Blood, Guts, & Whiskey Read online

  I took a step forwards. The place was cleaned out, all right.

  “You really Jackie Blue?”

  For the first time in a long time, I said yes.

  He shook his head sort of sad like. “Well, that’s what I get for opening my big fat mouth. I done told this cooze enough stories about Jackie Blue back in the day to fill her head with ’em. See, my pops used to ride through here, and he always told me that back then the hardest man in the hills were Jackie Blue. And so when we’d ride by, I’d always have to tell this bitch here about it. I guess I might have oversold you and made Jolene here get some mighty bad ideas.”

  She tried to shake her head, but I could see it was true—she’d known just who I was the moment she’d walked through the door. Makes sense. Lucky is just what you call someone when you don’t know how smart they are.

  “That may be, son, but still all the same, if a gal wants to take her leave of you, it’s best to let ’em go without a fuss. What do you say?”

  He laughed and yanked Jolene’s purse out of her hands. He shook it and dumped it out on the floor. First came all my money that she stole and then came pinkish white bricks, one, two, three.

  “Brother,” he said as I watched the Nazi dope pile on the floor, “it ain’t the leaving so much as the stealing that bothers me.”

  Well, damn.

  “All right,” I said. “I see it now. She done played you and then she played me. Figures. So you take what’s yours and get on out and we’ll call it a day. How’s that sound?”

  “Sounds fine,” he said, then turned to the woman. “Scoop that shit up—leave Jackie Blue’s money—and let’s get going. Let you have one last ride before you get yours.”

  “No,” I said. “You misunderstand me. The lady stays.”

  He looked at me like I gone plumb crazy. “Jackie, I know she’s got a snatch like hot butter, but come on—this bitch is pure poison. You can’t want her to stick around after she tried to rob the both of us.”

  “That’s so. But as much as I might like to see it, I can’t let you hurt her. See, even if it was partway, or even in total a lie, that girl made me wake up last night—she made me see who I am. And no woman under the protection of Jackie Blue is going to get dragged off and dealt with by no biker piece of shit like you.”

  The fear hit his eyes and I thought it was going to be easy, but then it went away. At first I wasn’t sure why, but it’s that his young ears heard them before mine did—the sound of a group of motorcycles rolling down the road.

  “Now, Jackie, I got all sorts of respect for you, but I got to think of my own image too. Can’t let my boys think I got taken by a slut and a geezer.”

  He reached behind him and pulled a little flat pistol. He moved the girl in front of him, as a shield like. His boys were rolling into the lot—I had about fifteen seconds to make this right.

  I walked in, stepping to the right, putting Jolene totally between us. That suited him fine, he thought, as I’m not going to hurt the woman. But also it meant he couldn’t see me to shoot me. I took Jolene’s head in my hands—our eyes met and I laughed—then I slammed her skull straight back into Cole’s nose. He dropped and just for a second I stood holding Jolene by the head like I was getting ready to lay a Hollywood kiss on her.

  But instead I tossed her to the side so I could stomp Cole while he’s down. Three times did nicely. Then I picked up the pistol with my right and his shaggy greasy hair with my left and I dragged him to the door, just in time for his three buddies to come to full stops on their bikes. The dust swirled up and their engines roared and I stepped into the storm of it all dragging Cole behind me.

  By God, I felt good.

  “Welcome to Jackie Blue’s,” I said.

  The Return of Inspiration

  Tom Piccirilli

  I was back in Frisco and I still had no idea why I was there.

  It had something to do with the fact that my wife had tossed me out and New York had turned sour for me. Her attorney had chased me from our apartment and her girlfriends had iced me from our social circle. My buddies had to meet me in secret so their wives wouldn’t know they were consorting with the enemy. They were getting more and more worried all the time until we could only hang for a few minutes at the kiddie park while their children played. My pals were always late and fled quickly. I sat on that fucking bench watching screaming kids so often that the cops finally rousted me for being a potential pedo.

