My head was throbbing from hours of hard partying up in the Slit.
Ask any one of those perfect specimines of soft, honey colored skin, legs a yard long, gravity-resistant breasts, and the just-right strength of cucumber melon scent wafting off them and they’d thrust for your crotch and coo how they could take care of a throbbing head. Aspirin? It did not exist there, even if you wanted it. Cocaine was what you took if yo weren’t feeling so hot, and I could tell there was a lot of if going around. The bump I took probably gave me the goddamned headache in the first place. Somebody probably cut it with just the right amount of baking soda so that it felt potent but held firm on the cusp of becoming an inferior blend. I rubbed my forehead and took a swift gulp of watery scotch, twirling the lone shrunken cube of ice in my mouth before sending down with the rest of the liquid.
It was still before dawn, but the festivities were no longer in the VIP area of the club, and had dragged themselves to the posh suites atop the Ritz-Carlton. There was a small part of me that thought this elaborate display of decadence and was Mason and Jeff’s way of showing how benevolently superior they were. My own empirical nature was also destructive because it was too easy to let the facts become warped in my mind and believe them to be correct. Realistically, the whole wild affair was just a testing of the boundaries of money and power, and my self-centering of the focus was just my cynical side trying to find fault. I tried to turn that part of my brain off, but there are times like this when, while you have a hard time believing how absurd your conclusions are, you’re glad to acknowledge then even if they are far fetched. This is how I came to have a gorgeous young girl convincingly feign attention to me who looked the spitting image of Nell from decades ago, questioning the chances of coincidence.
I feel that compared to most men, I’m probably hyper-sexual, but that is probably like saying you’re a frat boy who has a serious drinking problem or a reality television star who is a serious douchebag. But I do have sex and women on my mind far too much. I’m thankful that it’s not just repeating in my mind like an emergency beacon or mantra, “tits – ass – vagina”, because I’d go nuts. However it seems to manifest in more bizarre ways. Like having the honest belief that you can find a “porn” version of almost any woman. I guess mathematically, the genetic variation favors the likelihood of there being similarities, and with such a high population, the odds don’t seem so unlikely. Yes, Teagan Presley did really look like Brittany Spears – at least, before she got too much plastic surgery like most adult actresses, and was able to capitalize on that likeness, but what are the chances a stripper is going to look like my boss from half a lifetime ago? According to me, very high. You could compare their pictures and think they were the same person at different times, or but them side by side and swear it was a mother daughter. It was crazy. Shit, I’m drunk.
In my periphery, there were close to a dozen other objects wandering around the suite, which looked like it could fit my place in the walk-in closet. Ian was holding court in a far corner of the suite, arm around a pair of girls and a third boxing him in. Mason and Jeff were in the other end of the massive room, entertaining twins. Jim Hebert, who turned out to be a marketing veep for the convention organizers, gave me more information about himself by observing him in the corner then we spent within arm’s reach earlier. He had a fetish for Asian women, drank rosé, and had half the bladder capacity of the tiny Korean girl who he was chatting with. There were a handful of other guys who seemed to have glommed onto our group, and I wasn’t sure if they were conventioneers or just strip joint attendees. A tiny French man was wearing a chef’s coat and shaving various cheeses over a platter and tending to a propane burner on his cart that a petite filet was being pan-seared in.
Not Nell was telling me how she was in Mallorca last week on the yacht of a Yemeni sheik, and I didn’t bat an eye, as the real one could have done the same. I was consciously aware of our conversation but was not really involved in it, even though most other guys would follow up and ask how her cousin came to know Prince Alphabet and got her and her similarly hot, young girlfriends to spend a few days partying. I was concentrating on not unleashing pent up sexual tension on the doppelganger because I was sure that the next day or at some point later I would grab Nell’s breast or pat her ass in a horrific display of muscle memory. I was also torturing myself with the chaste notion of acting honorable for Carla’s sake, which existed as true and lopsided in my mind as the desire for my boss. I hadn’t made my mind up completely, but I took the strongest step so far in the direction of finding myself a woman who was actually available, or at least to indulge carnal pleasures without worrying about non-relationships they might effect.
The sky outside was changing from indigo to navy, and soon the shade would slip into a bluish grey as the sun prepared to make its ascent. I slowly wound up alone in the sunken entertainment area in the center of the suite, surveying the empty champagne bottles and drained tumblers. Isabella, the real name of the young Nell clone who was passed out on the couch beside me, snored slightly. I was sobering up though it was only because there was nothing left to drink. I should have left as the group thinned, but I observed as I usually do, watching and evaluating the scene as it unfolded. It didn’t leave me with any different insights – businessmen still go to absurd lengths to have fun when traveling since they can’t get away with that close to home, women who keep your company for money care less what you demand of them the more you pay, and that having a fuckload of money can buy happiness if it is a penthouse suite hosting an after-hours party.
