I’m in the tiny Central American country of Belize.
I’m at The Palace with Ronette and Greg, they’re both really tan, Ronette has short blond hair and Greg has really, really short blond hair. Ronette is wearing a black leather jacket and pants that match while Greg is wearing a leather jacket that’s black and matching pants. Either I slept with Greg or Ronette slept with Greg or Ronette and I slept with Greg at the same time or someone else that neither of us even knows slept with him. Jim drives up in his new cherry red Porsche and then realizes that he’s in the middle of a dance club on the 14th floor of an office building and drives back again. Later that evening we end up at Greg’s house because his parents are in France on location or they’re in New York or they were torn limb from limb by savage man-eating tigers over fifteen years ago in the jungles of darkest Africa, he can’t remember which. We do some cocaine and watch MTV for a while and then do some cocaine and watch MTV and then think about doing cocaine while we’re watching MTV and then we think about doing cocaine while thinking about watching MTV. We do some ‘ludes and watch The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour.
I’m driving home at seven in the morning and I come to a stoplight and I stop. I look up at a billboard that says “Drink Pepsi†and even though it’s probably an ad for Pepsi it freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard.
After the prom Cindy and I went to Palm Springs. It was about that time that I started collecting all those newspaper clippings; one about a new park being built in the LA suburbs j one about an elementary school closing; one about some construction work downtown; one about a new movie that just came out. I collected a lot of clippings during that time because, I guess, there were a lot to be collected.
Later that day I’m having lunch in rI)y living room. Doug drives up in his new maroon Mercedes320SL and then realizes that he’s in the middle of my house and drives back again.
The next week I drive over to Steve’s house. We’d been friends since we were five, gone to school together, played on me same soccer team. I have a picture of us with our arms around each other after we’d won the championship when we were seven. Now he has sex with businessmen in hotels for money. On the way over to his house I think about the billboard that I saw. Drink Pepsi. It really shakes me up. I have to pull over to the side of me road and smoke until I calm down. Finally I get moving again. Steve answers the door. “Hi,†he says. “Hi,†I respond. It feels good to slip into me old familiar patterns. We’ve done this as long we’ve known each other. It’s like a ritual. Sometimes he says hi and then I do, sometimes the other way around. It’ usually depends on who sees who first.