  For a year my publisher had been hinting at dropping me unless my novel sales improved greatly. They didn’t improve, greatly or otherwise. My last royalty statement had been for $12.35. I had resigned myself to the possibility that I wasn’t destined to retire to St. Croix anytime soon.

  Another buddy had started hitting it big in Frisco as an underground performance artist. He played to audiences of a few hundred every night, which didn’t seem very underground to me. He tried to explain exactly what he did, but I got too confused trying to picture how the bale of wire, the unicycle, the fifteen-pound weights, and the penis puppets all went together. It proved the limitations of my imagination, but he invited me out West anyway.

  The word got around the circuit that I was coming to town. I didn’t even know there was a circuit, or that such circuit would care about me in the slightest, but there it was. My mysteries never got reviewed. My horror novels had a sixty-five percent return rate. But my whitebread erotica stories had started getting some weird buzz. Even before I got off the plane I had three readings set up. One was at a sex bookstore, one at a sex shop, and one at a sex club. I began to sense a predominant theme attempting to impress itself upon my life.

  By the time I got to my buddy’s apartment he was already gone. The Europeans had gotten wind of his act and he was off to east London for a two-week show. Things moved fast in Frisco. He left a note saying the place was mine for the duration. Food was stocked and he’d conveniently left a map out on the kitchen counter with the bookstore, sex shop, and club marked in red pen. He told me that people who lived in San Francisco didn’t call it Frisco and I was doomed to look like a dumbass tourist. He wished me luck and was kind enough to leave me some cash in case I was strapped. It was fifty bucks. Clearly the concept of strapped didn’t go hand in hand with the penis puppets.

  The lady running the readings was named Miss Tress. She called and told me she was a big fan of my fiction. She thought it was wonderfully humorous, how I was always writing about my goofy alter ego getting into such ridiculous situations. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t have an alter ego. I told it like it was, but nobody wanted to believe me. I didn’t blame them; I didn’t want to believe it either.

  Miss Tress asked if I wanted to put on any kind of a presentation. She said many of the speakers brought up onstage their spouses, lovers, slaves, doms, troupes, entourages. They chose music, lighting, and a couple had smoke machines. They carried paddles, masks, costumes, plushies, pony-wear, ball-gags. I asked how they read with ball-gags in. She ignored me and said speakers liked to be playful before the audience. They often embraced their sexuality onstage. I had embraced my sexuality many, many times before but never on a stage. She said the best speakers knew how to use props to their advantage. I looked around my pal’s apartment and noted handcuffs, rope, duct tape, and excessive amounts of razor wire. The unicycle was propped in the corner. Christ, he even had a smoke machine.

  I told her I’d just need a copy of the anthology with my story in it. It was a book called Naturally Naughty 3, edited by Alison Wonderland. She said that was excellent—Alison was the main attraction of the show. She hung up and I stared at the phone like I wanted to call someone, but I didn’t know who.

  I hadn’t seen Alison since my last visit to Frisco six months ago, where she was the headliner and I’d read sixth out of six. She’d been expecting someone else. They were always expecting someone else. It was all right, I’d learned to live with it. I was sort of expecting myself to be someone else too.
r />   But after the reading at Betty’s Puss and Whips shop, Alison and I had thrown back a few drinks and done a curious dance around each other. She wanted to know where a vanilla fudge pudge like me had gotten enough imagination to write the stories I did. She was a dark, lovely woman with burning eyes, glossy black hair, and a molten fascinating core. The surface drew me in, but it was what smoldered beneath that really hooked me.

  We had taken a run over to her apartment, where she threw down a sexual gauntlet that had left me horny, shaken, and with a little too clear an insight into my own contradictions. I was a perverted prude. I was hardwired to be weak. I liked to be stomped but not too much. I liked being on my knees but only if someone appreciated it. She was so powerfully submissive that she’d scared the crap out of me. I didn’t cower but I came damn close. I was angry for a lot of reasons I understood and many I didn’t.

  I hadn’t been able to become the dom she needed. I couldn’t raise my hand to her. When I thought of a dom I thought of two guys named Dom that I’d known in high school. They’d both been bullies. I already had bad associations. When I thought of a sub I thought of Captain Nemo on the Nautilus or roast beef hoagies with lots of mayo. I figured I wasn’t going to be in the proper frame of mind to perform at a club called Beat Yer Ass.