Ask any one of those perfect specimines of soft, honey colored skin, legs a yard long, gravity-resistant breasts, and the just-right strength of cucumber melon scent wafting off them and they’d thrust for your crotch and coo how they could take care of a throbbing head. Aspirin? It did not exist there, even if you wanted it. Cocaine was what you took if yo weren’t feeling so hot, and I could tell there was a lot of if going around. The bump I took probably gave me the goddamned headache in the first place. Somebody probably cut it with just the right amount of baking soda so that it felt potent but held firm on the cusp of becoming an inferior blend. I rubbed my forehead and took a swift gulp of watery scotch, twirling the lone shrunken cube of ice in my mouth before sending down with the rest of the liquid.
It was still before dawn, but the festivities were no longer in the VIP area of the club, and had dragged themselves to the posh suites atop the Ritz-Carlton. There was a small part of me that thought this elaborate display of decadence and was Mason and Jeff’s way of showing how benevolently superior they were. My own empirical nature was also destructive because it was too easy to let the facts become warped in my mind and believe them to be correct. Realistically, the whole wild affair was just a testing of the boundaries of money and power, and my self-centering of the focus was just my cynical side trying to find fault. I tried to turn that part of my brain off, but there are times like this when, while you have a hard time believing how absurd your conclusions are, you’re glad to acknowledge then even if they are far fetched. This is how I came to have a gorgeous young girl convincingly feign attention to me who looked the spitting image of Nell from decades ago, questioning the chances of coincidence.
I feel that compared to most men, I’m probably hyper-sexual, but that is probably like saying you’re a frat boy who has a serious drinking problem or a reality television star who is a serious douchebag. But I do have sex and women on my mind far too much. I’m thankful that it’s not just repeating in my mind like an emergency beacon or mantra, “tits – ass – vagina”, because I’d go nuts. However it seems to manifest in more bizarre ways. Like having the honest belief that you can find a “porn” version of almost any woman. I guess mathematically, the genetic variation favors the likelihood of there being similarities, and with such a high population, the odds don’t seem so unlikely. Yes, Teagan Presley did really look like Brittany Spears – at least, before she got too much plastic surgery like most adult actresses, and was able to capitalize on that likeness, but what are the chances a stripper is going to look like my boss from half a lifetime ago? According to me, very high. You could compare their pictures and think they were the same person at different times, or but them side by side and swear it was a mother daughter. It was crazy. Shit, I’m drunk.
In my periphery, there were close to a dozen other objects wandering around the suite, which looked like it could fit my place in the walk-in closet. Ian was holding court in a far corner of the suite, arm around a pair of girls and a third boxing him in. Mason and Jeff were in the other end of the massive room, entertaining twins. Jim Hebert, who turned out to be a marketing veep for the convention organizers, gave me more information about himself by observing him in the corner then we spent within arm’s reach earlier. He had a fetish for Asian women, drank rosé, and had half the bladder capacity of the tiny Korean girl who he was chatting with. There were a handful of other guys who seemed to have glommed onto our group, and I wasn’t sure if they were conventioneers or just strip joint attendees. A tiny French man was wearing a chef’s coat and shaving various cheeses over a platter and tending to a propane burner on his cart that a petite filet was being pan-seared in.
Not Nell was telling me how she was in Mallorca last week on the yacht of a Yemeni sheik, and I didn’t bat an eye, as the real one could have done the same. I was consciously aware of our conversation but was not really involved in it, even though most other guys would follow up and ask how her cousin came to know Prince Alphabet and got her and her similarly hot, young girlfriends to spend a few days partying. I was concentrating on not unleashing pent up sexual tension on the doppelganger because I was sure that the next day or at some point later I would grab Nell’s breast or pat her ass in a horrific display of muscle memory. I was also torturing myself with the chaste notion of acting honorable for Carla’s sake, which existed as true and lopsided in my mind as the desire for my boss. I hadn’t made my mind up completely, but I took the strongest step so far in the direction of finding myself a woman who was actually available, or at least to indulge carnal pleasures without worrying about non-relationships they might effect.
