Monday, March 12, 2007

The Kids are Alright


Last week Louie got his claws chopped. He needed special litter and i needed to take a drive and listen to the Stooges so i passed over the Allegheny and out of the city limits to the burbs. The Waterworks Mall is named after the municipal water works that sit right on the river and clean the shit and piss from upstream so that when i'm hungover in the middle of the night i can take a refreshing drink and not worry about the corn my neighbor may have eaten the night before. Just the thought of it makes me thirsty.

The Waterworks, as it's known to the locals, is one of those disgusting strip malls that sprawl across this fair country of mine. I believe the strip mall originated in that horrible place called California, the place rock stars and movie stars live and die, get married and divorced, where small town girls go to get famous but end up with nothing more than collapsed veins and job on a corner in West Hollywood.

I bought my litter and being hungry i drove down to the local submarine sandwich shop. It's a small shop tucked towards the back of the strip mall and it serves beer. I would highly recommend to anyone to get drunk at a strip mall or shopping mall because by the time you actually leave the bar the place becomes like a Dali painting. It's horribly grotesque and strangely beautiful. My lawyer, Mikhail Hornfrog and i, once spent a glorious afternoon in the the Monroeville Mall Houlihan's getting shitfaced while the woman did her X-mas shopping. The place had huge windows and it was in the middle of one of those great winter snows with the big flakes and shit, we had a driver so we sat and talked to the bartender and got annihilated. You movie buffs might remember that the Monroeville Mall was were Dawn of the Dead was filmed many years ago but on this afternoon it was the living the upstanding citizens of Monroeville needed to worry about but fear not readers my lawyer and i made it home safely, though i can't remember how, i just remember taking running starts and sliding on the snow in the parking lot on the way to the car.

But back the the sub shop and my sandwich and the beer i ordered. The kids in the shop were all young bucks most likely in their late teens to early twenties and were discussing the fake names they used and when they used them. Since i was still sporting my Charles Manson beard and it was a slow night for the cheese steak makers i chimed in that i once had my own fake name: Eric Lee. Yes i know not very original but for the suburbs of Cleveland more than adequate. These kids were using names like Jeremy Copeland and Heck Mulligan and i told them that the former was much to complicated and the latter much to fake sounding which they took with thoughtful glances while i ordered another beer and watched the fake Jeremy burn my fries. My point, i continued, was you needed something that sounded real and was quick and ambiguous, something easily confused or changed at the first sign of trouble. They agreed i had a valid point and began to work on their new monikers as i told them about the exploits of one Eric Lee.

It was one of those non-descript summer nights when Eric, being under 21 and his sidekick One-Eyed Phil, who was not as you may think my penis but my friend who had a glass eye, had used a fake ID to score a case of beer and were now cruising the suburban streets of Cleveland looking for something to do. They stopped by friends houses who weren't home, tried to think of someplace to go that may have some females but instead just drove around those wonderful suburban housing developments hoping for lightning to strike. Lightning never struck these two partly because they were driving around in One-eyed Phil's mothers station wagon. Not exactly a bitch magnet. But as the sky began to darken the espied a couple of drunk girls sitting on a front porch. After a few drive-bys and smiles they stopped the car and began to converse with the fair maidens. Seems the young ladies were drinking airplane bottles of vodka and tequila and were half in the bag when the white nights arrived with half a case of beer. One was tall and blonde, a bit gangly, the other was short and brunette with a round ass and what would someday be a killer tache.

They all hopped in the wagon and drove around looking for something to do. First it was some lame party where the high school kids didn't like the fact that some not so popular chicks brought some college freshman from the other part of town. Then it was some other house where no one answered the door and finally Eric came up with the brilliant idea of getting a motel room. Everyone smiled and we were off to Brookpark Road where motels can be rented by the hour for any number of reasons like prostitution, drug deals, murders or kids getting drunk and screwing. They opted for the latter and i don't know if a good time was had by all but Eric sure had a good time with the little brunette and capped of his night by sort of taking a shower with the little chippy who pleaded for him not to get her hair wet and of course he shoved her head right into the onrushing stream of water. Needless to say the girls got home a little late that night and when we finally dropped them in front of their house he told Phil to step on it so their parents couldn't get the license plate number.

Unfortunately Phil was a fucking moron and dragged our hero Eric back the next week to see the fair maidens, who looked utterly fucking mortified that we had returned and had most likely spent the week trying to scrub the unclean feeling from their skin. One-eye forgot to use Eric's nom de plume but instead called by the same name his mother did and needless to say the fair brunette didn't put it together until right before they left and ran to the car to inform Mr. Eric Lee that he was an asshole.

Which is why, i told the boys making my cheesesteak and fries, to keep the names simple and try not to run with an idiot like One-eyed Phil.

Postscript: The little brunette called herself Sooki and to this day i wonder if i actually got her real name and if i didn't kudos to her. She still ended up with her ass in the air and wet hair so kudos to Eric Lee as well.

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