chair than she spent in her apartment.
My first week in LA went by quick. I'd wake up everyday, I'd be super tired from staying up until sunrise partying. After a shower, I'd get directions from Nicky to the restaurant where I had a lunch meeting scheduled. She'd write detailed directions on slips of paper that used to give writers notes for random scripts in development. I'd always get lost and have to call her for backup, anyway. I'd be able to find the place with no problems. Within a few days, I figured out the local LA streets. Where I'd screw up was when I'd get lost trying to find parking, taking random sidestreets and alleys and finding myself on the other side of Rodeo Drive caught on a street corner with cell phone-clutching hipster parents pushing carriages with $3,000 diamond earrings hanging from the earlobes of 16-month old children and unable to figure out where the fuck I was going. Was it walking towards the hills? Or away from them?
One day I had a lunch with my buddy JC. In the 1990s he managed two popular bands. He had burnt out on the music industry over the past ten years and switched gears. These days, he was involved with poker and several successful ventures. He wanted to discuss some career options for me. I picked La Scala on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills for the meeting. He joked that I knew it was a free meal... because I picked an expensive and high end place. Nicky recommended the Italian restaurant that was located a few blocks from her old office. Several years ago it was one of the places to eat lunch in LA especially in Beverly Hills. These days La Scala is not as cool, but still attracted a steady crowd of new money fakesters who were out to be seen rather than to enjoy a decent meal.
I just started getting used to that whole weird LA thing when people stare at you as soon as you walk in a room, or a bar, or a restaurant. Everyone stop what they are doing whether it's drinking, talking, eating, snorting blow... just to see who walked in.
JC and I were led to our seats by a former reality TV star, who spent four afternoons a week humiliating herself as a hostess in a desperate last minute attempt to catch the eye of a casting director before she subjected herself to doing hard-core gonzo porn movies in the Valley with bi-sexual hairless meatheads who had uncircumcised junks that were the size of paint cans. We all walked towards the back of La Scala while everyone casually peeked up from their Tiramisu to see who we were. Several crescent moon shaped booths along the wall were filled with shit talkin' studio execs wearing last year's fall line of Versace shirts. We were surrounded by a gaggle of trendoids and pharmaceutically bloated ex-actress-model girlfriends of semi-famous directors who carried around eight balls in their $2,500 Marc Jacobs purses. They would glance at us and try to figure out a few things...
Most bathrooms in chic LA eateries were ultra nice with big stalls. Only in Hollyweird bathrooms will you find more stalls/shitters than urinals. They know their clientele and cater to executive cokeheads and other drugged out miscreants who spent the majority of their lunches shoving Colombia's finest candy up their nostrils, which accounts for the frenzied and meaningless drivel that spills out of their mouths when they come back to the tables.
Aside from the trendy crowd, the food was better than average and La Scala is known for their Chop Salads. That typical writer-doing-a-lunch experience was just one of the few I had this past week. They were all roughly the same. I might have been one of the few people who actually wanted to talk business at lunch instead of showing off a new pair of Fendi sunglasses.
* * * * *
One afternoon last week, Nicky took me to a kick-ass breakfast joint called John O'Groat's. On our ride over, the typical blonde California pothead and I took turns smoking a bowl of medicinal marijuana. She told me should could hook me up with a special card. She knew a doctor that you could bribe for $150 to get a prescription card. There were very few people who smoked as much as I did, and one of those people was Nicky. She was perpetually stoned. Nicky held a semi-important job in Hollyweird and was baked to the tits from the moment she walked into the interview. In show business, people are too self-involved to notice co-workers with definite drug problems. Besides, most people mistook her stoner behavior as ordinary flakiness that most blondes are prone too.
As we circled the block for parking she lowered the volume on her iPod as Beck blasted. She admitted, "OK, now I have to harness my parking chi."
She took a deep breath and centered herself. Focused on finding parking, her eyes darted back and forth anticipating an open spot in the heavily trafficked road during lunch hour. She was locked in and when she found an empty space located in a prime spot only a few stores down from O'Groat's, a lady in a black convertible Mercedes 500s cut her off and stole the spot.
"You fucking twat!" Nicky yelled, clenching her fist.
Nicky drove past the lady in the Mercedes who avoided eye contact. Nicky rolled down the window and bitched her out.
"That was my spot, you fucking whore!" she said as she flipped the lady the middle finger.
Inside of a few minutes Nicky went from a laid back stoner to a maniac on the verge of road rage. That's what retarded LA drivers and intense vehicular congestion can do to sane people.
"Imagine how stressed I'd be if I didn't constantly smoke?" she said trying to justify her heavy daily weed intake.
We needed to smoke another bowl before we went inside. Nicky was still steaming. She was on parking space tilt. We had to wait a few minutes to get a table at John O'Groat's. The place is a legendary LA eatery. Originally it was just located in one store space. As the popularity grew, the owner purchased the adjoining two stores and eventually expanded. Despite the additions, they were always packed with hungry customers.
The daily special was Oreo French Toast, where the chef melted crushed Oreos on top of the bread. I didn't even need to use syrup because it was so juicy. The side order of bacon was just how I liked it because it was crisp enough that it melted in my mouth.
At the table behind us, one scenester with a receding hairline was on a date with an unknown actress.
"You have excellent cheek bones and amazing skin tone," he said in his best attempt to flatter her.
The first five minutes of the conversation were dedicated to him kissing her ass and telling her about how hot she looked. The next ten minutes were dominated by his ego and small penis. He rattled off the highlights on his resume, then dropped names of semi-famous people with whom he claimed to be friends. Nicky shook her head and laughed at the absurdity of the dating scene in LA.
"Everyone's working an angle," she explained. "And everyone is a terrible fuck, too."
That's when she clued me in on the latest trend that was sweeping Hollyweird... stripper-aerobics.
"At Crunch in West Hollywood," she said, "they offer classes. Carmen Elektra was teaching you how to strip. It was aerobics using a stripper's pole. It's the latest hipster rage! Yoga is dead. The only people doing yoga these days are hippies and pregnant women from Sherman Oaks."
I thought she was joking, but she was serious. Only in LA would women multi-task to learn how to strip and loose weight at the same time.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
The 11 AM sunlight ripped through the blinds and illuminated the entire room with a radioactive glow that burned the eyelids off my face. That was my daily alarm... a high concentration of natural light piercing my retinas. If I was able to conquer the insomnia for a rare night, I never slept in too late because the solar rays prevented me from falling back to sleep. My first glimpses each day were traces of a large palm tree shooting up out of the ground and towering over the garage across the alley. That was the first reminder that I was in Los Angeles. I'd wander outside for a minute and shrug my shoulders at the warm temperatures.
"This is what winter in LA feels like," I’d mutter out loud to the anorexic chick who lived upstairs.
She always smiled when I tried to speak to her. The dark-haired twenty-something with oversized sunglasses sat on a piece of Target-bought lawn furniture and chain smoked while she yapped on the phone to no one in particular. At odd hours, she'd be found sitting outside Nicky's kitchen window. Sometimes sipping tepid coffee, but always chain smoking, she discussed every minor detail of her last audition for a sitcom at Fox or the last blind date she went on with a vegan indie label record exec from Malibu who drove a Ferrari. Decked out in pink flipflops and grey sweat pants, she spent more time on the phone sitting in the piece of shit lawn chair than she spent in her apartment.
My first week in LA went by quick. I'd wake up everyday, I'd be super tired from staying up until sunrise partying. After a shower, I'd get directions from Nicky to the restaurant where I had a lunch meeting scheduled. She'd write detailed directions on slips of paper that used to give writers notes for random scripts in development. I'd always get lost and have to call her for backup, anyway. I'd be able to find the place with no problems. Within a few days, I figured out the local LA streets. Where I'd screw up was when I'd get lost trying to find parking, taking random sidestreets and alleys and finding myself on the other side of Rodeo Drive caught on a street corner with cell phone-clutching hipster parents pushing carriages with $3,000 diamond earrings hanging from the earlobes of 16-month old children and unable to figure out where the fuck I was going. Was it walking towards the hills? Or away from them?
One day I had a lunch with my buddy JC. In the 1990s he managed two popular bands. He had burnt out on the music industry over the past ten years and switched gears. These days, he was involved with poker and several successful ventures. He wanted to discuss some career options for me. I picked La Scala on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills for the meeting. He joked that I knew it was a free meal... because I picked an expensive and high end place. Nicky recommended the Italian restaurant that was located a few blocks from her old office. Several years ago it was one of the places to eat lunch in LA especially in Beverly Hills. These days La Scala is not as cool, but still attracted a steady crowd of new money fakesters who were out to be seen rather than to enjoy a decent meal.
