my friends are so depressed

I feel the question of your loneliness / Confide 'cause I'll be on your side / You know I will . . .

You ever really take the time to think back about your friends? Not your buddies-for-life friends, but the random pile of people with whom you've somehow formed a fondness for? I've been pondering this a lot lately. Why do I adore the people I adore? Who are they? What do they bring to the table that I covet so much - whether it's just being randomly cordial while riding the bus to work, or exchanging revisionist history over pints in a murky booze-induced haze at some hometown watering hole?

I'm proud to break bread with a multifaceted crew of characters: sometimes sweet, sometimes degenerate, mostly unsavory, always odd, and some even truly frightening. The most common theme of these relationships is that somehow, for some reason, we have always managed to drift apart. Sometimes I isolate myself from others for reasons I can't really identify. Sometimes these friendships turn into throbbing obsessions and no matter how much I try to will some sucker to stray, friends who were once friends can suddenly turn into wrathful enemies; fuming forces to be reckoned with, and boy do they want you to feel it.

Never before had the experience of making, loving, listening, eavesdropping, admiring, and even steering clear of friends been more of an eye-opening experience than when I worked for a few years at D.C.'s notorious Pleasure Place. It was at the tender age of nineteen that I would come to find out which personalities I find truly magnetic. I've come to know and befriend a mixed bag of both sweetly bizarro and charmed seekers of the absurd (these drifter types being somewhat like me) but more often than not I run into the addicts, the anarchists, the people who hold a genuine contempt for society, the grifters, the delusional freaks who revel in sick scenarios; stewing, paranoid individuals for whom to them being a friend is practically synonymous with being a monster. Why is that?

Some highlights:

Throughout my days and nights at the Pleasure Place, I came to befriend an insane Brazilian expat model living between L.A. and D.C. who constantly crowed of her plans to seduce her married therapist. Meanwhile, she was fleshing out a plan to wed her own English lover so he could obtain U.S. citizenship. Off work, we would play dirty cards, drink Maker's Mark, and knock back overflowing glasses of in-fashion beers at their tony townhouse. They would regale me with lurid accounts of self-performed adult circumcision (him - "Fuck right it bloody hurt! But I'd been yanking at it [ahem, the foreskin] for as long as I could bloody remember, then it finally just came off!") or vaginal fisting (her - "I just love the idea of his dexterity inside me!" she'd wail). Then we'd get stoned, make pizza rolls, and play "Who'd You Rather?" before calling it a night and catching some winks.

She, along with most of the rest of the staff, despised a certain bitchy male nurse who routinely snapped cell phone shots of his patient's (victim's?) genitals at the hospital, then promptly dissolved into hysterical laughter when he arrived at work to scroll through his shots, splitting his sides until breathless and bright-faced, clutching onto the Tight Tiger Pussy Cream counter to rein himself in as the rest of us threw him some shade.

My favorite gal, an angelically serene young babe, came in bright and cheery one hot summer night and proudly declared that she no longer planned to exist as a 'she,' but that 'she' was now going to live out the remainder of her life as a 'he.' He hadn't gone through with the reversal operation yet, but was already experimenting with a new series of trial hormones and masculine pronouns. I will say it was difficult to imagine this already puerile looking female choosing a new boyish name over her already boyish moniker. Slip-ups were easy, but he didn't seem to mind much, because we still chowed on cheese fries with ranch dip at the Silver Diner like clockwork after every scandal-filled Friday nightowl shift. This is approximately around the time I started referring to all my guy and gal pals as "Dude."

There were others, too, these friends of mine. I associated with sub rosa homo thugs who considerately bought me the occasional coffee, but wouldn't think twice about having me murked had I sold their true identities out. I had an all-time favorite boss who fucked random mattress actresses and Dick Nastys at Vegas porn conventions and chose to document it to celluloid while her husband back home waited for her (sadly, we called him Juice Box, for that's how childish he seemed to us, always waiting around for this woman who was clearly more like his mommy than a marital partner). Then there was the pretentious poetry loving sapphic sister who, after blubbering because I reminded her that it probably wasn't the wisest decision to allow a group of dudes to try on thong bathing suits without wearing any tightie whities underneath (I'm such a buzzkill, gosh) refused to speak to me ever again. EVER. And then there was me, the prudish prig who acquired the job only to demonstrate to herself that spread and stretched porno vagina was not the same thing as sloppy open-faced roast beef sammiches, much as it appeared so, and thus I needn't be frightened by female genitalia anymore.

I encountered deranged hookers. Hookers who got their rocks off by flashing me the honey pot then slipping me a twenty spot. Hookers who let their sweaty pimps drag them around the store by their weaves like whimpering hound dogs. Hookers who were proud to flash their freshly purchased pneumatic knockers, inviting us to give a squeeze if we pleased. (We pleased). Slippery pimps with even slipperier jheri curls who handed out suave velvet business cards and whispered in honeycomb pimp tones the assurances that our backs would be had, should for some reason a time come when we might not be needing them (or, presumably, our ponytails if we didn't make quota...harsh!)