The sky outside was changing from indigo to navy, and soon the shade would slip into a bluish grey as the sun prepared to make its ascent. I slowly wound up alone in the sunken entertainment area in the center of the suite, surveying the empty champagne bottles and drained tumblers. Isabella, the real name of the young Nell clone who was passed out on the couch beside me, snored slightly. I was sobering up though it was only because there was nothing left to drink. I should have left as the group thinned, but I observed as I usually do, watching and evaluating the scene as it unfolded. It didn’t leave me with any different insights – businessmen still go to absurd lengths to have fun when traveling since they can’t get away with that close to home, women who keep your company for money care less what you demand of them the more you pay, and that having a fuckload of money can buy happiness if it is a penthouse suite hosting an after-hours party.
---
Mason had a car on hand at the hotel, so it was about ten minutes of sleep I had rather than an hour long walk back past the circle of hotels that dotted the path around the convention center to get back to my room. There were a handful of people milling about, the early risers who you hated just on principle. They went about their morning routines and safely stayed out of mine, seeing the disheveled look in my eyes that matched the state of my clothes. The room had a mini coffee maker, so I loaded it up and set the timer. I scratched out another half hour of sleep in the bathtub soaking thigh-deep hot water, which would have been slightly dangerous if the tub was actually large enough to straighten my legs in. I threw on a khaki pair of pants and a powder blue v-neck tee shirt. It was a little casual, but I was not going to have to spend much time at the booth today, so I aimed for comfort. Besides, I’d seen what some of the others around were wearing, and I could have been much worse off.
I walked into a conference room that had been set up with assorted pastries and breakfast food for the staff of Talking Heads. I received some odd looks, but more for the two cup glass coffee pot from my room that I was drinking out of than for being in restricted territory. I nodded and smirked whenever eye contact was made, but kept to myself as I filled up my deluxe cup with their coffee. There was a plate of muffins that I stood over and had to sniff out banana nut, but I found my bounty and softened the sticky bits of the well done top that I chewed with sips of black coffee.
Tawny passed by the entrance and had a double take before retreating and coming back inside. She pensively checked the card on the outside of the room, peered inside to look at me and then the rest of the inhabitants, before deciding to join me.
“Good morning,” she said in a far too upbeat manner.
I smiled and raised my uber-cup in toast, “I salute thee.”
Tawny giggled like a schoolgirl, which she looked like. She reminded me of those child pageant contestants, looking too dolled up for her age, but without the sultry style of a woman. Her eye shadow was a glittery blue and her lip gloss was a bubblegum pink, which furthered the kiddie pageant look, and once again, she dressed in a mix of workout gear and lay about clothes. The physical toll from gymnastics and the forced development of her body at such a young age gave Tawny her tiny form, but I think that lack of a normal childhood also stunted her maturity. By the time she looked old enough to be taken for a woman would probably be when she grows into one.
“Are you staying in here or coming out to the booth?”
“Do I have a choice?”
She giggled again. I bet she had a sunrise prayer circle with the speakers from the Congregation Mount bureau, ate a cantaloupe with lowfat granola, and did calisthenics in the time it took me to gather the will to live and come downstairs this morning.
“No silly, we have to be the first ones there today!”
“Let me top this off and we can go,” I reasoned with her.
We headed out onto the concourse as more and more badge wearing attendees made their way in every direction. I was thinking of going to sleep after this morning block of standing and smiling, rather than checking out the lectures and workshops as Nell had intended for me. I should have swiped a pinch of that coke, just to keep me sharp for the next hour or two, but I wasn’t back in my early network days, and I was a drinker, not a druggie.
“Congratulations,” Tawny said, giving me a nudge on the arm.
“For what,” I asked.
“I heard Ms. Tanner got a big fish and you’re going to be the one doing the first engagement with them.”
“Really, you heard that? She tell you?”
“No,” she confided, “but I overheard her talking on the phone with Sunday about it. You must be excited!” I wish I could have summoned her enthusiasm over it, and not just because I was running on fumes.
“I should be, right?”
“Yes,” she said with an aw-shucks, wide eyed glee like her pumpkin was getting entered in the county fair.
“Maybe you’re right…I just have my…concerns.”
“Well, it is a big deal.”
“Yeah, but I have a little history with the client, so it’s complicated to say the least.”
“Uh-oh. Is it an ex-girlfriend?”
“Worse. Ex-employer.”
“Oooh, that sounds juicy!” She didn’t quite grasp the severity.
“If I told you the whole thing, perhaps it is kinda juicy, but it is like an ex-girlfriend in a way. The way you’re hoping you went your way and they went theirs.”
Tawny made a frowny face. “That’s no good.”
“No, and I wasn’t too keen to get back together with them.”
“As long as you don’t go all Billy Ransom on them.”
“Who is Billy Ransom?”
“He’s like a legend in the speaker circuit.” She was hesitant about him…there was something else.
