The 401

I used to go to this bar on the corner, the 401. Hsan, the Korean woman who owned it was a tough, little bitty thing who’d been in business in the Loin longer than most. The 401 was a dive, a dark perfect place balanced on the knife edge of violence that surrounded every aspect of life in that neighborhood. Knowing how and when to kick people out was a matter of life and death for bar owners like Hsan. People on the street killed each other all the time, usually over money, sometimes over nothing. Crackheads, hookers, pimps, dealers, the johns from the Hilton two blocks away, the cops and the paddy wagons, the roundups, the fights, knives, guns, broken bottles, a lot of crazy angry people all over the place. The whole atmosphere of that neighborhood was one of violence, a study of urban criminology, and Hsan was nothing if not a criminologist. I wasn’t sure what kind of illegal shit she was into herself but I knew she ran some kind of gambling. Not cards or dice, but more like numbers. The only people that seemed to play were old Asian women like Hsan and I think it entertained her more than it brought in money. She might’ve been the biggest madam in the Loin for all I knew. I just know she was at that bar morning, noon, and night, and from what I could tell, she was running her bar solely to inebriate a hard-core group of locals, many of whom she called friend. As much as she loved us, however, love didn’t keep that place open, the money flowing off the street did. There was always the tired pimp getting all his friends drunk on Hennesey while the girls come in to pay up or the young dealers drinking bottles of Corona while taking paper off the b-girls or the guys in the suits nobody came to see sitting in the corner nursing neat Scotches and making calls. It was all out in the open in the 401, just like it was in that whole neighborhood the entire time I lived there. I came in every day, just sat at the bar and put bread in the jar and said, “Hsan, what am I doing here?” Hsan loved me. I went in one night, nothing in my belly but the bagels I ate at work, and she gives me this huge portion of piping hot spaghetti with meatballs. “This my dinner. I give to you. You too skinny.” Just like that. No room to argue. I asked for wine. “Wine? I got special bottle for you.” She goes down to the basement and comes back with a really old bottle of Gallo. Perfect. She was so happy. I didn’t have any money to speak of, my tab was growing and way past due, but she didn’t care. She liked me. I was never, ever a problem for her. I didn’t shoot or sell drugs, I didn’t cause problems, I wasn’t a criminal. She couldn’t figure out for the life of her why the fuck I was even there. “I’m a writer.” “Why here? Go someplace nice. Go New York.” “I’m from Texas.” “Go Texas. It’s better you there.” Not mean about it, she didn’t necessarily want to get rid of me, but she understood immediately what it took me half a year to learn. I wasn’t cut out for the Loin. I didn’t belong there. I was too sensitive. Too scared. Too fucked up all the time. It was a bad combination of undesirable traits and she knew well enough to know I was in trouble from the jump. Hence, spaghetti. She couldn’t do much else for me. I might die out there but it wasn’t going to be from hunger. Not on her watch. I ate the spaghetti. Every last delicious bite. It was Prego and overcooked noodles but, to me, it was gourmet shit, best I ever had. She comped my whole bill that night. I drank the entire gallon of Gallo. She never said a word and never asked for a dime.

I don’t really remember leaving. I do remember being at the Shawmutt Hotel with my friend Jack Root, saying the most incredibly vile things to him. Telling him God knows what. I cry. He threatens to punch me, hugs me, kicks me out. I pound on his door for a minute, think better and split. I hit the street, bawling like a baby. I pass this fat, black hooker talking to her pimp. “Hey, baby… Baby, you all right? What’s wrong, sugar?” She’s nice. She looks at me. “Oh, sweetie, I know just what would make you feel better. You got any money, boy?” “Yeah. I got a lot of money. I’ve never been with a black woman before.” “Oh, honey, you ain’t lived. Let’s go. Stop crying now. Gonna make me cry, you look so bad.” “I live right here.” “Okay. Give me one second.” She talks to the gigantic black guy. I hear her say, “This won’t take long.” Thinking, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? This could take FOREVER.’ She grabs my hand and we walk to the front door of my hotel. There’s no one behind the desk. We run for the stairs and up to my room on the 4th floor. “Where’s your money?” I pull a wad of cash from the drawer. “How much you got there?” “How much am I paying you?” “125” I peel off some bills and give them to her. “You gonna feel so much better when you come, sugar. You got anything to drink?” I pour two glasses of Southern Comfort. I unbuckle my pants and pull them off. I go for her breasts. “Easy now.” I back off a little. She doesn’t use a condom as she goes down on me. I play with her tits, amazed by them, the blackness, the stretch marks, the sheer size of them. She’s a big girl all the way around. She looks up at me. “You wanna fuck me? Let’s fuck.” “Okay.” “Give me some more money.” I hand her a wad of cash. “More.” I give her more. She pulls her pants off. Hands me a rubber. I put it on. She bends over and I find my way inside her. I play with her giant black tits and fuck her giant black ass until I can’t stand up. I roll off of her. She pulls off the rubber and starts jerking me. “Let me play with those titties. Let me see those titties.” I lick and caress her tits, each one bigger than my head. I can’t believe it. She jerks me off for a while then stops. “Where’s your bathroom?” I point to the door. “And then make a left.” “I’ll be right back.” She leaves.