I just started getting used to that whole weird LA thing when people stare at you as soon as you walk in a room, or a bar, or a restaurant. Everyone stop what they are doing whether it's drinking, talking, eating, snorting blow... just to see who walked in.
JC and I were led to our seats by a former reality TV star, who spent four afternoons a week humiliating herself as a hostess in a desperate last minute attempt to catch the eye of a casting director before she subjected herself to doing hard-core gonzo porn movies in the Valley with bi-sexual hairless meatheads who had uncircumcised junks that were the size of paint cans. We all walked towards the back of La Scala while everyone casually peeked up from their Tiramisu to see who we were. Several crescent moon shaped booths along the wall were filled with shit talkin' studio execs wearing last year's fall line of Versace shirts. We were surrounded by a gaggle of trendoids and pharmaceutically bloated ex-actress-model girlfriends of semi-famous directors who carried around eight balls in their $2,500 Marc Jacobs purses. They would glance at us and try to figure out a few things...
1. Who important just walked in?We were seated next to a table of four soused women pounding white wine. I called them the third-wives club. Their combined plastic surgery probably cost the equivalent of two fully loaded SUVs. And on the other side of us were two young starlets with IQ points plummeting every time they open their mouths to speak. The blonde with the supple lips was high-end hooker with a sexy back tattoo and the other one looked a lot like Jennifer Love Big Tits, minus the big tits. They rambled on about shopping during the duration of the lunch, in between bitching about having to drive to a party out in the sticks later that night.
2. If I don't know them, should I?
3. If they are nobodies, I have to look much cooler than them.
4. I wonder if they have any coke?
Most bathrooms in chic LA eateries were ultra nice with big stalls. Only in Hollyweird bathrooms will you find more stalls/shitters than urinals. They know their clientele and cater to executive cokeheads and other drugged out miscreants who spent the majority of their lunches shoving Colombia's finest candy up their nostrils, which accounts for the frenzied and meaningless drivel that spills out of their mouths when they come back to the tables.
Aside from the trendy crowd, the food was better than average and La Scala is known for their Chop Salads. That typical writer-doing-a-lunch experience was just one of the few I had this past week. They were all roughly the same. I might have been one of the few people who actually wanted to talk business at lunch instead of showing off a new pair of Fendi sunglasses.
One afternoon last week, Nicky took me to a kick-ass breakfast joint called John O'Groat's. On our ride over, the typical blonde California pothead and I took turns smoking a bowl of medicinal marijuana. She told me should could hook me up with a special card. She knew a doctor that you could bribe for $150 to get a prescription card. There were very few people who smoked as much as I did, and one of those people was Nicky. She was perpetually stoned. Nicky held a semi-important job in Hollyweird and was baked to the tits from the moment she walked into the interview. In show business, people are too self-involved to notice co-workers with definite drug problems. Besides, most people mistook her stoner behavior as ordinary flakiness that most blondes are prone too.
As we circled the block for parking she lowered the volume on her iPod as Beck blasted. She admitted, "OK, now I have to harness my parking chi."
She took a deep breath and centered herself. Focused on finding parking, her eyes darted back and forth anticipating an open spot in the heavily trafficked road during lunch hour. She was locked in and when she found an empty space located in a prime spot only a few stores down from O'Groat's, a lady in a black convertible Mercedes 500s cut her off and stole the spot.
"You fucking twat!" Nicky yelled, clenching her fist.
Nicky drove past the lady in the Mercedes who avoided eye contact. Nicky rolled down the window and bitched her out.
"That was my spot, you fucking whore!" she said as she flipped the lady the middle finger.
Inside of a few minutes Nicky went from a laid back stoner to a maniac on the verge of road rage. That's what retarded LA drivers and intense vehicular congestion can do to sane people.
"Imagine how stressed I'd be if I didn't constantly smoke?" she said trying to justify her heavy daily weed intake.
We needed to smoke another bowl before we went inside. Nicky was still steaming. She was on parking space tilt. We had to wait a few minutes to get a table at John O'Groat's. The place is a legendary LA eatery. Originally it was just located in one store space. As the popularity grew, the owner purchased the adjoining two stores and eventually expanded. Despite the additions, they were always packed with hungry customers.
The daily special was Oreo French Toast, where the chef melted crushed Oreos on top of the bread. I didn't even need to use syrup because it was so juicy. The side order of bacon was just how I liked it because it was crisp enough that it melted in my mouth.
At the table behind us, one scenester with a receding hairline was on a date with an unknown actress.
"You have excellent cheek bones and amazing skin tone," he said in his best attempt to flatter her.
The first five minutes of the conversation were dedicated to him kissing her ass and telling her about how hot she looked. The next ten minutes were dominated by his ego and small penis. He rattled off the highlights on his resume, then dropped names of semi-famous people with whom he claimed to be friends. Nicky shook her head and laughed at the absurdity of the dating scene in LA.
"Everyone's working an angle," she explained. "And everyone is a terrible fuck, too."
That's when she clued me in on the latest trend that was sweeping Hollyweird... stripper-aerobics.
"At Crunch in West Hollywood," she said, "they offer classes. Carmen Elektra was teaching you how to strip. It was aerobics using a stripper's pole. It's the latest hipster rage! Yoga is dead. The only people doing yoga these days are hippies and pregnant women from Sherman Oaks."
I thought she was joking, but she was serious. Only in LA would women multi-task to learn how to strip and loose weight at the same time.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
February 25, 2006
Highway Job
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2006
The bus station.
It looked new but the inhabitants were always the same. The bus stations around America featured some of the lowest forms of wayward travelers. These were folks who couldn't afford plane or train fare. You wondered how they scratched together enough cash to pay for the Greyhound fare. Even with the influx of gamblers from New York and Philadelphia catching buses back to those cities, there were plenty of sullen faces on the rest of the people who sat silently in the brightly lit terminal. A few rows were crowded by street people bundled up in layers of clothing. They smelled like a combination of three-day old urine and rotten eggs as the aroma of depravity made me nauseous for the entire fifteen minutes I sat and waited for my Greyhound bus bound for NYC to arrive. I couldn't withstand the smell anymore and went outside to wait.
The bus showed up on time and I sat next to an old lady who brought ear plugs with her. She didn't want to have to listen to the Russian guys in the back bitch and moan about their bad beats for two hours straight. Plus the guy on his cell phone two rows ahead of us blew off the bus driver's warning to keep all phone conversations brief and polluted the air recanting his last 48 hours as he slowly lost his entire paycheck at the tables.
I listened to my iPod and zoned out. I'd wake up every fifteen minutes and find myself staring out at the window watching the landscape of the Garden State Parkway whoosh by. Two portly passengers diagonally across from me cuddled most of the ride. She looked like a 300-pound version of Whoopi Goldberg with six-inch nails colored in seven shades of acrylic paint. She had her hands down her boyfriend's pants. He looked like Fidel Castro minus the cigar and hat.
Fat chicks jerking off guys on the NJ Turnpike.
It was Groundhog Day and I'd kill myself if I got stuck seeing that gruesome scene everyday for the rest of my life. I tolerated it once because as much as it sickens me to death, I have a morbid curiosity of the psychology behind explicit and random displays of sex acts in public places. It's one thing to see a guy get his rocks off on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. It's something totally different to see a guy get a beejer sitting in row 10 on a Greyhound.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
The bus station.
It looked new but the inhabitants were always the same. The bus stations around America featured some of the lowest forms of wayward travelers. These were folks who couldn't afford plane or train fare. You wondered how they scratched together enough cash to pay for the Greyhound fare. Even with the influx of gamblers from New York and Philadelphia catching buses back to those cities, there were plenty of sullen faces on the rest of the people who sat silently in the brightly lit terminal. A few rows were crowded by street people bundled up in layers of clothing. They smelled like a combination of three-day old urine and rotten eggs as the aroma of depravity made me nauseous for the entire fifteen minutes I sat and waited for my Greyhound bus bound for NYC to arrive. I couldn't withstand the smell anymore and went outside to wait.
The bus showed up on time and I sat next to an old lady who brought ear plugs with her. She didn't want to have to listen to the Russian guys in the back bitch and moan about their bad beats for two hours straight. Plus the guy on his cell phone two rows ahead of us blew off the bus driver's warning to keep all phone conversations brief and polluted the air recanting his last 48 hours as he slowly lost his entire paycheck at the tables.
I listened to my iPod and zoned out. I'd wake up every fifteen minutes and find myself staring out at the window watching the landscape of the Garden State Parkway whoosh by. Two portly passengers diagonally across from me cuddled most of the ride. She looked like a 300-pound version of Whoopi Goldberg with six-inch nails colored in seven shades of acrylic paint. She had her hands down her boyfriend's pants. He looked like Fidel Castro minus the cigar and hat.
Fat chicks jerking off guys on the NJ Turnpike.
It was Groundhog Day and I'd kill myself if I got stuck seeing that gruesome scene everyday for the rest of my life. I tolerated it once because as much as it sickens me to death, I have a morbid curiosity of the psychology behind explicit and random displays of sex acts in public places. It's one thing to see a guy get his rocks off on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. It's something totally different to see a guy get a beejer sitting in row 10 on a Greyhound.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
Can I Hit It and Quit?
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2006
Sometimes playing against drunks is like trying to juggle hand grenades with Charles Manson. You know that some weird and crazy shit is going to go down at some point. This time, one guy spilled his cocktail. The dealer was pissed because she warned him at least five times in the first minute I sat down. He had an empty cup holder but was so polluted that he kept putting it on the other side of his stack. And he had a stack. A monster stack. It was dirty for sure with a few $1 and $25 chips grouped together in a sea wall of red $5 chips. Seat 6 was the sucker and I wanted him to double me up. He wasn't friends with the other two Russians at my table. And they had been badgering him all night.
"Call me Nicky," he insisted, "I want you to know the name of the guy who is going to take all your money!"
He began taunting me early on. He had the hipster kid from Brooklyn on tilt and must have run through at least four or five buy-ins according to the Russian chick sitting next to me. She reminded me of a young Meryl Streep. Her accent was thick and she smelled like flowers and blueberries. She sipped on a Sea Breeze or some sort of vodka-cranberry concoction. She was shortstacked and if I spoke better Russian, I would have figured out that she was the table captain. She thought she knew what she was doing and she was screaming at Nicky, the drunk Russian guy every time he scooped a pot. I like feisty women. I prefer feisty drunk women with a penchant for gambling and playing cards at 3 AM.
Every time she entered a pot, Nicky would raise, and she would see the in anger even more. Nicky had the most of the table on tilt. He even got the dealer on tilt after he knocked over his drink.
I'll spare you the bad beat. Pocket pair busted by an unsuited two gapper. Before Nicky could scoop up the pot, I dug back in for a rebuy.
"He is stupid," she said. Actually it sounded more like "stew-pet."
I quickly became her table friend. The old guy to her right with the hairy ears was in a daze. I couldn't tell if he was heavily medicated or just tired after a long session.
"What's your name?"
Always ask hot women what their names are and follow it up with something quick. If it's exotic say something like "What does that mean?" or "How did you get that interesting name?"
If it's a common name like Jennifer or Michelle, just say, "You've got to be one of the best looking Jen's I’ve ever met."
It sounds corny, but it works.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Nadya," she said.
"That's beautiful. What does it mean?"
She smiled. "Hope," she said.
"Like you hope that assclown is going to double you up eventually?"
She laughed and then cursed at Nicky in Russian. The other Russian at the table laughed. Nicky fired something back and by the look on Nadya's face, I'm sure he called her a pig or a dog or dropped a Ruskie C-bomb.
Nadya doubled through Nicky twice in one orbit. She had the best hand both times. A-K and J-J held up for her against A-3 and 3-5s. I doubled up against Nicky and lost a big pot to the old guy with the hairy ears. The hipster dropped another buy-in when he chased a baby flush and Nadya filled in a full house on the river. All of a sudden she had chips and started talking smack with everyone at the table.
"People are so stew-pet," she said.
I was about even when I was heads up with Nadya. I raised with A-Js and missed my flop. She checked to me on a ragged board and I bet the pot on the flop. She muttered something like she knew I had A-K and re-raised me.
Hot Russian chicks drinking Sea Breezes at 6 AM, check-raising me in a $30 pot is a total turn on. I moved all in on her.
"You are a good player. Not one of those stew-pet players like Nicky," as she pointed and cursed at him in Russian.
She folded and showed me her small pair.
"Since I like your face, I'll let you see one card for free. Pick one," as I spread out my hole cards. She pointed to one and I flipped over the Jack of hearts.
She groaned and said something in Russian. Nicky taunted her for the next ten minutes before Nadya racked up her chips and left. After I cashed out she stood at the top of the escalator smoking a menthol cigarette.
"Think I can hit it and quit?" I joked.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
Sometimes playing against drunks is like trying to juggle hand grenades with Charles Manson. You know that some weird and crazy shit is going to go down at some point. This time, one guy spilled his cocktail. The dealer was pissed because she warned him at least five times in the first minute I sat down. He had an empty cup holder but was so polluted that he kept putting it on the other side of his stack. And he had a stack. A monster stack. It was dirty for sure with a few $1 and $25 chips grouped together in a sea wall of red $5 chips. Seat 6 was the sucker and I wanted him to double me up. He wasn't friends with the other two Russians at my table. And they had been badgering him all night.
"Call me Nicky," he insisted, "I want you to know the name of the guy who is going to take all your money!"
He began taunting me early on. He had the hipster kid from Brooklyn on tilt and must have run through at least four or five buy-ins according to the Russian chick sitting next to me. She reminded me of a young Meryl Streep. Her accent was thick and she smelled like flowers and blueberries. She sipped on a Sea Breeze or some sort of vodka-cranberry concoction. She was shortstacked and if I spoke better Russian, I would have figured out that she was the table captain. She thought she knew what she was doing and she was screaming at Nicky, the drunk Russian guy every time he scooped a pot. I like feisty women. I prefer feisty drunk women with a penchant for gambling and playing cards at 3 AM.
Every time she entered a pot, Nicky would raise, and she would see the in anger even more. Nicky had the most of the table on tilt. He even got the dealer on tilt after he knocked over his drink.
I'll spare you the bad beat. Pocket pair busted by an unsuited two gapper. Before Nicky could scoop up the pot, I dug back in for a rebuy.
"He is stupid," she said. Actually it sounded more like "stew-pet."
I quickly became her table friend. The old guy to her right with the hairy ears was in a daze. I couldn't tell if he was heavily medicated or just tired after a long session.
"What's your name?"
Always ask hot women what their names are and follow it up with something quick. If it's exotic say something like "What does that mean?" or "How did you get that interesting name?"
If it's a common name like Jennifer or Michelle, just say, "You've got to be one of the best looking Jen's I’ve ever met."
It sounds corny, but it works.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Nadya," she said.
"That's beautiful. What does it mean?"
She smiled. "Hope," she said.
"Like you hope that assclown is going to double you up eventually?"
She laughed and then cursed at Nicky in Russian. The other Russian at the table laughed. Nicky fired something back and by the look on Nadya's face, I'm sure he called her a pig or a dog or dropped a Ruskie C-bomb.
Nadya doubled through Nicky twice in one orbit. She had the best hand both times. A-K and J-J held up for her against A-3 and 3-5s. I doubled up against Nicky and lost a big pot to the old guy with the hairy ears. The hipster dropped another buy-in when he chased a baby flush and Nadya filled in a full house on the river. All of a sudden she had chips and started talking smack with everyone at the table.
"People are so stew-pet," she said.
I was about even when I was heads up with Nadya. I raised with A-Js and missed my flop. She checked to me on a ragged board and I bet the pot on the flop. She muttered something like she knew I had A-K and re-raised me.
Hot Russian chicks drinking Sea Breezes at 6 AM, check-raising me in a $30 pot is a total turn on. I moved all in on her.
"You are a good player. Not one of those stew-pet players like Nicky," as she pointed and cursed at him in Russian.
She folded and showed me her small pair.
"Since I like your face, I'll let you see one card for free. Pick one," as I spread out my hole cards. She pointed to one and I flipped over the Jack of hearts.
She groaned and said something in Russian. Nicky taunted her for the next ten minutes before Nadya racked up her chips and left. After I cashed out she stood at the top of the escalator smoking a menthol cigarette.
"Think I can hit it and quit?" I joked.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
January 30, 2006
Subway Bitch Slap
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2006
I bumped into a guy I grew up with. Pedro lived in the apartment building down the street and we went to grammar school together. Long story short, he was a former cracker dealer who went to jail. When I saw him, he was with his wife and driving a brand new Mercedes.
"Things have changed. This is my new wife. I got three kids and a fourth on the way," he told me as he pointed to his wife's large stomach.
Pedro knocked up one of the neighborhood girls when we were in highschool. I think she had two kids with Pedro. She seemed like a nice girl but for the life of me I kept wondering, "What the hell are you doing with a crack dealer?"
In the late 1980s, when crack was the cash cow in New York City, Pedro took advantage of the addictive trend. He started out in an entry level position. He dropped out of highschool and sold nickel bags of weed to kids who would cut class and hang out in the park to get high. He eventually started scamming the private school kids and sold them oregano and other spices. If you complained, he beat your ass to a bloody pulp. Rich Jewish kids were not going to mess with a crazy Puerto Rican with a loaded gun and a pitbull.