  I was eager and nervous to see her again. We hadn’t spoken or e-mailed since our encounter. I read her blog for any hint of me that might turn up. She talked of many lovers and situations, but never of me. It left me remotely jealous and a little bitter.

  Two days later, the fifty bucks was long blown. I was in a cab heading towards the BYA. It was the kind of town where you could mention the name of a club and all the cab drivers would already have the best route mapped out. I was impressed.

  The BYA proved to be a decent-sized space that reminded me of some East Village bars. Dark, somber, but with a constant blur of activity in the back corners. A stage had been set up with tables covered in paraphernalia. Some objects I recognized. Many I didn’t. My curiosity was piqued. Dozens of books were stacked far to one side. There was no microphone or stool where a reader might sit. A large sign boasted a dozen names. Mine was number eleven out of twelve. I was moving up. At the top with a bullet was Alison Wonderland. The insecurities and self-consciousness began to hit hard.

  The joint was crammed. Women in see-through nighties and leather halters with their tits exposed wandered past me. Men in chaps and crushed velvet suits glided past. There were riding crops, canes, cricket paddles, strops, leashes, and zippered leather masks on view. The masks had holes for the eyes and mouth and nostrils but not for the ears. I knew I was going to have to enunciate clearly and really project.

  A young woman approached almost warily, slinking up to me hesitantly as if she might slip up on me unnoticed. Since I was staring right at her I didn’t quite know how that could work, but I was new to the scene. She wore a black silk halter and a latex skirt and not much else. She looked underage, had a heart-shaped face and cornflower eyes that would normally make me think of girl-next-door wholesomeness if not for the venue being packed with folks waving their naughty bits around.

  She looked into my eyes, going deep and not stopping. I didn’t know whether to blink or not. I stared back at her and she flinched.

  “You’re full of rage,” she said.

  “Me?”

  “You’ve killed many.”

  “Me?”

  “You’ve destroyed many men and women. The ones you hated and the ones you loved.”

  “Lady, you’ve got me mixed up with somebody else.”

  “If not yet, then soon.”

  “Say what?”

  “Your anger, it cuts into me. I want it. Don’t give it to anyone else. I want it. You can punish me. You can murder me if you want. I don’t care. Flay me, dump me in the bay. I’ll sign a suicide note. They’ll never find you.”

  It was a nutty enough dialogue to normally make me roll my eyes and grin, but I wasn’t smiling. Icy threads of sweat prickled my scalp and ran down the back of my neck. She spoke with more conviction than I’d probably ever spoken about anything in my life. I backed away from her and her hand shot out and clenched my wrist.

  “I’m yours.”

  “I don’t want you,” I said.

  “She’s not worth bleeding.”

  “Who?”

  “Alison. I know what you want.”

  “And how the fuck do you know that?”

  “She’ll never fulfill you. She can’t inspire you.”

  “Look, seriously, I think you—”

  “Please.”

  The girl had some muscle to her. I snapped my arm back twice and still had a hard time breaking her hold on me. The third time she released me.

  I wanted to ask her what the hell she was talking about. I wanted to ask exactly why she thought she recognized in me some overwhelming urge towards pain and frenzy. I opened my mouth and she stood on her toes, leaned in, and kissed me.

  She said, “You can kill me whenever you want,” and faded back, step-by-step, as if consumed by darkness in a well-lit room, until I couldn’t see her anymore.

  I recognized Miss Tress from my last reading. She spotted me and crossed the place with her hand held out like a duchess. She was decked in full head to toe pink rubber wear. I had images of her tripping, falling, and bouncing around the room like a handball.

  She drew me into the wings of the stage. “Are you all right? You look a bit ... put out.”

  “I think I just had a run-in with a fan.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Not really. I’ve just never had a fan before.”

  She snorted. “Have you ever been to a reading at a club like this?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Well, let me just fill you in ... you see, reading is, ah, optional.”

  “Say what? Reading is optional?”

  “Yes, as I mentioned, most of our speakers like to ... perform and put on something of a display for the audience. A cabaret.”

  “A cabaret.”

  “Yes, their ... well, their bodies become their art, you see. Their bodies, their acts of worship, become their fiction. Very few of them actually read.”

  I blinked at her. “Most of the readers don’t read?”

  “That’s correct.”

  No wonder the penis puppetry brought in the big bucks. I was in the wrong game and getting deeper all the time, and I still didn’t know what it was. She smiled at me like she thought my stupidity was pitiful and kind of cute. I blinked at her some more. “What about those of us who do read?”

  “Well, tonight, you’re the only one who does, if you choose to.”

  I sighed. I turned on my heel and started to walk out of the place when the stage lit up.

  Alison Wonderland, wearing a pink teddy and garters and fishnet stockings, wafted out. Noise and activity heightened in the shadows, but there was no applause. The rest of the lights dimmed. The darkness crept across me. My breathing slowed and grew shallow. My back itched like I was covered in leeches.

  “The show’s beginning,” Miss Tress said.

  Alison pressed her hands against the stage wall and assumed the position. I’d seen a lot of street dealers hit that position in alleys flooded with flashing lights, but I’d never seen a beautiful woman do it of her own initiative. Her head hung low. Her disheveled, black shining hair covered much of her face. It got me going. It filled me full of lust and dread and a little fear. I wanted to see her eyes.

  A prettyboy with muscles like cannonballs, wearing a little Tarzan loincloth, stepped past me. He held a thick belt in his hand. He lingered beside me in the dark, allowing the moment to stretch and progress. Alison waited, as immobile as stone.

  “Who’s he?” I asked.

  Miss Tress said, “Her dom.”

  Six months ago she’d been living with two guys. I’d met one of them. This guy wasn’t him. Maybe it was the other one. Maybe she’d pulled in a third guy to pick up t
he slack in bed or help make the rent. It set the prude in me on edge. I didn’t know where I’d gotten such puritanical angst. The perv in me really wanted to check out the tableau, sit back and watch it all play out. I wanted to push. I wanted to be pushed. I began to tremble.

  I knew Alison best through her confessional prose. She’d offered herself honestly to the world. The angle of her jaw energized me. The curve of her ass plucked at my guts. I was turned on by her and starting to really burn. I wanted to feel her nails digging in hard. Her flesh clapping mine. I had been shamed by her. I was furious with her. I should’ve at least rated a half-inch column in her blog.

  The dom’s oiled muscles and good looks offended me. That subtle hint of envy ratcheted up in my belly. It lifted me onto my toes. I didn’t understand it. A rage and a sudden insane need swept over me. The dom looked cool and almost bored. He was slack-jawed. He didn’t even have his lips set for what he was about to do.

  My heart hammered and my pulse tripped along at an increasing rate. I became light-headed. I felt like I’d been doing wind sprints all evening. Sweat slithered down my face. I stepped over to him.

  “You!” I said. “You her boyfriend?”

  He wheeled to face me and went, “Wha’?”

  “Alison’s boyfriend. Her lover. You him? You one of the two or three?”

  “What? No.”

  “Well, who the hell are you then?”

  “Chad.”

  “Chad?” Even his name offended me. “Chad! You a reader who doesn’t read? Fuck you, Chad!”

  “What?”

  “Take a walk! We don’t need you here tonight. You’ve been demoted. My lips are set, buddy!”

  “Wha’?”

  The look in my eyes scared him. The sound of my own voice scared me. He backed away and his jaw grew even slacker. Any other day he could probably twist me in half, but right now we both knew I wasn’t in control of myself. That put me in control of the situation, maybe.

  Before I knew what the hell I was doing I walked out onstage. There was a spattering of noise, a mixture of murmurs and disappointed yawps. Fuck them too. I stared into the shadows for a moment and saw bodies turning in motion, rolling over on couches, in the carpeting, doing their own thing. I looked for the wholesome girl and didn’t see her.