I wake up the next day in a panic, two hours late for my job at the bagel shop. I look on my dresser and find my wallet. Empty. I’d cashed my check the day before for over 400 dollars and she’d taken every penny. All the money I had in the world.

When I get back to the hood that night, that same hooker asks me if I want another go-round. “Maybe this time you come, right?” “Payday only comes every two weeks, baby." I hear her laughing as I walk away.

Painless

When I lived in San Francisco, a guy who lived in the building behind me jumped out his 7th floor window. It was a Saturday, middle of the afternoon. Del was down the hall in the shower. We lived in a residence hotel, The Winton, on O’Farrell between Jones and Taylor. The room just had the sink, everything else was community. I was sitting at the desk, typing a letter to a friend when I heard what sounded like a gunshot. I looked out the window and there was a group of dudes in the alley, hiding behind a car. They saw me and called out, “You see anything? What was that?” I looked over to where they were pointing and there he was. Naked from the waist down, wearing a blue t-shirt, a puddle of blood forming rapidly beneath him. I screamed, “It’s a body! A dead body! Right there!” “What?! A what?!” “A dead fucking body! It’s right there! Right there!” I was freaked out, pointing frantically. I didn’t want to look but had to look, of course I had to look. I wanted to know where he came from, what floor. I looked straight up from where he lay and followed the windows to the 7th floor and sure enough, there they were, curtains flapping in the wind. No mystery to me what was on the other side of that windowsill. It was death.
Del came in. “Holy shit, holy shit. This guy just fucking killed himself. He just jumped out the fucking window.” “What? Where?” I wasn’t thinking about shielding her from anything, wanted her to be witness to it, wanted her to see his half-naked body lying in that Tenderloin alley. In one desperate move, this guy had summed up my entire San Francisco experience and I wanted her to see it.
She went to window and looked out. The blood was like an outline around him with one stream running from his feet to the nearby gutter. I couldn't see his face but the guys who’d been hiding behind the car were freaking out, alternately looking at him and then jumping away. “Shit, he is fucked up! Oh shit! Goddam!” All three had their cellphones out and it wasn’t long before an ambulance showed up and was followed by a couple of detectives and a uniform car. Del was horrified but like me, she couldn’t leave her spot by the window. One of the cops spotted us. “What did you see?” “Nothing! Just heard it and looked out! It’s the 7th floor!” “We know! Thanks!” I wished so much that I had seen it. I wanted to be more involved in this whole thing. Something I was going to exploit for the rest of my life hadn’t even really all the way happened to me. I felt gypped. I got back on my typer and told my friend what had happened. I couldn’t believe it. What luck.
Del was upset. Both by the sight of that guy’s body and my obvious excitement. “I gotta get outta here.” She brushed past me to the other side of our tiny room. “Let’s get drunk.” It was all I had. “No. I’m not getting drunk with you in the middle of the fucking day.” “That guy just exploded all over the alley.” “I know. I saw it.” She was dressed by this point. I grabbed my coat. “I’m gonna get a drink.” She stopped to look at me. “I’m just saying. That’s what I’m doing and I’d like it if I could drink with you.” “Okay. But I’m not getting drunk. I’ll leave you there.” “I know you will.”
Mr. Bing’s on a Saturday afternoon. Beats suicide every time. The light slanting in just right through the windows, cutting the smoke, more movie than real life. Jameson and Budweisers. Tom Waits on the jukebox. “I’m leaving. Be careful.” She kissed my cheek. “I’ll see you later.” I drank until there was no more light shining through the windows. Drank until I was cross-eyed. Met two Irish kids who’d had all their shit stolen. They were holed up at The Shawmut across the street from me so we took the bus back to the Loin together. I was wasted, telling’em I was gonna get’em into all these bars. They didn’t need any fuckin I.D. It was the Tenderloin, man. They said okay, they’d meet me in a few. I go upstairs and Del’s there. She’s just leaving. “Come on, Del. Let’s getta drink.” She’d had a few herself at this point. “Okay. Let’s go.” We meet the Irish kids on the street and take’em down to Eddy. They don’t get carded. We play pool until the sharks started circling. Left a big tip and moved to Jones. Hit the 311. It’s packed. The Irish can’t handle the dark, go home. Del and I dance, oblivious to our whiteness. The knife in my pocket and the pint in my pocket making me color-blind, happy to not be the guy in the alley, happy to be on the edge and not on the ground. “I gotta go. I’m sorry. You wanna come with me? Come with me.” I knew we were going to meet her boyfriend and the lesbian mafia she hung with. It was a bad idea. “Sure. Let’s go.”
In the Mission. Their apartment. Boyfriend weird about me. On the street. Lesbo friend hits me. “Go home!” Del resigned and angry. Stumble to the closest bar on Valencia. Buy a round for the house. Half my paycheck. Bartender tried to talk me out of it, then said fuck it asshole wants to give me his money shit and poured. Everyone thinks I’m a weirdo. I leave. Bus back. Pass out. Wake up when the bus driver hits me. “Get off the fucking bus!” I stumble out. Ass-end of nowhere. Long walk home. Head that way. Cutting across Polk when the Wu-Tang Clan asks me for smokes. I pull my knife and scream. “Aiaaaiiaaaaiiiaaaaa!” Then run. The Clan laughs. I decide to go the Green Door. Who doesn’t want to know what’s behind the Green Door? Make my way over to Sutton and there it is. The bull dyke behind the desk looks at me, swaying and weaving, trying to count my money. “Forty dollars for a massage.” “I got 38.” “Hang on.” Little Asian woman comes out. “Let’s go.” I follow her into the red-lit hall, there’s a bath, a shower stall, it looks dirty. I follow her into a room. She lays out a towel on a massage bench. “Take off your clothes.” I take off my clothes. “Lay down.” I lay down on my back, my boner poking up waiting for her to grab it and jerk me off for 38 dollars. She pats me on the side. “Roll over.” I roll over. “What would happen if I came here with a hundred dollars?” “You get a very special massage.” She squirts oil on my back and starts rubbing. “Could I get a blowjob?” “You get a very special massage.” “Handjob?” “Very special massage. Okay, you done.” “Okay.” I get up from my three-minute massage and put on my clothes. She walks out without another word. I part the curtains and look out into the hall. It’s some kind of hellish maze. I have no idea where to go to get out of here. There’s no one around. No noise. I turn right and walk down the hall. Dead end. Turn around and go the other way. Lost in the red maze. “Can I help you?” It’s the bull dyke. “I’m done.” “That way.” She points to the door. “Thank you.” “No. Thank you.”
I stroll into the Loin 30 minutes later and it’s late. All the decent criminals have gone home, only ones left are the crackheads, the pimps and the teenage hookers. I’m in the pizza shop and I see this one girl. Blonde. Built. “Hey.” “Hey. Wanna date?” “Yeah. How much?” “125” “It’s in my room. I live right here.” “Let’s go.” A whispered conversation with the gigantic black guy. She walks out first and I follow. She takes my arm. We walk to the hotel door. I look through the glass and see the desk clerk in the two-way mirror. “Wait.” I watch as the guy behind the desk gets up and leaves. “Let’s go.” I open the door and we run down the hallway to the stairs. We run up the stairs to the 4th floor, to my room. “Where’s the money?” I open my drawer and take out a wad of bills. I give her a few. “Got anything to drink?” I pour two