I was once shocked to see a former friend I used to work with at a lowbrow lingerie boutique come in one evening accompanied by her newly-acquired madam, a grizzled no-nonsense chola in a tatty business suit. They were shopping for a new rubber ensemble and were on their way to meet up with my friend's next john, who she explained as a guy who gave her an insane sum of bills to simply squat over his face and fart with as much audible potential as possible, the louder and wetter, apparently, the better. The madam asked if I'd be interested in a new line of work, though for some unknown reason I declined. I bid them a fond farewell as they walked out in search of the nearest Taco Loco.

I witnessed violent thieving transvestites fucked up on poppers, PCP, and platforms (FYI, dangerous combo). I met every kind of freaked-out hustler trying to scam on me in any way conceivable. Promises of hooking jobs, exotic dancing gigs, Penthouse pictorials, the whole slinky triple-X shebang (if only I would go upstairs with him next door... It would just take a minute, mamí... But I would have to go alone... Unless I had an adventurous amiga...? In the astute words of Cher Horowitz, "As if!")

I worked with some of the whitest Howard University students who fully admitted cloak-and-dagger style that the only reason they chose that educational institution in the first place was to attain some 'street cred,' yet after trying it on for so long and attempting to navigate the foreign politics of Georgia Avenue with little success, they privately seethed with contempt at their black classmates (who also happened to be their fellow co-workers). This caused for some minor discomfort when black Howard students wondered aloud why white Howard students had even chosen that college in the first place. It suddenly became very evident that it is only within the realm of porn that racial barriers truly get smashed. Uh heh heh...

I met customers who crawled in from some of the pissiest corners of civilization, people who felt that in the safety of the store, with me playing the part of the (sexy redheaded) therapist, they could divulge their every fear, desire, sexual perversion, fantasy, and freaked-out fetish. Not to mention what they felt they could show me. Actual Poloroids of unknowing (I presume) spouses sporting nothing but nipple clamps, a ball-gag, and a horizontal smile. And one favorite customer of mine, a guy who documented his increasing-in-size bride, would proudly flip through his parade of sordid portraits chronicling his wife's amplified abdomen. Boy did he get what he was aiming for, because the proof really was in the pudding, so to speak. As her bosoms began to balloon, he practically foamed at the mouth, pointing to her corpulent breadbasket and sighing, tears of love practically bursting from of his baby blues.

I spoke with dozens of hot & bothered housewives who felt compelled to share with me their every sexual neuroses and, in one case, possible psychosis. "My husband wants me to dress like a stuffed rabbit. What does that even mean?" or "My husband is always trying to convince me to do butt sex, but every time he tries I start seeing stars, then I mysteriously black out."

Sorry folks, but the numbing truth is out there:

One of the most frightening moments of my life happened on a mild spring morning when I was alone in the store, minding my own beeswax, dancing along to J. Lo on the loudspeakers, ensuring that the electric blue g-strings clashed just right with the zebra print booty shorts. Before I could even scream out in spine-shivering surprise, I discovered one of my regulars standing in front of me. He wasn't just any regular, he was the extremely wealthy but elderly limping palsy sufferer who crammed his shaking and distorted feet into some of our spikiest high-heeled fetish stilettos. Accompanying him was yet another one of his freshly procured teenaged twinkie boy toys wearing daisy dukes and a purple glitter crop-top, the look made complete with a bleach blonde buzzcut and a wad of fragrant fruity chewing gum bubbling out of his M.A.C. lip-glassed mouth every few seconds until POP! He then rolled his gum back between his pink-lacquered smackers and continued chomping, feigning total boredom, not unlike a teenaged girl shopping for diapers with grandpa when she'd rather be rollerskating or disco dancing or smoking meth or whatever the kids do these days.

"Hi! One Magnum pleeeaaase," the older gentleman trilled as he plunked an expensive and horrifyingly girthsome dong of doom on the counter (faux glued-on blonde pubes thoughtfully included). His voice was warbly, womanly, and altogether terrifying. I don't know why, but I guess I kinda considered this eerie gent my friend in a way. It was almost as if I grew up with him on teevee, as he sort of resembled Roseanne's mother Bev, but with a slightly more fabulous wig. I ran into him all the time and besides, I knew all his ditzy twinks by their sparkly street names, not to mention the width of their wands.

Hmm... I'm still trying to come to a reasonable conclusion as to why I embrace these outlaw professions and the people who keep them in operation.

More steamy accounts to follow in the future...

(This is a companion piece to How Stella Got Her Tube Packed, an article I wrote back in '09).

I love all of them / Hurt by the cold / So hard and lonely too / When you don't know yourself

- rhcp