Pedro eventually graduated from low level thuggery to middle level drug dealing. He started out at the bottom as a look out, then a runner, then a full on dealer. He would hang out at bus stops and at subway stations and deal his goods as people got on and off mass transit. His peak sales happened during rush hours, when his highly addictive clients would step off the subway and Pedro would be waiting there for a $20 or $40 rock. And it wasn't just poor people smoking crack. Tons of suits and functioning drug addicts with real jobs were part of his expanding customer base. When I was in college in the early 1990s, I heard that he got busted and went to prison upstate.
Years later I bump into him on the way to the subway. Mercedes? How was he making those car payments? The world finally made sense to me now. Former imprisoned crack dealers with four kids are rewarded with luxury German cars late in life. I should have skipped college altogether and started dealing smack in Phuket.
On the subway, a chubby black woman wearing an orange jump suit with Uggs sat across from me. Except the Uggs were knock offs and they were actually called Iggs. The orange jumpsuit hurt my eyes and I wished I wore my sunglasses. She had gang tattoos on her hands and listened to an old school Walkman. She thumbed through an old copy of People Magazine with Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey on the cover. Sitting next to her was the guy who ate is entire breakfast on the train. He got bacon, eggs, sausage and pancakes from a diner. They put it in an aluminum take out container and he struggled to eat everything in his lap. I admired his efforts and the bacon smelled good.
A guy wearing a fur coat got on at the next stop. He carried an oversized Hefty garbage bag with him and stood in the center of the car. His fur coat looked like it was made out of some sort of rabbit or raccoon. The lady in the orange jumpsuit started making fun of him.
"How many dogs you kill for that?"
He ignored her and she continued to taunt him. That happened for three more stops. When he was about to get off, he walked over to the lady in the orange jumpsuit and slapped her. Twice. Her Walkman fell onto the floor and she knocked over the breakfast of the guy sitting next to him. A piece of half eaten bacon slid a few inches away from my right foot. The guy in the fur coat ran out of the car when the doors opened as the woman screamed in agony and embarassment.
Bitch slapped on the subway.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
I bumped into a guy I grew up with. Pedro lived in the apartment building down the street and we went to grammar school together. Long story short, he was a former cracker dealer who went to jail. When I saw him, he was with his wife and driving a brand new Mercedes.
"Things have changed. This is my new wife. I got three kids and a fourth on the way," he told me as he pointed to his wife's large stomach.
Pedro knocked up one of the neighborhood girls when we were in highschool. I think she had two kids with Pedro. She seemed like a nice girl but for the life of me I kept wondering, "What the hell are you doing with a crack dealer?"
In the late 1980s, when crack was the cash cow in New York City, Pedro took advantage of the addictive trend. He started out in an entry level position. He dropped out of highschool and sold nickel bags of weed to kids who would cut class and hang out in the park to get high. He eventually started scamming the private school kids and sold them oregano and other spices. If you complained, he beat your ass to a bloody pulp. Rich Jewish kids were not going to mess with a crazy Puerto Rican with a loaded gun and a pitbull.
Pedro eventually graduated from low level thuggery to middle level drug dealing. He started out at the bottom as a look out, then a runner, then a full on dealer. He would hang out at bus stops and at subway stations and deal his goods as people got on and off mass transit. His peak sales happened during rush hours, when his highly addictive clients would step off the subway and Pedro would be waiting there for a $20 or $40 rock. And it wasn't just poor people smoking crack. Tons of suits and functioning drug addicts with real jobs were part of his expanding customer base. When I was in college in the early 1990s, I heard that he got busted and went to prison upstate.
Years later I bump into him on the way to the subway. Mercedes? How was he making those car payments? The world finally made sense to me now. Former imprisoned crack dealers with four kids are rewarded with luxury German cars late in life. I should have skipped college altogether and started dealing smack in Phuket.
On the subway, a chubby black woman wearing an orange jump suit with Uggs sat across from me. Except the Uggs were knock offs and they were actually called Iggs. The orange jumpsuit hurt my eyes and I wished I wore my sunglasses. She had gang tattoos on her hands and listened to an old school Walkman. She thumbed through an old copy of People Magazine with Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey on the cover. Sitting next to her was the guy who ate is entire breakfast on the train. He got bacon, eggs, sausage and pancakes from a diner. They put it in an aluminum take out container and he struggled to eat everything in his lap. I admired his efforts and the bacon smelled good.
A guy wearing a fur coat got on at the next stop. He carried an oversized Hefty garbage bag with him and stood in the center of the car. His fur coat looked like it was made out of some sort of rabbit or raccoon. The lady in the orange jumpsuit started making fun of him.
"How many dogs you kill for that?"
He ignored her and she continued to taunt him. That happened for three more stops. When he was about to get off, he walked over to the lady in the orange jumpsuit and slapped her. Twice. Her Walkman fell onto the floor and she knocked over the breakfast of the guy sitting next to him. A piece of half eaten bacon slid a few inches away from my right foot. The guy in the fur coat ran out of the car when the doors opened as the woman screamed in agony and embarassment.
Bitch slapped on the subway.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
December 24, 2005
Sunset
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2005
My grandmother died on Saturday morning of a heart attack. She was 93. I saw her a few moments in the ICU before I left NYC and headed to Vegas. I decided to leave for my month trip because she woke up from her coma and seemed like she would be better. Unfortunately she wasn't and had two (or three) heart attacks. The last one killed her.
When I left the hospital that day I wondered if that would be the last time I saw her. It was. Whenever I embark on a long journey I always made the effort to stop by and she her. I knew that she was old and that could be the last time I see her. The hardest part about traveling so much the last ten or so years was knowing that my grandmother (or any family member or friends) would die while I was away. That was one of my biggest fears... having to cut short a holiday to come home. I had to do that.
I was over 3,000 miles away in Long Beach when I found out she died. And getting home was harder than I thought. I had to drive four plus hours to Las Vegas then get on a plane and fly five plus hours home. I had a free flight coming to me on JetBlue and I could not pick the dates/flights I wanted. I got stuck with a redeye on Monday night arriving Tuesday morning.
I'm not overly upset at the loss of my grandmother. I feel more sad for my mother and her brothers and sister. My grandmother was old and after she survived a stroke 20 months ago, I accepted that she was in the last stages of her life. That time was bonus time I told myself. And in that span she hit a few slots jackpots at Mohegan Sun. She took down $10K one trip and ht a few small jackpots worth a few grand. Whenever she won she'd always give me and my brother a small cut. I guess that's why whenever I come into money, I'm always sharing it as much as I can.
Some people are just plain lucky and based on her tough life, I'm sure she would tell you that she got lucky in life more than once. Sadly, in the last chapter of her life, my grandmother was severely depressed. Although she had a quick mind, it was slipping and she was not as mobile as she used to be. This prevented her from taking long walks through the neighborhood. She couldn't go to the grocery store a few blocks away without a cane and someone to keep an eye on her.
She also stopped going to church. Everyone thought she had too much pride and didn't want the other parishioners see her have to walk with a cane. The real reason was that she was angry at God. In her eyes, God let her down. I suspect that when she had her stroke, she didn't want to survive. She was stronger than she expected and recovered, but not without a reminder of how awful it is to be stuck in a hospital with tubes sticking out of you and being hooked up to machines and having strange nurses poke you with holes for blood samples. When she was in the stroke ward, the guy next to her was crazy. He would scream uncontrollably because he wanted morphine and pain killers. The doctors wouldn't give him any so he would yell non-stop and rip off his gown until the nurses sedated him. I was watching one of his incidents one afternoon when I visited my grandmother and I was horrified by the wailing naked old guy. In my grandmother's eyes, she was in hell's waiting room and she couldn't get out. She asked God to take her right there on the spot but refused. She's been pissed off ever since.
When I first arrived in LA, I checked my email/messages. My mother wrote me. This was one line about my grandmother that was hard to stomach:
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
My grandmother died on Saturday morning of a heart attack. She was 93. I saw her a few moments in the ICU before I left NYC and headed to Vegas. I decided to leave for my month trip because she woke up from her coma and seemed like she would be better. Unfortunately she wasn't and had two (or three) heart attacks. The last one killed her.
When I left the hospital that day I wondered if that would be the last time I saw her. It was. Whenever I embark on a long journey I always made the effort to stop by and she her. I knew that she was old and that could be the last time I see her. The hardest part about traveling so much the last ten or so years was knowing that my grandmother (or any family member or friends) would die while I was away. That was one of my biggest fears... having to cut short a holiday to come home. I had to do that.
I was over 3,000 miles away in Long Beach when I found out she died. And getting home was harder than I thought. I had to drive four plus hours to Las Vegas then get on a plane and fly five plus hours home. I had a free flight coming to me on JetBlue and I could not pick the dates/flights I wanted. I got stuck with a redeye on Monday night arriving Tuesday morning.
I'm not overly upset at the loss of my grandmother. I feel more sad for my mother and her brothers and sister. My grandmother was old and after she survived a stroke 20 months ago, I accepted that she was in the last stages of her life. That time was bonus time I told myself. And in that span she hit a few slots jackpots at Mohegan Sun. She took down $10K one trip and ht a few small jackpots worth a few grand. Whenever she won she'd always give me and my brother a small cut. I guess that's why whenever I come into money, I'm always sharing it as much as I can.
Some people are just plain lucky and based on her tough life, I'm sure she would tell you that she got lucky in life more than once. Sadly, in the last chapter of her life, my grandmother was severely depressed. Although she had a quick mind, it was slipping and she was not as mobile as she used to be. This prevented her from taking long walks through the neighborhood. She couldn't go to the grocery store a few blocks away without a cane and someone to keep an eye on her.
She also stopped going to church. Everyone thought she had too much pride and didn't want the other parishioners see her have to walk with a cane. The real reason was that she was angry at God. In her eyes, God let her down. I suspect that when she had her stroke, she didn't want to survive. She was stronger than she expected and recovered, but not without a reminder of how awful it is to be stuck in a hospital with tubes sticking out of you and being hooked up to machines and having strange nurses poke you with holes for blood samples. When she was in the stroke ward, the guy next to her was crazy. He would scream uncontrollably because he wanted morphine and pain killers. The doctors wouldn't give him any so he would yell non-stop and rip off his gown until the nurses sedated him. I was watching one of his incidents one afternoon when I visited my grandmother and I was horrified by the wailing naked old guy. In my grandmother's eyes, she was in hell's waiting room and she couldn't get out. She asked God to take her right there on the spot but refused. She's been pissed off ever since.
When I first arrived in LA, I checked my email/messages. My mother wrote me. This was one line about my grandmother that was hard to stomach:
She was saying that when she gets home she was going to jump out the window. Anyway, I hope when she starts to eat something, maybe she'll feel differently. I hope so.My mother thought it was just a phase or a state of mind that would change that some food would cure. I took those words seriously. My grandmother lived enough life and she wanted to leave the party. When I found out she had a heart attack I was relieved. No one should have to wait to die like that. Last week, when I stood over my grandmother and seeing all those tubes in her, my eyes filled with tears. I wasn't sad that I was going to lose her. I was angry, ashamed, and confused on why we were torturing her like that. That's no way to die. She deserved better and that's a tough decision that certain family members are going to have to deal with for the rest of their lives. She was in too much pain and if there is a higher being, then God finally answered her prayers.
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
November 24, 2005
Las Vegas Blvd. Hookers
By Tenzin McGrupp
We wandered back over to the front of the casino and sat down to do some more people watching. There was a kid in a tie-dye sitting next to us who looked like he was in high school. His girlfriend wore a long green dress and looked like she was barely 16 years old. He had a ton of acid to sell but was worried that he would get busted. We joked with him that we were FBI agents, but he sold us some anyway. He mentioned that he had not been to too many shows because he wasn't 21 and most bands that he liked had an age requirement of 21 and older. He was trying to tell the Joker that Cheesekids (teenagers who followed around String Cheese Incident) were good people.
"I know. I live in Boulder," answered the Joker. "I see Cheesekids and the guys in the band all the time."
The kid liked the Cheese and didn't even know they were from Colorado. That's what happens when you chomp on acid every day from ages 16 through 18. Although naive, he seemed nice enough and he had a hot girlfriend who we still couldn't figure out was jail bait or not. For a brief moment, I considered beating the piss out of him, stealing his drugs, and running away to San Francisco with his girlfriend. But then I'd have an Amber Alert on my hands. The federalies would lock me up and throw away the key for sure if I was caught with a glove compartment full of doses.
The Trey Anastasio Band show ended and the crowd rushed back into the casino as hey left the theatre. I yelled, "They're letting the freaks out! Here come the freaks."
Thousands of spun out hippies, Phishkids, wookies, and other weirdos flooded the Aladdin casino floor just around 4 AM. For a tourist couple who had no idea there was a music festival going on in Vegas, they must have been freaked out to see so many dirty hippies walking around in a jovial daze. The unleashed freaks did nothing to deter the degenerate gamblers from plugging away at the slot machines. They kept their heads down and continued to gamble while they ignored all the weirdness that went down right behind them. Kids were slinging pot and molly behind rows of slot machines, while other rolling hippie chicks watched the various lights on other slots, or headed to the bar for post-show cocktails, or continued to dance at the bar above the poker room.
Grubby was in the poker room at the time and told me that the entire casino reeked of pot. He thought kids were actually smoking it inside. I'm sure that the aromas of various kind buds wafted from the theatre out to the floor. Grubby also said he saw a few braless hippie chicks wander through the poker room.
The Joker and I made our way outside and walked from the Aladdin to the Excalibur. Along the way, we spotted two hookers on Las Vegas Blvd. just outside of Fatburger. The Joker wanted me to teach him how to spot a hooker in Las Vegas and I gave him a quick tutorial. We identified the ladies as they walked right next to us. One was a tall, super thin black woman with a blue wig. Her friend was a portly white girl with a super short skirt and her beer belly slipping out of her top. Two middle-aged tourists also spotted the girls and began to follow them. We walked a few paces behind them. I couldn't tell if they were interested or just fucking around. The black hooker with the blue wig walked up to an older gentleman wearing a suit. He was by himself and she made a decision that the guy was going to be her mark for the moment. The other chubby hooker slowed down and made a phone call while she let her friend do her thing. I assumed she was calling up their pimp telling him that they have a possible john. The old guy walked into the MGM. The black hooker with the blue wig walked in with him, followed by the chubby hooker a few feet behind them. The two middle-aged tourists followed the chubby hooker. I looked at the Joker and motioned towards the MGM front doors. We followed everyone into the casino. We decided to investigate.
By then, the Joker picked up on which girls were hookers and which weren't. As we walked by one of the bars, we saw about a dozen at work. He was amazed at what was going on, but for me, it's just part of Las Vegas. It's not anything out of the ordinary for me to see hookers crawling around a Strip hotel bar. It's simply another integral part of Las Vegas, just like the Bellagio fountains or the all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet.
The black girl with the blue wig struck out with the older gentleman. I assumed he wasn't interested. The middle-aged tourists soon disappeared from sight and we found the two hookers sitting at the hooker bat at the MGM. We sat down for a little while before retreating back to the Excalibur. On our way from New York, New York to Excalibur, I spotted a woman sitting down in front of the Statue of Liberty. She was drunk with a souvenir goblet nearby, she was missing her shoe, and crying hysterically. Another Las Vegas 5 AM casualty.
We headed to the bar at Mandalay Bay where we met up with some of the Joker's friends from Colorado. We all watched the hookers over there work it. One guy had a table of three or four of them and we wondered if he had any idea they were working girls. There was some sort of bull riding contest in town, and a slew of cowboys were all around. They stood out with their tall black cowboys hats, blue jeans, and shiny buckles. Some of them were getting hit on by the hookers. The bar had an interesting mix at 5 AM with drunken cowboys, tripping hippies and scantly clad hookers elbowing each other and fighting over which girl is gonna blow the only high roller in the bar.
The Joker is originally from Texas and said, "Tourists from Texas must get a lot of hookers when they come to Vegas, because every time I tell them I used to live in Texas before I moved to Colorado, the hookers start flocking and hit on me even harder."
Since Vegoose was supposed to start in seven hours, we decided to leave Mandalay Bay. We eventually walked back to our room as the sun was coming up over the mountains, and we spotted a hooker walking towards us. The Joker nodded to me with a funny face which said, "Spotting hookers at sunrise is tons of fun."
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
We wandered back over to the front of the casino and sat down to do some more people watching. There was a kid in a tie-dye sitting next to us who looked like he was in high school. His girlfriend wore a long green dress and looked like she was barely 16 years old. He had a ton of acid to sell but was worried that he would get busted. We joked with him that we were FBI agents, but he sold us some anyway. He mentioned that he had not been to too many shows because he wasn't 21 and most bands that he liked had an age requirement of 21 and older. He was trying to tell the Joker that Cheesekids (teenagers who followed around String Cheese Incident) were good people.
"I know. I live in Boulder," answered the Joker. "I see Cheesekids and the guys in the band all the time."
The kid liked the Cheese and didn't even know they were from Colorado. That's what happens when you chomp on acid every day from ages 16 through 18. Although naive, he seemed nice enough and he had a hot girlfriend who we still couldn't figure out was jail bait or not. For a brief moment, I considered beating the piss out of him, stealing his drugs, and running away to San Francisco with his girlfriend. But then I'd have an Amber Alert on my hands. The federalies would lock me up and throw away the key for sure if I was caught with a glove compartment full of doses.
The Trey Anastasio Band show ended and the crowd rushed back into the casino as hey left the theatre. I yelled, "They're letting the freaks out! Here come the freaks."
Thousands of spun out hippies, Phishkids, wookies, and other weirdos flooded the Aladdin casino floor just around 4 AM. For a tourist couple who had no idea there was a music festival going on in Vegas, they must have been freaked out to see so many dirty hippies walking around in a jovial daze. The unleashed freaks did nothing to deter the degenerate gamblers from plugging away at the slot machines. They kept their heads down and continued to gamble while they ignored all the weirdness that went down right behind them. Kids were slinging pot and molly behind rows of slot machines, while other rolling hippie chicks watched the various lights on other slots, or headed to the bar for post-show cocktails, or continued to dance at the bar above the poker room.
Grubby was in the poker room at the time and told me that the entire casino reeked of pot. He thought kids were actually smoking it inside. I'm sure that the aromas of various kind buds wafted from the theatre out to the floor. Grubby also said he saw a few braless hippie chicks wander through the poker room.
The Joker and I made our way outside and walked from the Aladdin to the Excalibur. Along the way, we spotted two hookers on Las Vegas Blvd. just outside of Fatburger. The Joker wanted me to teach him how to spot a hooker in Las Vegas and I gave him a quick tutorial. We identified the ladies as they walked right next to us. One was a tall, super thin black woman with a blue wig. Her friend was a portly white girl with a super short skirt and her beer belly slipping out of her top. Two middle-aged tourists also spotted the girls and began to follow them. We walked a few paces behind them. I couldn't tell if they were interested or just fucking around. The black hooker with the blue wig walked up to an older gentleman wearing a suit. He was by himself and she made a decision that the guy was going to be her mark for the moment. The other chubby hooker slowed down and made a phone call while she let her friend do her thing. I assumed she was calling up their pimp telling him that they have a possible john. The old guy walked into the MGM. The black hooker with the blue wig walked in with him, followed by the chubby hooker a few feet behind them. The two middle-aged tourists followed the chubby hooker. I looked at the Joker and motioned towards the MGM front doors. We followed everyone into the casino. We decided to investigate.
By then, the Joker picked up on which girls were hookers and which weren't. As we walked by one of the bars, we saw about a dozen at work. He was amazed at what was going on, but for me, it's just part of Las Vegas. It's not anything out of the ordinary for me to see hookers crawling around a Strip hotel bar. It's simply another integral part of Las Vegas, just like the Bellagio fountains or the all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet.
The black girl with the blue wig struck out with the older gentleman. I assumed he wasn't interested. The middle-aged tourists soon disappeared from sight and we found the two hookers sitting at the hooker bat at the MGM. We sat down for a little while before retreating back to the Excalibur. On our way from New York, New York to Excalibur, I spotted a woman sitting down in front of the Statue of Liberty. She was drunk with a souvenir goblet nearby, she was missing her shoe, and crying hysterically. Another Las Vegas 5 AM casualty.
We headed to the bar at Mandalay Bay where we met up with some of the Joker's friends from Colorado. We all watched the hookers over there work it. One guy had a table of three or four of them and we wondered if he had any idea they were working girls. There was some sort of bull riding contest in town, and a slew of cowboys were all around. They stood out with their tall black cowboys hats, blue jeans, and shiny buckles. Some of them were getting hit on by the hookers. The bar had an interesting mix at 5 AM with drunken cowboys, tripping hippies and scantly clad hookers elbowing each other and fighting over which girl is gonna blow the only high roller in the bar.
The Joker is originally from Texas and said, "Tourists from Texas must get a lot of hookers when they come to Vegas, because every time I tell them I used to live in Texas before I moved to Colorado, the hookers start flocking and hit on me even harder."
Since Vegoose was supposed to start in seven hours, we decided to leave Mandalay Bay. We eventually walked back to our room as the sun was coming up over the mountains, and we spotted a hooker walking towards us. The Joker nodded to me with a funny face which said, "Spotting hookers at sunrise is tons of fun."
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
October 22, 2005
Baby & Winky Reprise
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2005
Baby sat in the front seat of the car and trembled as she sobbed uncontrollably. Winky's dull windshield wiper blades barely cleared away the late afternoon Seattle rain as he sped off onto the Alaskan Highway with a faintly audible Neil Young song fading in and out on the radio.
"What the fuck you crying about?" Winky shouted.
"I shot," she whimpered for a few moments before she completed her sentence. "I-I-I shot Moses' dog!"
"Good!" Winky screamed. "Fuck Moses and his stupid dog!"
"You're not angry?" Baby timidly asked.
"Of course not, Baby," he said as he brushed away a tear from her cheek. "That prick had it coming. And you know how much I hate pets. Especially those chic hybrid dogs. Who the fuck cross-breeds pugs with beagles anyway? Moses' fuckin' dog was the ugliest mutt I've ever seen! You did this world a justice by ridding it of another ugly hipster pet."
Baby wiped away the remainder of her tears and slid the gun underneath the passenger's seat. Just a few minutes earlier she had stood barefoot on a cold linoleum kitchen floor and kept firing until Moses' dog stopped moving. Seven bullets later, one found its way into the door of the refrigerator while six were lodged in the body of the poor dog.
A simple drug deal gone bad had ended up in a case of canine homicide. Moses had tried to sell Baby and Winky a sheet of bad acid the month before. They didn't know it was bunk and had sold the entire sheet to a group of aging hippies making their way to Burning Man in a renovated school bus that looked like a giant banana. Upon their return, the hippies demanded all their money back.
Winky was pissed. That wasn't the first time Moses had fucked them over. He’d screwed them on a Canadian marijuana deal after crossing over the border in a kayak and smuggling in three pounds of British Columbia Super Skunk. Moses had shorted them several ounces and he still owed them. Moses had also stolen a pair of Baby's dirty underwear at one of their parties and held them for ransom. He said he would give it back for $200 and only if Baby and Winky would let him watch them have sex while he jerked off and sniffed Baby's armpit.
Winky tracked Moses down at his Mother's house and confronted him while he sat in the kitchen in his boxer shorts, eating a bowl of Froot Loops. Moses pulled a small pen-knife on Winky and Baby pulled out the gun. She pointed it at Moses' barking dog.
"Drop the knife or I shoot your dog!" Baby yelled.
Moses hesitated for a moment and then he heard the first shot. He quickly dropped the knife into his cereal. By the fifth shot, his dog had stopped barking and Moses began screaming. Winky grabbed the only thing of value he could find nearby -- a brand new Ron Popeil Showtime Rotisserie. He almost went for the juicer, but settled upon the Rotisserie because he always wanted to cook his own chicken.
The two dashed out the back door as Moses looked at the pool of blood collecting on his Mother's linoleum floor and screamed, "You killed my dog, Baby! Now Moses is gonna kill you!"
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
Baby sat in the front seat of the car and trembled as she sobbed uncontrollably. Winky's dull windshield wiper blades barely cleared away the late afternoon Seattle rain as he sped off onto the Alaskan Highway with a faintly audible Neil Young song fading in and out on the radio.
"What the fuck you crying about?" Winky shouted.
"I shot," she whimpered for a few moments before she completed her sentence. "I-I-I shot Moses' dog!"
"Good!" Winky screamed. "Fuck Moses and his stupid dog!"
"You're not angry?" Baby timidly asked.
"Of course not, Baby," he said as he brushed away a tear from her cheek. "That prick had it coming. And you know how much I hate pets. Especially those chic hybrid dogs. Who the fuck cross-breeds pugs with beagles anyway? Moses' fuckin' dog was the ugliest mutt I've ever seen! You did this world a justice by ridding it of another ugly hipster pet."
Baby wiped away the remainder of her tears and slid the gun underneath the passenger's seat. Just a few minutes earlier she had stood barefoot on a cold linoleum kitchen floor and kept firing until Moses' dog stopped moving. Seven bullets later, one found its way into the door of the refrigerator while six were lodged in the body of the poor dog.
A simple drug deal gone bad had ended up in a case of canine homicide. Moses had tried to sell Baby and Winky a sheet of bad acid the month before. They didn't know it was bunk and had sold the entire sheet to a group of aging hippies making their way to Burning Man in a renovated school bus that looked like a giant banana. Upon their return, the hippies demanded all their money back.
Winky was pissed. That wasn't the first time Moses had fucked them over. He’d screwed them on a Canadian marijuana deal after crossing over the border in a kayak and smuggling in three pounds of British Columbia Super Skunk. Moses had shorted them several ounces and he still owed them. Moses had also stolen a pair of Baby's dirty underwear at one of their parties and held them for ransom. He said he would give it back for $200 and only if Baby and Winky would let him watch them have sex while he jerked off and sniffed Baby's armpit.
Winky tracked Moses down at his Mother's house and confronted him while he sat in the kitchen in his boxer shorts, eating a bowl of Froot Loops. Moses pulled a small pen-knife on Winky and Baby pulled out the gun. She pointed it at Moses' barking dog.
"Drop the knife or I shoot your dog!" Baby yelled.
Moses hesitated for a moment and then he heard the first shot. He quickly dropped the knife into his cereal. By the fifth shot, his dog had stopped barking and Moses began screaming. Winky grabbed the only thing of value he could find nearby -- a brand new Ron Popeil Showtime Rotisserie. He almost went for the juicer, but settled upon the Rotisserie because he always wanted to cook his own chicken.
The two dashed out the back door as Moses looked at the pool of blood collecting on his Mother's linoleum floor and screamed, "You killed my dog, Baby! Now Moses is gonna kill you!"
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
September 28, 2005
September Subway Story
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2005
The homeless man wore a NY Mets t-shirt and black dress shoes three sizes too big. He wasn't wearing any socks. He stood in the middle of the subway and pleaded with everyone. In a raspy voice, he gave his thirty second sales pitch and then went through the car jingling a plastic cup. The subway was about half full and as he walked from one side to the other, he's keep saying, "Have a good day!"
He didn't get anyone to donate. Not one cent. After collecting no spare change, he stopped in his tracks and out of sheer frustration, he turned around to address the rest of the passengers. He screamed, "Fuck you! Have a bad day! Maybe someone should ship your ass to Louisiana."
He left as a young Russian girl in a tight tank top fumbled around with her map of New York City. I could see characters written in Russian and she kept flipping it over looking for a specific place. She was good looking enough that I considered offering her my assistance.
A twenty-something guy in an ugly olive green suit read the New York Times and tapped his foot on the floor of the subway. An empty plastic bottle of Diet Pepsi would bounce off his foot depending on how fast the train was going. When it would stop, the bottle would thrust forward towards the middle of the car.
Another young woman about half my age was busy trying to keep her baby from crying. The guy in the suit seemed oblivious to the bottle and the crying baby, that's when I realized he was listening to an iPod.
"Crack! Snap!"
I turned to my left and saw an elderly black woman with a big piece of bubble wrap. She started popping all of them in two second intervals. After the first seven or eight snaps, I got annoyed. The baby started crying louder. The Russian girl frantically studied her map. The suit tapped his foot and turned the page of his newspaper.
"Snap! Snap!"
About five minutes and two stops later, the bubble wrap lady appeared to stop. That's when she pulled out another piece out of her bag.
"Snap! Crack! Snap!"
I wanted to lean over and snatch the bubble wrap out of her hands and stomp on it. I stood up and glared at her as I walked into the next car. As I searched for a seat in the new car, the homeless man was at the tail end of his spare change collection and yelled out, "All you cheap motherfuckers need to get shipped to Louisiana!"
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
The homeless man wore a NY Mets t-shirt and black dress shoes three sizes too big. He wasn't wearing any socks. He stood in the middle of the subway and pleaded with everyone. In a raspy voice, he gave his thirty second sales pitch and then went through the car jingling a plastic cup. The subway was about half full and as he walked from one side to the other, he's keep saying, "Have a good day!"
He didn't get anyone to donate. Not one cent. After collecting no spare change, he stopped in his tracks and out of sheer frustration, he turned around to address the rest of the passengers. He screamed, "Fuck you! Have a bad day! Maybe someone should ship your ass to Louisiana."
He left as a young Russian girl in a tight tank top fumbled around with her map of New York City. I could see characters written in Russian and she kept flipping it over looking for a specific place. She was good looking enough that I considered offering her my assistance.
A twenty-something guy in an ugly olive green suit read the New York Times and tapped his foot on the floor of the subway. An empty plastic bottle of Diet Pepsi would bounce off his foot depending on how fast the train was going. When it would stop, the bottle would thrust forward towards the middle of the car.
Another young woman about half my age was busy trying to keep her baby from crying. The guy in the suit seemed oblivious to the bottle and the crying baby, that's when I realized he was listening to an iPod.
"Crack! Snap!"
I turned to my left and saw an elderly black woman with a big piece of bubble wrap. She started popping all of them in two second intervals. After the first seven or eight snaps, I got annoyed. The baby started crying louder. The Russian girl frantically studied her map. The suit tapped his foot and turned the page of his newspaper.
"Snap! Snap!"
About five minutes and two stops later, the bubble wrap lady appeared to stop. That's when she pulled out another piece out of her bag.
"Snap! Crack! Snap!"
I wanted to lean over and snatch the bubble wrap out of her hands and stomp on it. I stood up and glared at her as I walked into the next car. As I searched for a seat in the new car, the homeless man was at the tail end of his spare change collection and yelled out, "All you cheap motherfuckers need to get shipped to Louisiana!"
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
Red Light City
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2005Red Light City
After three huge hits, I tired not to cough as I put down the joint which I had sprinkled with Moroccan hash. Miami stopped smoking ten minutes prior and was zoning out while she sipped her tea. I took turns with a German guy with bad dandruff and we smoked the rest of the wonder joint as we sat at a small table in a coffee shop off of Nieuwendyk Street in Amsterdam. He got up and left without saying anything and staggered out onto the street.
"Take me to go see the hookers," Miami said as I looked at my reflection in her glazed eyes.
"It's the middle of the afternoon," I explained. "Only the old hookers work the day shift."
"Then let's go see the old hookers. I'm sure they have great stories to tell," she insisted.
She was right. No one weaves a better tale than an old hooker. To hell with Hemingway. If he chugged 50,000 cocks in his day, I'm sure his writing would have a slight edge to it. If anything, my journey into the Red Light district could become research for a new book idea... Existentialist Conversations with Hookers.
Miami had been to Amsterdam dozens of times before, but she never ventured over to see the area of town where the prostitutes worked. After our quick tour, she walked away from the Red Light district very depressed. Like so many other people, Miami had a romanticized image of the world's oldest profession. She instantly felt sorry for the old whores. In the highest trafficked area, you only see old and ugly hookers. They have been turning tricks since the Carter administration. The better looking ones are on the side streets and you have to navigate the narrow alleys while following the aroma of cheap sex in the air to find the doorways with the girls. And for $50 Euros, they can be yours for 15 minutes. It's weird to see a group of old Japanese ladies saunter by on a walking tour of Amsterdam soaking in the scene. You also notice how the scummy looking guys walk around the same block several times, circling for an available hooker.
The prostitutes stood inside small rooms with glass doors. Most of them wore their underwear or other lingerie. Some of them tried to get your attention as they knocked on the window. Others winked at you or blew kisses. Some actually touched themselves. On the day shift, I spotted several hookers yapping on their cell phones. One read the paper. Another watched TV. No matter what, do not take pictures of them. Derek tried once and a surly Russian hooker told him to "Fuck off!"
Miami and I estimated that a hard-working prostitute in Amsterdam's Red Light District averaged 2,500 Johns a year. That's $125K Euros a year after taxes and fees to rent the space. But even if they are clearing $60K a year, that's almost twice as much as teachers in NYC make. What does this say about us? Seriously, 2,500 tricks a year?
"That's gotta start to hurt after a while," Miami said as she grabbed her crotch and shuddered as we crossed the canal and walked backed to the coffee shop.
Tenin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
After three huge hits, I tired not to cough as I put down the joint which I had sprinkled with Moroccan hash. Miami stopped smoking ten minutes prior and was zoning out while she sipped her tea. I took turns with a German guy with bad dandruff and we smoked the rest of the wonder joint as we sat at a small table in a coffee shop off of Nieuwendyk Street in Amsterdam. He got up and left without saying anything and staggered out onto the street.
"Take me to go see the hookers," Miami said as I looked at my reflection in her glazed eyes.
"It's the middle of the afternoon," I explained. "Only the old hookers work the day shift."
"Then let's go see the old hookers. I'm sure they have great stories to tell," she insisted.
She was right. No one weaves a better tale than an old hooker. To hell with Hemingway. If he chugged 50,000 cocks in his day, I'm sure his writing would have a slight edge to it. If anything, my journey into the Red Light district could become research for a new book idea... Existentialist Conversations with Hookers.
Miami had been to Amsterdam dozens of times before, but she never ventured over to see the area of town where the prostitutes worked. After our quick tour, she walked away from the Red Light district very depressed. Like so many other people, Miami had a romanticized image of the world's oldest profession. She instantly felt sorry for the old whores. In the highest trafficked area, you only see old and ugly hookers. They have been turning tricks since the Carter administration. The better looking ones are on the side streets and you have to navigate the narrow alleys while following the aroma of cheap sex in the air to find the doorways with the girls. And for $50 Euros, they can be yours for 15 minutes. It's weird to see a group of old Japanese ladies saunter by on a walking tour of Amsterdam soaking in the scene. You also notice how the scummy looking guys walk around the same block several times, circling for an available hooker.