“What’d he do? Most consecutive hours talking or something?”
“Not quite. He was a former tobacco exec. One of those guys that was all for their product. Smoked all the time, stood behind it.”
“Sounds typical,” I said. “Where’s the spectacular part?”
“He quit the business because of something that went on with the top brass. Left it all behind and decided to hit the talk circuit. He found out was terminal with cancer and ended up getting booked at his old employer.”
“Must have put them in their place,” I chucked.
“Opened up a manila envelope during his address. Shot six of his former co-workers and then killed himself.”
“I see…not so good for business.”
“No,” Tawny said, looking sad.
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I have terrible aim.”
I walked into a conference room that had been set up with assorted pastries and breakfast food for the staff of Talking Heads. I received some odd looks, but more for the two cup glass coffee pot from my room that I was drinking out of than for being in restricted territory. I nodded and smirked whenever eye contact was made, but kept to myself as I filled up my deluxe cup with their coffee. There was a plate of muffins that I stood over and had to sniff out banana nut, but I found my bounty and softened the sticky bits of the well done top that I chewed with sips of black coffee.
Tawny passed by the entrance and had a double take before retreating and coming back inside. She pensively checked the card on the outside of the room, peered inside to look at me and then the rest of the inhabitants, before deciding to join me.
“Good morning,” she said in a far too upbeat manner.
I smiled and raised my uber-cup in toast, “I salute thee.”
Tawny giggled like a schoolgirl, which she looked like. She reminded me of those child pageant contestants, looking too dolled up for her age, but without the sultry style of a woman. Her eye shadow was a glittery blue and her lip gloss was a bubblegum pink, which furthered the kiddie pageant look, and once again, she dressed in a mix of workout gear and lay about clothes. The physical toll from gymnastics and the forced development of her body at such a young age gave Tawny her tiny form, but I think that lack of a normal childhood also stunted her maturity. By the time she looked old enough to be taken for a woman would probably be when she grows into one.
“Are you staying in here or coming out to the booth?”
“Do I have a choice?”
She giggled again. I bet she had a sunrise prayer circle with the speakers from the Congregation Mount bureau, ate a cantaloupe with lowfat granola, and did calisthenics in the time it took me to gather the will to live and come downstairs this morning.
“No silly, we have to be the first ones there today!”
“Let me top this off and we can go,” I reasoned with her.
We headed out onto the concourse as more and more badge wearing attendees made their way in every direction. I was thinking of going to sleep after this morning block of standing and smiling, rather than checking out the lectures and workshops as Nell had intended for me. I should have swiped a pinch of that coke, just to keep me sharp for the next hour or two, but I wasn’t back in my early network days, and I was a drinker, not a druggie.
“Congratulations,” Tawny said, giving me a nudge on the arm.
“For what,” I asked.
“I heard Ms. Tanner got a big fish and you’re going to be the one doing the first engagement with them.”
“Really, you heard that? She tell you?”
“No,” she confided, “but I overheard her talking on the phone with Sunday about it. You must be excited!” I wish I could have summoned her enthusiasm over it, and not just because I was running on fumes.
“I should be, right?”
“Yes,” she said with an aw-shucks, wide eyed glee like her pumpkin was getting entered in the county fair.
“Maybe you’re right…I just have my…concerns.”
“Well, it is a big deal.”
“Yeah, but I have a little history with the client, so it’s complicated to say the least.”
“Uh-oh. Is it an ex-girlfriend?”
“Worse. Ex-employer.”
“Oooh, that sounds juicy!” She didn’t quite grasp the severity.
“If I told you the whole thing, perhaps it is kinda juicy, but it is like an ex-girlfriend in a way. The way you’re hoping you went your way and they went theirs.”
Tawny made a frowny face. “That’s no good.”
“No, and I wasn’t too keen to get back together with them.”
“As long as you don’t go all Billy Ransom on them.”
“Who is Billy Ransom?”
“He’s like a legend in the speaker circuit.” She was hesitant about him…there was something else.
“What’d he do? Most consecutive hours talking or something?”
“Not quite. He was a former tobacco exec. One of those guys that was all for their product. Smoked all the time, stood behind it.”
“Sounds typical,” I said. “Where’s the spectacular part?”
“He quit the business because of something that went on with the top brass. Left it all behind and decided to hit the talk circuit. He found out was terminal with cancer and ended up getting booked at his old employer.”
“Must have put them in their place,” I chucked.
“Opened up a manila envelope during his address. Shot six of his former co-workers and then killed himself.”
“I see…not so good for business.”
“No,” Tawny said, looking sad.
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I have terrible aim.”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment