Lush

Chapter Nine






I’m reduced to a common beast. A pathetic captured animal chewing off its own limb in order to escape the torment. What had happened to dignity? To pride? To integrity?

I pull the cork from the second bottle of Merlot and scan the personal classifieds to laugh into the hollow void of the hearts of lambs seeking slaughter. I needed to know that there were others out there. Lone desperate lighthouse keepers tending the lamp hoping that finally a ship would birth their docks.

I’d sucked the faces off all my female friends and half of my male. I had been stumbling around blindly seeking a replacement for the last. I needed just to know momentarily that the world was full of lost souls adrift from their moorings floating back and forth in occasional brief copulations and dispersing as they resume the search for the one.

The personal classifieds was a good place to begin.



A GENTLEMAN entertaining with financial security sought to spoil two attract’ classy Europeans.

ATTRACT 33 SPIRITUAL male seeks petite female 18-30 for safe sexual fun E-subs’ genuine replies only.

ATTRACTIVE 30 yo’ English guy seeks transsexual for very fun-times.

ATTRACTIVE 30 YO’ BI’ GIRL seeks same 25-35 for f/ship’ SE’ suburbs

ATTRACTIVE dark bi’ male seeks couples for discreet fun times.

BUSTY DOUBLE D WOMAN wanted for fun times eastern suburbs.

COUPLE male 45, female 38 seek bi’ female. Asian women welcome.

CROSSDRESSER 51 tall slim seeking female f’ship’, r’ship’.

CROSSDRESSER fem’ exhibitionist seeks friend for discreet parade.

DOMINANT married guy, 32, requires female or couple for day fun times.

DON’T MISS THIS!! I’m a refined, not unatt’ve’ woman in my 70’s. I seek a warm sensitive intelligent woman for outings to cinema, theatre, concerts & ballet.

ELLEN/HELEN PLEASE BE MY VALENTINE met you at Copacobana New Year Eve, love 1st sight, my soul mate. Cover band performed Jeff Buckley. Our souls truly connected when we were arm in arm. Love to hear from you.

EURO  36 seeks Indian/African 25-45 f/ship’ r/ship’ students welcome.

EXOTIC sexy Afro/Asian/Latina sought by late 30’s tall exec’ bachelor.

FEMALE wanting to meet other sgle’ Greek females 30’s for socializing.

FINE committed Christian lady 50+ seeks Christian gent godly man 50-60

FRIENDS WANTED Married couple 50’s seek same f’ship’. Non sexual.

GENT 60 seeks lady or couple for completion of lifestyle.

GENT 66yo’ seeks lady who also misses those hugs and kisses.

GRANDAD would like to meet grandma for f/ship’ to complete our lives.

GUYS bored lonely? Join me (male) on a fun trip to the Philippines.

GUYS required to satisfy my insatiable X dresser partner.

HANDSOME guy late 30’s seeks happy slim lady to become my wife.

HARLEY DAVIDSON BIKIE 35yo. Free rides hot machine for young ladies, r’ship’. 

HERPES male seeking ladies all ages to start social group.

HERPES MALE 65 seeks female any age for affair f/ship’ r/ship’.

HERPES SOCIAL GROUP house parties music dancing all ages.

HOUSEWIVES wanted for discreet daytime fun male 30 city.

I’M A 56 YO’ single gent and I’m not seeking a committed r/ship’ but I feel the need for regular physical intimacy. If you share this need than I’d love to hear from you.

KISS FAN/80’s heavy metal seeks sim’ minded sub culture slim woman.

LA SENORA seeks el senor 45-55 yo’ for f’ship’ possible r’ship’.

LONELY 30 yo’ female seeks female friendship for girlie talks coffee dancing.

MARRIED African American 30’s seeks older woman. Discreet encounters.

MARRIED GUY seeks married lady for fun times.

MARRIED HANDSOME fit 35 seeks attractive Asian lady for intimate affair.

MARRIED INDIAN professional 45 seeks married lady for fun times.

MARRIED neglected 34 yo’ seeks attrac’ sexy 25-36 woman for fun time.

MARRIED 44 prof’ seeks discreet meetings with woman.

MARRIED 49 prof’ seeks married lady for discreet affair no stings.

MISTRESS wanted for 37 yo’ opportunity not to be missed.

MOTORCYCLIST fit 40 easy-going seeks active lady pillion rider/lover/social.

NICE LOOKING 36 yo’ guy seeks similar guys 30-42 yo’.

NUDIST seeks female 40-53 as partner at nudist camp.

PASSIVE GUY 55 yo’ seeks bi or gay guy, nth suburbs.

SEX BIKES ALCOHOL hot rods & Rock & Roll. If I’ve got your attention I’m 47 young, 5’10” no kids. Looking for fun r/ship’ with right girl, slim/med/bld’ 30-45. Lets enjoy life together!

SPUNKY separated mid 30’s gent seeks pretty and petite separated lady.

SWINGING 40’s male looking for bi’/str’ lady to explore swinging lifestyle.

T/V seeks similar for fun times.

WANTED pink shirt loving male for do dah times. Pin stripes only.

WOULD ……. FROM …….* (has friend Emma living nearby) call Bob. Met you at Town Hall 20th Jan for dancing lessons.

*Deleted to protect identity



Jesus what a circus of undersexed under-loved carnie freaks.

When was the last time these animals even kissed a sibling and didn’t feel the loin excitedly jump with thoughts to Shakespearean incest copulation? I’m convinced that they all live in trailer parks. Except the pinstripe only guy. Almost replied to that one myself.  Thinking about trying my own, just to see if it will be printed.



LUSH WRITER age indefinable through self-pickling of organs. Unfit. Suicidal tendencies. Likes Neil Diamond. Looking for 12-25 yo with firm breasts and a tight cunt. MUST BE STRAWBERRY-BLONDE WITH LONG LEGS. Must have credit card and own/parents convertible. I love seaside meals of lobster followed by theater and a night of cocktails and ecstasy pills at the most refined inner city clubs. Paid by you. Flaccid sized cock ready to pump into you momentarily for self-gratification. Must like dressing up as FBI agent Clarice Starling and being chased through a darkened abandoned house by a naked night-goggle wearing sociopath. Must like cuntilingus while bleeding. Must have motorbike license. Gun license. And a black belt in karate. Sensitive wine and chess by the river kind of guy just waiting for your call. Ring once three times and then again three times so I can screen you out from the debt collectors. Looking for f/ship’ r/ship’. Better still, a quick break of hymen in Reno on our honeymoon and jury duty on Michael Jackson’s next trial. Call me if you’re wet and husky.





*Deleted to protect identity





So it’s Valentines Day.

St Valentine that Roman Christian bastard martyr that every year rapes our hearts in envy from his deep six holiday, leaving the lonely lonelier and being responsible for ten thousand accidental conceptions.

I’m watching this big sap sitting up at the bar. A real good times loser. Today’s that day he hates so much, feels the pang, the knife twist a little deeper each year as the loneliness threatens to take up permanent residence in a hollow heart. He wants only to hide inside, I can tell, yet even with the pain of it all feels compelled to shave and shower, grease back his hair and wear a red carnation.

I watch him for sometime sitting there knowing that he fought the urge today to just draw the curtains and lie on the living room carpet masturbating in a litter of chocolate bar wrappers. Sprawled amongst the crushed silver bodies of beer cans. An ashtray aureole. Yet this poor bastard is powerless against the urge. Against the gamble of dressing up hoping that a heartbroken valentine honey will just saunter up and place a hand on his.

He throws a handful of salty beer nuts down his throat. Chewing slowly as he stares down into his beer. I can see that he’s been crying. He sits hunched over that big ol’ beer schooner with the slightest zephyr of hope blowing his sails as he floats around waiting for that candle at the end of tunnel to be re-lit.

He’s shined his shoes. Ironed his shirt. Washed his slacks. Picked the dirt out from under his fingernails and deodorized those armpits. He feels cheap. Sure, who wouldn’t? Out here whoring himself to the whimsy of love. Waiting along the bar with all the other poor saps as if in a police line-up waiting to be fingered by a fox. Those savage angels. Those divine monsters. An invitation with a wink. A seduction with a sigh. It’s so goddamned depressing as he grows old waiting.

That pathetic lump swelling as alcoholic fungi on the barstool layer upon layer until it grows high enough to reach across the bar for another beer. I’ve seen him here before. Waiting for a pre-midnight Cinderella to complete his fairytale. Chump.

What sort of militant sociopath, necrophiliac, coprophagus palooka would have the confidence to approach him anyway, sitting there with his bad tattoos and fight scars? Bad coaster poetry and big red beard. Sitting there with the sad sads, thinking about all the cunt he’s eaten and fucked, where was it now? Two and three women at a time, should have stretched it, one at a time, left some for now, like side-orders to a great meal. He sits there in the mirror behind the bar staring back at me. That poor bastard that I live everyday with.



I had wrestled with the city. Twisted its Rubix Cube city block sides trying to colour the town red. Had even worked til’ nine o’clock tonight in the vain hope that The One, my valentine, would answer a door to me. Maybe throw her hair down from above for me to climb. Eyes lock. The first kiss. We’d jump a tram downtown and spend the night, no, spend eternity, eating cherries and sipping Manhattans and inching our barstools closer wrapped in the Valhalla of the held stare. The Nirvana of the comfortable laugh and loving smile.

I’d forget all my angst toward midnight train couples with flowers and public displays of affection. I would not cry as I scraped dropped pavement chocolate from my heel. Would not have to turn quickly away from horses pulling carriages of lovers as the lump in my throat swelled. I would not be here. Only a couple more hours anyway and it will be all over. A new day. A new loneliness.



Ah, I shouldn’t complain. I could have had a girl tonight anyway, just was too choosy. It was only last weekend that I had been pushing the paycheck through a slot machine and trying to drown the brain in my leaky head when she had turned to me. A real Dante’s fallen angel trying to plant those big red lips on me.

I’d been punching buttons waiting for a heavy pay-out of cherries. A monolithic hangover and the ebbing adrenaline of the scene I had caused in the lobby had me stunned and jittery. My brain was idling. My survival instincts were frayed. I was a broken devil doll effigy of a man once strong.

The foyer of this particular casino was a kid’s amusement parlor so parents could just dump their snot nosed brats in front of a Mortal Kombat machine as they disappeared for a couple of hours gluing themselves to the nugget slots. A million bucks spent on this place just so shitty parents wouldn’t leave their kids in the car under a thirty-nine degree sun.

Besides, it’s a real bummer dragging screaming kids past the slot machine humanoids, having them knock over ashtrays and drinks as they rock the machines in tantrum.

No, one mustn’t disturb the regulars. A break in zombie concentration could cost a BIG WIN for these middle-class bovine ruminants. You have to get into the zone with these machines. Twisting through them with a kundalini psychic force to put the pressure on the robots inside to pay out.

Few people know the mentality of the slot machine. A seemingly cold gadget that operates entirely on chance wins through random numbers. This is wrong. The entire design has been manufactured to fool the average punter into actually believing this. The machines themselves are extremely sensitive to telepathic vibrations. If you haze your eyes and stare through the screen of falling fruit you can catch a small glimpse of the psychic powers within the machine.

The old ones know it, sitting there bathed by an electric glow and never taking their foggy eyes from the screen as they mentally twist and writhe within its clunky mechanics pulling wins from electric vortexes. They send telepathic depth charges into the heart of the sensitive robot buckling it and destroying its randomness. Its an age old heaven and hell battle between the machines and the humans. Without our telepathic abilities they would have taken over completely by now. We would be at their mercy, slaves to the self-manufactured ever-growing cyborg terrorists, a militia funded completely on stolen pension checks. The entire human race is protected against the imminent onslaught by an aged few that dominate the machines with their metaphysical abilities, slaving them in mental shackles.

They work their old gypsy magick ignoring the signs hung on each individual machine that read,

CAN YOU REALLY WIN ON A POKER MACHINE? NO AMOUNT OF CONCENTRATION OR POSITIVE THINKING WILL HELP YOU WIN. THESE MACHINES OPERATE PURELY ON RANDOM NUMBERS. MANAGEMENT.

They know why those signs are hung. It’s all part of the ploy to divert the recruitment efforts of the growing resistance. To diffuse rebel leaders from psychically worming through the screens and manipulating the machines from within. Next time you stand in a casino pay particular attention to the old gypsies, look at their eyes. Slightly swaying in front of the machines as they chant mantras within and seduce the red light perched upon their particular robot to illuminate with a siren howl of JACKPOT. Blank, compassionless spheres revolving in their heads with no more feeling than a crab’s eye on the end of a stalk. Snake charmers to electric serpents.

Yep, a shitty nappy wailing four year old clinging to a headless doll with a lollipop stuck to its forehead could really break these slot machine shamans out of their trance and cost the very win that will be fed back into the machine. So management constructed this massive lobby amusement park, where guys with ear pieces and tuxedos roam like massive predators dancing in a brutal parental protectiveness to a swarm of cuckolds.

The place is screaming through bells and whistles. Machines with groundhogs that spring in random order out of holes in a panel that brats punch back down with massive padded mallets. A shooting gallery where if you hit the target in the arse of the piano player it jolts him into electric life to play Beethoven’s opus 55 Eroica. Decapitated clown heads having grubby fingers stuff Ping-Pong balls into gaping mouths as the whitefaces revolve slowly in unison watching me cross the room with their crudely painted evil eyes. Lazer skirmish, that’s it, give kids a pair of combat boots and a semi-automatic laser firing weapon and send them into a dark labyrinth to hunt each other, obviously a covert military training facility preparing our children for the imminent invasion from Korea, Russia or China. A Gravatron machine where a mullet wearing disc jockey plays 1980’s Motorhead in a central stationary booth while your little darlings are stuck to the walls revolving at four hundred miles per hour. A miniature rocket that you climb a small pool ladder up into and then they shut the hatch behind you for the ride of your life. Those dirty ex-carnies lock you in, dig that, trapping you in man, while they go and try to win a Pokamon stuffed toy from the Skill Tester machine. A fucking fiberglass deathtrap. The whole joint is burning down around the miniature shuttle and your just sitting calmly in the dark watching a small projection screen rocking gently to the motions of the spaceship as you cruise through deep space.

I’m stumbling across the Sponge Bob Square Pants carpet with bad paranoia, a little shaky on my pins. Speed psychosis. A vicious MDMA comedown. No serotonin left and my dopamine receptors are all burnt out.

Did these people even know about my restraining order preventing me from loitering outside primary schools? Did they know about my dawn raids on foster home Hills Hoists? Had they shuffled with long bony sick fingers through my massive Neverland porno collection? I could feel every camera zooming in on me. I was obvious and I hadn’t even gotten through the children’s area yet.

I could feel the weasels closing in. nasty vibrations. The dragnet drawing around me as they whispered into their tiny cufflink microphones. They were shuffling in highly polished shoes. Flashing past behind the machines like lupine shadows between campfire bordered pines. Tensing muscles ready to pounce. I could feel their steady breathing on my neck. Feel the heat of their combined massive bulk radiating invisible around me.

Only another eight feet and I would be through this hell, could I make it? Was there an iota of a chance for our hero? Was reprieve from these monsters possible? Once into the blinking lights and free coffee of the gaming room I would be safe. It was a sanctuary for freaks and criminals. They look after felons there, as long as you’re feeding their machines and tipping the cocktail waitresses no body hassles even the most diabolical of criminals. There I would be safe from the savagery of these lizards, if only I can make it. Should I run? NO! Never run. That’s just what these tuxedo wearing snakes want me to do, give them a reason to shoot my legs out from under me. Maybe put a bullet in the back of my head in a gangland style assassination as I fall to my knees.

No, just remain calm and keep walking. Eyes straight ahead on those double glass doors to freedom. I’m hunched slightly forward watching the carpet wear itself out under each footfall, feeling emancipation close as the doors loom above me and then it happens.

FREEZE SCUM!

The net had closed around me. They had left their move until the last minute. Lulling me into a false sense of security before they pulled their Aztec gold tipped tank buster hollow points at my aching back. It wasn’t the words that had me stall rigidly and move my hands from my body with open palms to show that I was not about to pull out a machete, it was the tone.

The authoritative tone is the death knell of the felon. The unmistakable accent of complete self assured confidence that permeates every syllable of authority. Your average rat-bastard criminal is rarely frozen by the words themselves but by the tone coupled with the associated guilt, the knowing that you have done something wrong and had been just waiting for the axe to fall, it was just a matter of time.



DRUGS ARE BAD!

Fuck! How did they know? What square had ratted? How many huckster stool pigeons were out there right now grinning at my demise? I’ll kill that fucking snitch if I ever get out of life imprisonment on a good behavior bond. At this particular point in time it didn’t look likely. I could almost feel the heavy breathing on my naked back, could almost hear the latex snap on thick forearm of rubber gloves, a prelude to imminent cavity search. I was fucked.

The machines blowing steam and blinking lights, zapping, throbbing, thumping, zinging was unbearable in my present suspension of absolute terror. Electricity all around me. Arcade games manufactured to capture the one-second attention span of Attention Deficit Syndrome kids with crime boss parents.

The sweat on my forehead. The hot cyclops of a well oiled Colt special staring me down with a hollow eye of death or serious maiming. I needed to treat this whole affair very gently. This was serious. They knew I was a trafficker. What sort of mad detection system was installed in this hellhole to be able to sense illicit chemicals in my bloodstream? What sort of futuristic probes was the establishment using to feel me out from inside with giant invisible insect proboscises, worming through me and sending up data streams of chemical matches through the Big Computer? Was every surface here sensitized to decipher through palm sweat even the tiniest trace of narcotic pushed into my system since 1979?

I had starting to sweat pretty badly. Nothing from behind. Yet I could feel those eyes behind wrap around mirrors on me, unblinking. Unfeeling. White sclera callousness as taught jaws chewed Juicy Fruit.

Silence from my assassins, patient and reserved as they let me go crazy with the insanity of it all. I could feel the static in the air as they waited for me to buckle under the pressure and do something stupid giving them a reason to fill me full of hot lead. 

They wouldn’t do it! Surely. Not in front of children. Imagine the guttural wailing. Little girl’s high pitched screaming shattering Skill Tester glass booths. Little boys wiping away tears with dry snot caked chocolate stained fists. Parents would sue.

The people verses casino with me sick with lead and liver poisoning on the stand.

Remembering that you are under oath, is it true that you heard the casino employed security guard moments before firing upon you scream, ah, quote, ‘move and I will drop you right there in your own piss in front of these arsehole kids you fucking cocksucker’ unquote?

The media would have a field day.

No, they couldn’t take me out in front of all these children. Or could they? Was the risk of me alive amongst so much innocence greater than the life scar of watching a lush pervert shot to pieces by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones Men in Black impersonators? I wasn’t about to call their bluff. The vibes were too nasty.

I turn very slowly. Hands raised before my chest with open palms. Wide eyes calculating every angle. Was there still a way to slip the knot? Was the dragnet perhaps frayed? A weak link? Could I make it behind the SEGA Datura Racing machine with a quick commando roll? Would a mad dash into the laser skirmish labyrinth save me? Knock down a tyke and steal his weapon so I’ll have something to shoot my way out with, holding these psychopaths at bay with laser zaps as I back out of the big glass sliding doors.

Could that work? Take a child as ransom, demand a Black Hawk and a muscle-truck with a suitcase of Sadam’s stolen gold on the backseat. No. The risk was too great. These kamikaze, hari-kari nazis would go down dying as they took me out rather than see me walk with Huessain’s precious war gold.

My cowboy boots were doing a little shuffled salsa as I turn slowly to face the enemy, the law. A hot flush. Pearls on my forehead and runners down my back.

Against the wall was a large glass cabinet with a life sized automated replica of Robocop. With jagged, robot movements he lowers its gun arm and then brings it back up again with a quick, jerky motion that shakes its entire frame.

DRUGS ARE BAD. DRUGS ARE BAD.

A rubber mouth pulled taught over a mechanical jaw moving sickly as it talks through a tinny speaker. 

My assassin was an oversized kid’s toy trapped in a fish tank. Maybe I shouldn’t had that last pill before bed last night. The lights were suddenly too bright. The guy with fluorescent lighting tan in the red Smith Family Robinson jacket in the ticket booth was scratching his neatly parted slick back head as he stared at me concerned while punching tickets to the Mirror Maze.

How had it happened? Was this entire children’s amusement parlor constructed just to make a spectacle of me. I was a freak. Alone, naked and wounded in a petting zoo of savage Lilliputians.

Raised arms and a savage pill-sweat, frozen in the middle of a vast sea of cartoon character carpet, children had forgotten their high scores as they stared at me. Not even Sonic The Hedgehog could save me now. I had blown the whole invisibility routine. I was obvious. Should I drop to my hands and knees and pretend to be looking for a contact lens? No, I needed to get out of there before I aroused any more suspicion. Cut my losses and just move through the big doors into a strange and fierce world that sharpens its horns on people like me.

Shaking heavily I push my broken body through the glass doors and into the instant calming sanctuary of adults with as many or possibly more issues than me.



I order a Hitler’s Grenade from a potbelly-pig faced woman behind the bar, slip a fifty into a cursed machine and ease my blood-enflamed Hemorrhoids down slowly on a padded stool.

I’m losing big, my mind still racing from the brief interlude with Robocop so I’m failing to weave a tapestry of ancient gypsy magick into the belly of the machine, my psychic arguments are not convincing enough for it to hit the jackpot. Pull a lever, press a button, kick a bucket.

I’m under the cold massaging glow of my electric nurse. My robot huckster croupier. I’m concentrating deep and practicing an ancient silent mantra, slipping into a state of mental torpor when I’m distracted briefly by a gypsy pterodactyl perched cold-blooded on the stool by my shoulder. A strange and distinctly foreign force occupying the machine next to me. An entity that was twisting its aura around me to consume mine in a stranglehold of jock itch and over trimmed snatch. I throw a sideward glance and feel my mind reel, backpedaling to hold itself steadfast against the furthest wall of my skull.

This dame is about fifty, overweight with a clay mask of foundation, LOVE, HATE knuckle tattoos and too much cheap Twilight in Venice factory seconds perfume. She’s taking a big slug out of a hip flask that she gingerly stuffs back into her Jackie O style handbag.

She turns to me with a wink. A slow seductive facial twitch that has cold skeletal fingers playing the xylophone of my vertebrae. A gap-toothed smile. A face so heavily wrinkled that it looks like a wooden tribal mask carved by a clinically blind, obsessive-compulsive, ice pick wielding witch doctor. Big blue circles of rouge to hide the sandbags under her eyes. An empty bottle of peroxide in her laundry sink.

My cock crawls up into my body, sinking into ingrown as it struggles to become even more flaccid against this sin. This blasphemy of cunt bliss. This perversion of pornography. A long bony finger with fire-apple red fingernails depresses a blinking button and she’s laid maximum bet without taking her eyes from me. Another slug from the flask. An unbuttoning of top blouse button to give me a peek at scarred and wrinkled tits. A tongue sliding along top lip like a slug on a razorblade.

Having a win honey?

Ah, no. Not today.

I can change that sweetie. Only live a block from here. What’s that tusk around your neck?

Ah, its boar tusk from P.N.G, my father used to ride his bike over there in the fifties.

Oh yeah, what’s sort of bike are we talk’en bout here honey?

A big ol’ 1949 Bantam Major Side-Valve.

No shit! I used to ride with the Redfern chapter of the Hells Angels. Used to be married to the leader, a crazy dude called WildChild. Let me fucking tell you, those were the days. I’ve never been fucked so hard in my life than by sixteen fat bikers on the floor of a snooker hall on our honeymoon.

She goes a little misty in the eyes as she reminisces. Takes a big slug from the flask. Places a bet.

What’s your name sweetie?

Adam.

Well then Adam, you can call me Eve.

A tickle of my chin by long, painted fingernails. A full bladder. A slight shudder. A turn to the machine for momentary electronic distraction with a fake smile frozen like supermarket fish fingers on my lips. She shoves the flask into my hand and I take a belt.

HOT LAVA! Jesus Henry Christ! What’s in that thing?!

Rocket fuel honey, only the best from my personal reserve.

I take another hit, a real BIG gulp and instantly feel my liver shuffling around nervously downstairs. It throws a bunch of clothes and a passport into a big, old suitcase and leaves a note on the slamming door that it just can’t take the abuse anymore. It’ll be back, I know, we’re too attached. We need each other.