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Ha ha ha. And the chances of that?
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We met at Maggie’s and rolled the die. To my great relief, Dad did not put in an appearance. Pete won again for the 4th (or is it 5th?) time, and we ended up at a party in Coconut Grove - where all the Beautiful People hang - or should be hung! Pete said the place would be crawling with babes and Troy added that getting laid was a sure thing. What else would they say?
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I don’t know about babes, but sure enough, the place was crawling. Mostly a blur to me still… I suffered like a martyr for about 20-minutes before succumbing to the call of the bathroom where I kneeled for over an hour, head bowed over the Giant Telephone. I spoke to Ralph and Hughie. And in the end, I had a word with God. First time in a long time.
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I’ve thrown up more in the past week than the whole rest of my life. Funny, eh?.
And Time does turn to trickery.
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Standing alone in a darkened room beside a palm tree, watching smoke swirling around bodies in all states of undress, surging with all kinds of chemicals: writhing, wriggling and riding the pulsating music, the whites of their eyes and the skin of their teeth and pieces of clothing all lit up like fairy-lights under stroboscopic UV.
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The Halitosis Dude’s name eludes me now, but I remember that, as he spoke, I tried to discern whether he was actually for real, or just some surreal figment of my imagination, which kind of gives you an insight into my state of mind at the time. .
He asked me all kinds of weird and wonderful shit, like riddles, or conundrums or what have you, and all the while I thought about UB. Who the hell is this asshole? Has someone spiked his drink? Has someone spiked mine?
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Somewhere in his droning monologue he mentions he’s writing a novel, and not just a novel, mind you, but a novel that would undoubtedly be turned into a movie. Guess who was going to write the screenplay? Why is it that this kind of person always has a novel brewing on the back-burner, never quite ready, but bubbling away nicely?
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‘Really,’ I say. ‘Amazing.’
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Besides the riddle that got me a free ride home, I can only remember one other. It goes like this: You’re standing beside a man who is looking at a portrait of a man hanging on the wall. You ask him who he’s looking at. He – for some reason left unexplained – chooses to answer you in rhyme. ‘Brothers and sisters I have none’, he says, ‘but that man’s father is my father’s son.’ Who is the man he is looking at? If I knew the answer then, I cannot remember now. I’ll have to think about it. So, I’ll use UB’s excellent advice about solving riddles. Knowing I already have the answer, just toss it in to the inky depths of my unconscious mind and let it sort it out. Okay. Splash. You deal with it, Unconscious, and let me get on with my story. Let me know when you have the answer. Take your time. No rush.
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And whatever the other riddles were, I don’t believe I managed to answer any correctly… except the last one. I blamed the beer – or maybe it was that laughing cigarette Mikey had passed me sometime earlier. But they were not what I thought of as real riddles, they were more like jokes. For example: What’s the difference between a duck? Answer: One of its legs are both the same.
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And so on.
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Almost barf on him at one point, I kid you not, but miraculously tightened my throat in time. I tuned out the noise the bad-breathed dope standing in front of me churned out. Tuned into the music blaring from countless speakers surrounding us. John Lennon as I recall, singing seductively:
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waiting to take you away
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climb in the back
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with your head in the clouds
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and you’re gone
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That’s what I need, a taxi, only I have no money. Could ask one of the guys, but none are to be seen and the thought of searching fills me with dread, like UB’s dude standing between the doors of Heaven and Hell – except I’m already in Hell and want out.
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My eyes find themselves settling upon a fat person across the room, sitting. Can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. The T-Shirt s/he wears is so tight that the letters running across the front look like they’re about to pop! In the region of the fat person’s extra-large gut was the motto: When you’re going through hell…
and below that a picture of a stick-man running through orange-red flames, and two words below that
don’t stop!
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‘Here’s one you’ll never get!’
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Oh God, not the Halitosis Dude again. Leaning into me, eyes flashing with misguided intelligence, he hits me with another riddle, sinking my hopes that - if I just ignore him - he and his breath will blow away.
.
The riddle strikes me strange. Because I recognise it? Stunned. It was the very same riddle UB posed not so very long ago! Who’d ever have thought it’d come in real handy some point down the road. And here it was. What a stroke of luck! Talk about coincidences – this was, as skeptics like to say, too good to be true. I feel myself smiling inside, deciding to turn the tables on this joker. I mean, he’s really asking for it and all.
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‘Before I even consider the question, let me wager you this: I’ll give you a riddle too, and whoever gives the right answer first pays for the other guys ride home. Deal?’ I wasn't fucking about.
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‘Where you going?’ he asks.
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I tell him not to worry, that I only live about 10-miles away. He shrugs dopily showing a smile that sends a chill up my neck and out through every hair on my head. A front tooth missing: inside mouth wetblackred.
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‘Then shoot,’ he says.
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So I throw one at him I know he’ll never get. ‘If it takes a chicken and a half a day and a half to lay an egg and a half, how long does it take a monkey with a wooden leg to kick the seeds out of a dill pickle?’ Man, you should’ve seen his face.
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Needless to say, I win. To his riddle, I give him the same answer I’d given UB. When he gets over the shock, he tells me that the answer to mine had better be good. And so, with a straight face I give it to him. ‘Not long at all because there are no bones in ice cream.’
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Unsure of whether I’m genuine or he’s being had, he laughs nervously.
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‘Okay. You win, man. Hey. That’s really good. How much you need?’
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And that’s when I lighten him twenty bucks, make like a bread truck and haul buns. It’s on my way out that I visit the bathroom for an amount of time I’m still unsure of.
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The bowl and I become one.
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‘At least he can’t get in here,’ I kept telling myself between chucks, hoping I’d remembered to lock the door.
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Also, needless to say, I don’t get laid.
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That’s the way the die rolls sometimes.
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Just about to fall asleep and the answer, out of the ether, pops into my head.
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The man speaking in rhyme is looking at himself.
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