glasses of Southern Comfort. She takes a sip, leans into me. “Don’t try to kiss me, don’t put your mouth on my tits and don’t get rough.” “Okay.” She pulls my pants off, unrolls a condom and goes down on me. I lean forward and play with her tits while she blows me. She lifts her shirt and bra to let me feel her. “You wanna fuck me?” I don’t know what she looks like. I can’t really see her. I know she’s white which is a first for me and I know she’s not out to kill me. “Yeah. I wanna fuck you.” “Give me some more money.” I give her a few more bills. She stands up and takes off her shirt and bra. She moves me over on the bed and sits. She takes off her shoes and pulls her pants off. “You don’t have any weapons, do you?” I pull my knife out of my pocket. “Give it to me.” I hand her the knife. She puts it behind her head without looking. She puts a fresh black condom on me and eases me into her. I’m crazy with lust but surrender to her lead, take it slow. “Go ahead.” She pulls me into her. “Come on, baby. That’s right. Fuck me, baby. Fuck me.” I quicken my pace, it’s heaven, I can’t stop, I don’t want to. “Pull out before you come, okay? Okay?” I nod. “Roll over.” “Not my ass.” “I know.” I take her from behind. She moans. I’m going to come. I can’t believe it. I’m wasted, been drinking since godknowswhen, it’s almost dawn, I’m wearing a rubber. But, it’s happening. “Okay. Okay.” I pull out of her. She rolls over quickly and pulls the rubber off and points my dick at the bedspread. “That’s it, baby. That’s right.” She milks my cock, careful to not let any of it touch her. I shudder. “Hey, that was all right. You’re a nice guy. You come find me again, okay?” She’s dressed already and at the door. “Okay. Thanks.” Out she goes.
I pick up the phone and call Delfina. “Hello?” “I just fucked a teenage whore.” “Where are you?” “At home.” “You just fucked a whore in our room? On our bed?” “Yeah. She was hot. I bent her over.” The line goes dead. I finish my drink and grab what’s left of my cash.
I’m back on the street. I walk up to the first b-girl I see. “Fitty.” I give her some bills and she whistles. Another girl comes out, throws a bag on the ground and then goes away. I pick it up and start walking back to my room. “Hey baby.” “Hey." "Wanna date?" "No. I don't wanna date. I don’t wanna fuck. I don’t have any money.” “You got rock?” "Yeah.” “Let’s go.” She takes me by the hand and leads me to a resi hotel on Polk St. As we go through the front door, the guy behind the glass makes me give him my license. I follow her to her room. “I don’t wanna fuck. You wanna get high with me, that’s cool. I’m down with that. But I’m not gonna pay you for sex, okay?” She ignores me and pulls out her works. She takes my bag and stuffs the end of her pipe full. She hits it hard, hands me the torch and the pipe. I hit it hard, hand it back. She loads it again. Hands it to me. I can’t work the torch so she does it for me. “Yeah. That’s it. Just like that.” I hit it again. I can’t see. Her bedspread is blue, the walls are green, the bed we are sitting on is soft. I lean back. She flips out. “What’re you doing?! What’re you doing?! TONY! TONY!” She’s screaming. “What? What?” I can’t figure out what the hell is going on. I freeze then remember where I am. I run for the door. Don’t stop. Nothing left behind, just run. I get to the hallway and look back. There he is. Tony. All I see is big, mean, latin, black, wifebeater, something shiny in his hand. I don’t look back again. Hit the stairs running. Is he still coming? Don’t look. Get to the desk. “Oh, so you are ready to go?” The young Iranian guy giving me shit. I look back to the stairs. Nothing. “Yeah, I’m ready. Give me my I.D., please.” He chuckles to himself, hands me my license. “Good night.”
I wake up the next day two hours late for my job at the coffee shop. Show up and my bosses want to fire me. I convince them not to, to go out, not worry about it, I’ll be fine. By 7 p.m. that night, I’m on a bus to Colorado Springs.