The prostitutes stood inside small rooms with glass doors. Most of them wore their underwear or other lingerie. Some of them tried to get your attention as they knocked on the window. Others winked at you or blew kisses. Some actually touched themselves. On the day shift, I spotted several hookers yapping on their cell phones. One read the paper. Another watched TV. No matter what, do not take pictures of them. Derek tried once and a surly Russian hooker told him to "Fuck off!"
Miami and I estimated that a hard-working prostitute in Amsterdam's Red Light District averaged 2,500 Johns a year. That's $125K Euros a year after taxes and fees to rent the space. But even if they are clearing $60K a year, that's almost twice as much as teachers in NYC make. What does this say about us? Seriously, 2,500 tricks a year?
"That's gotta start to hurt after a while," Miami said as she grabbed her crotch and shuddered as we crossed the canal and walked backed to the coffee shop.
Tenin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
August 27, 2005
More Existentialist Conversations with Strippers: Crazy Horse and Sapphire
More Existentialist Conversations with Strippers: Crazy Horse & Sapphire
By Tenzin McGrupp © 2005"Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other." - Milan KunderaA couple of weeks ago, less than 24 hours after the WSOP ended, Grubby and I made a late night run to Crazy Horse 2 or "Too" is how I think it's spelled. Anyway, I was wicked wasted. Extremely inebriated. Shithoused slammed. That's probably not the best state of mind to stumble into a strip club, but that's what happened. I wish I had a better recap of that night, but the moments are a blur. At some point, all strip club experiences blend together, especially when they happen way past 3 AM under a wet towel of liquor.
I was knocking back SoCo's on the rocks and Grubby said that I did not turn one stripper down during that visit. He was on a budget that night, down to his last $100 after a bad day at the craps tables and in the poker room at the Mirage, so he was super selective. I recall that one chick looked like Daryl Hannah (the current botox and collagen injected version). She had horrible breath and kept blowing in my face. I’ve never wanted a lap dance to end faster.
I remember that a Brazilian beauty with breasts the size of pumpkins kept pressing me to head to the VIP room. I know that's a sucker bet and told her, "No way."
Grubby befriended a Kansas girl. I forgot what her face looked like but he described her as a girl-next-door type who resembled Avril LaVigne. He told me I needed to get a dance from her. She did some weird thing with her supple mouth and it vibrated when she ran her face over my crotch. I loved that tingling sensation. It gave me goosebumps.
I vaguely recall the lesbian duo. I know I got them for two dances and they took turns grinding on me while they kissed each other and grabbed my junk. I purchased a lesbian team at Spearmint Rhino last week, and they weren't as good as the feral couple at Crazy Horse. I guess I give off that vibe, "That guy likes two chicks at once." And right away a menagerie of strippers would swoop in towards me fully prepared to vacuum $20 bills out of my pocket.
Supposedly (according to Grubby's blog), I said something to one stripper after she gave me a lap dance, "You're a true artist. And you know this." And yes that makes another Top 5 list.
Top 5 Lines I Say to Strippers...OK, so most of those are flat out bluffs. But even strippers like to be complimented every now and then. I have often recycled #2 and #5 on my regular list of Top 5 Lines I Use to Pick Up College Girls. Never underestimate the importance of complimenting a female on her shoes. Even if she's wearing flip flops, always tell her you like her choice in footwear.
1. "You're a true artist."
2. "I love your shoes."
3. "You have amazing skin. So smooth and so silky."
4. "You're the most beautiful dancer here."
5. "You're a deadly combination: smart and hot."
Flashback to last Friday night.
When Senor, Grubby, and I stood in the middle of New York New York trying to figure out what to do for Senor's last night in Las Vegas, Grubby laughed when he said, "We're only doing one thing."
That of course was... going to a strip club. The next decision to be made was... where? Grubby suggested Sapphire, the largest strip club in Las Vegas. Before we ventured off to blow my poker bankroll on naked ladies, we walked upstairs to the arcade. Grubby wanted to gamble on video games. He's an action junkie. We fucked up the horse racing video game and couldn't all play at once. We settled on skee-ball, specifically a version of basketball where you get points based on what hoop your ball goes into. We were playing $5 a game. The losers gave the winner $5. So if you won the round, you'd pocket $10. Grubby won the first. Senor won the second and I had an incredible run and took the third round. We all broke even.
Off we went to Sapphire and Grubby was bummed out that they only gave him a $10 discount for being a Las Vegas resident. He usually gets in for free. The hallway leading from the entrance to the actual strip club is cluttered with all types of art... mostly paintings and bonze sculptures of female torsos with erect nipples.
We were seated and it took forever for our waitress to bring us drinks. Sapphire reminded me of an airplane hangar with a stage, a few stripper poles, and plenty of loud music. Strippers naturally love Grubby and Asian strippers really, really love Grubby. He's a magnet for them.
I turned down the first girl who came up to me, on principle, and wanted to show my friends that I had some self-discipline in a strip club. The real reason was that my drink had not arrived. As soon as I downed my first, a brunette beauty made her way towards me. She reminded me of Summer from The OC and was severely curvaceous. I kept repeating, "I love your curves." And that seemed to get her going.
Senor pointed out to an Asian stripper in the corner wearing all white and said that was the only one he wanted. A few minutes later, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I thought that was the girl Senor liked. It ended up not being her, but at the time I was convinced it was her. Anyway, I told her that my friend loves Asian women and that I would like to buy him a lap dance from her. Unfortunately, Senor was already being entertained. She sat down on my lap and we chatted. It turns out she's from Thailand, which is where Senor's wife is from.
"He's gonna love you," I joked. "He even speaks Thai!"
"How do you two know each other?" she asked.
"We went to Harvard together. I live here now and he lives in Rhode Island."
"Ewww! I went to Rhode Island once for two weeks. I hated it."
"Just don't tell him that!"
She couldn't wait to get her hands on Senor. But then a rarity occurred, Senor got a second dance in a row from his stripper. That never happens! I felt bad for the Thai stripper on my lap. She asked me if I wanted a dance.
"I'd feel bad if I got you before my buddy, but since he's busy, how I could I turn down a dance from the most beautiful stripper in here?" (Note... Line #4.)
She started and she was fantastic. At the same time, a leggy Asian beauty made her way over to Grubby. We all had simultaneous lap dances. As I ran my hands over the Thai girl's body, I blurted out, "I love your skin. It's so smooth and silky!" (Note... Line #3.)
She giggled and grinded a little hard. That's when I said, "You're a true artist!" (Note... Line #1.)
Finally Senor was done with his double-dip and as my Thai girl put her clothes back on, I slipped her enough money to pay for my dance and one for Senor and said, "You're a deadly combination: hot and smart!" (Note... Line #5.)
She laughed again. I didn't bust out the "shoes line", mainly because I never looked down at her feet and more importantly, you should never say more than two of those lines with one girl. I broke that rule and used four!
Senor enjoyed himself with the hot Thai girl and she hung out with him for what seemed like an hour. Her roommate was the stripper who was grabbing and twisting Grubby's nipples for several songs and she eventually made her way towards me. She kept whispering in my ear that she wanted to go into the VIP room with me, Senor and the Thai girl. I suggested the Redneck Riviera after they ended their shift. She insisted on the VIP room. I hate the "hard sell" you get from strippers, especially in the middle of the lap dance. It's like seeing a commercial in the middle of a movie. It's uncalled for. Anyway, I told her that she wasn't good enough to get me back in the VIP room. She responded by grinding a little harder and grabbing my junk with more frequency. That was enough to get another dance out of me, but I refused to head to the VIP area.
Before the night ended, a cute blonde who looked like Elisha Cuthbert made her way to me. She was the girl I had been waiting for. She had an sexy accent. She was from the Czech Republic and had an infectious smile. She sat on my lap for a few minutes and we got to know each other before her dance. Before she sat down and began rubbing my chest, I knew I was getting at least two from her. When she told me where she grew up, near Prague, I mentioned how I loved reading Milan Kundera. She quickly joined in the conversation and discussed several of her favorite books from one of my literary heroes.
"Sometimes, his stories are so strange. It make you think about life."
Strippers who think and talk about books are such a turn on. She smiled and winked at me as I lost myself and all concept of the universe for seven and a half minutes.
"Sometimes," she whispered as she took off her Victoria's secret lacey bra and threw it on my head, "Sometimes there is no meaning to life. It just is."
Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.
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