What would you do?

Standing on the subway platform earlier playing the ol’ what-would-you-do game. What would you do if that D train just pulling in was suddenly slammed in the rear by an out-of-control B train and the whole fuckin mess jumped off the tracks and started hurtling toward you? Would you run? Duck? Hide behind the staircase, a cross-beam? Shit yourself? All of the above? What would you do if the person next to you started freaking out, having a seizure, pulled a gun? What would you do if a cab jumped up on the sidewalk and creamed eight people right in front of you? What would you do if you were one of those people? What would you do if you suddenly found yourself in the middle of a vicious crackhead claw-hammer fight? What would you do if you woke up paralyzed from the eyeballs down? What would you do if you fell down the stairs and broke your leg at 11 a.m. and there was no one in your building and you’d left your phone locked in your apartment? What would you do? Another good one I like to play is “Random Death.” Sort of a variation on the same theme but a little different. You just think about the most random ways to die you can. I came up with it when I lived in Colorado Springs. I used to live downtown and I worked at this bar down the street from my apartment and one day, I was walking to work when this truck came roaring by that had a bunch of big metal pipes sticking every which way out the back. Got me to thinking, ‘What if I hadn’t been paying attention and the guy driving the truck didn’t see me and I accidentally got too close when it was passing by and one of those pipes smashed me in the fucking head and killed me? What would that be like?’ When I got to work, I got behind the bar and got my apron and shit and was waiting for my happy-hour crowd to show up, just shooting the breeze with this guy Brett who was a cook down the street at one of the other restaurants. I told him about “Random Death” and about the truck.
“That’s the kinda shit you think about when you’re walking to work?”
“Yeah. You should try it.”
“Who thinks about that? Gimme another beer.”
Brett came in every day at 3 pm and left every night at midnight. He drank about 20 beers a night and even threw in a few random shots of Jager just to keep it interesting. He lived alone, his teeth were going, his friends had abandoned him. He wasn’t gonna die randomly. He was gonna die from liver failure and loneliness and he knew it. Then the damndest thing happened. One day outta the clear blue, Brett got himself a girlfriend. She just started coming in with him a coupla times a week. He tended to drink less when she was there and he even started coming in only a coupla times a week, too. He was in love with her. She was nice, pretty enough, a good healthy girl who liked to ride her mountain bike and hike and ski and all that shit Colorado people do. She seemed to really like Brett, too. She was always fussin over him, laughin at his jokes, hangin on him. And she was good for him. I mean, he really got his shit together. He started ridin bikes with her and hikin with her and after a few months, they looked like they were headed to the altar. I’ve rarely been so happy for a guy who was practically a stranger to me. Made me think maybe there was hope for all of us, you know?
One night, she came in just as I was closing up. I told her Brett’d already gone home but I’d get her a beer if she wanted. “Sure,” she says and takes a seat at the bar. One beer led to two and then three and then we did a coupla shots of Jag and then we decided to go out to another bar where a friend of hers was bartending and had more beers and more shots. After a few hours, I kinda blacked out. Woke up the next day on my bathroom floor with puke and piss all over me. My head was killing me and I knew I was late for work. I get up and take a shower and go to put on clean clothes and get my ass in gear and that’s when I noticed my front door. It’d been busted open with what must’ve been a crowbar. The jamb was all torn up where someone’d pried the deadbolt away from the wood. There was even a hole where they’d kicked it open and sent the knob into the wall. Immediately, like a shot to the nuts, panic set in. I started lookin around for more clues and that’s when I saw the note by the phone.
I THOUGHT YOU WERE MY FRIEND.
No name, nothing. What the fuck? I went to the mirror to inspect my face more closely for obvious damage like maybe I’d missed something in my earlier misery but I still had all my teeth, eyes, no lumps or bruises. I figured all would be made clear to me at some point so I said fuck it and went to get dressed. That’s when I saw her hair-tie thing on my nightstand. I went and smelled my pillow and checked my sheets and sure enough, she’d been there. I don’t know if I’d fucked her or not but she’d definitely been there. I couldn’t believe what a scumbag I was. Here this guy’d finally found a girl he cared about and was turning his life around and was all happy and shit, and I’d just fucked it all up for him. The only thing I could figure was someone’d seen us together at some point that night and called him and he’d come over to my house to kill us but instead of finding us in the sack together, he’d just found me on my bathroom floor covered in piss and choking on my own puke, and apparently that’s when he decided not only to not kill me but also to not let me kill myself. You know he probably hated me so much more for having to help me but I guess he didn’t hate me enough to let me choke to death on my own puke. How the hell was I going to face him? I knew I was gonna see him at some point, the town was too fuckin small for us not to see each other. What was I gonna do when I saw him? As it turns out, I never had to answer that question. Three days later, I got so drunk I blacked out again and this time when I woke up, I was in Austin, Texas.

I never went back to Colorado Springs.