Chris HansenSelf-styled Journalist

A few years ago, I was heading back from meeting someone in Cape May, when one of my tires blew out while I was driving through Vineland. The blowout happened in one of the city’s nicer residential neighborhoods. I’ve changed enough tires to have the routine down pretty solid. I set about jacking up the car removing the lug nuts on the blown tire.

As I worked on removing the tire, a man parked a purple PT Cruiser across the way. He got out of the car and headed for a house down the street. He was a slim man with a moustache wearing aviators and a Hawaiian shirt, carrying a six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. As the man passed, a problem was brought to my attention: I had removed the spare tire from my car to make room for a hidden compartment that I could store a couple ounces of weed in. It wasn’t until I already had the wheel off that I remembered this.

For a several minutes I tried in vain to get a signal on my cell phone; Vineland apparently not being part of ‘Nationwide Coverage.’ While I was sitting in my disabled car, waving my phone around trying to get bars, another guy walked by in a Hawaiian shirt. He was chunkier than the first one. As he walked, he looked around in a paranoid manner. This man also had a small moustache, wore aviators and carried a six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. He walked into the same house as the first.

By the time the second man had disappeared into the house, I was outside my car, wandering around the street in a desperate attempt to find a signal. I began to move closer to the house that these men were going into. It looked like a typical two-story home, but there were no lights on and the front door was cracked open. There was a purple PT Cruiser parked in the driveway. As I looked up and down the street, I quickly realized that there were at least a half-dozen purple PT Cruisers parked along it.

Still waving my cell phone around, I approached the house. Its lawn was perfectly manicured; I couldn’t even see any mower tracks. There was a bright assortment of flowers in beds running along the walls of the house. Every last one of the flowers looked like plastic.

“Excuse me,” I called. “My car broke down; I’m looking for a phone.”

I waited a beat for an answer. From somewhere deeper in the house, I faintly heard some talking. I ventured further into the house and ended up in an immaculately clean kitchen. A man suddenly appeared in a doorway at the opposite end of the room. It was Dateline’s Chris Hansen. “Have a seat,” he told me, gesturing to a bar-stool up against one of the counters.

“Oh shit man, you’re that Predator guy.”

“To Catch a Predator… please, take a seat.”

“Really, I just need to use your phone. A tire blew and my cell phone gets shit reception down here.”

“Why don’t you just take a seat,” he said, still standing in the doorway, gesturing again at the barstool.

“What are you like a vampire or something?” I asked. He looked shocked. “You can’t enter until I sit down?”

“Something like that. Take a seat.”

I gave in and sat on the bar-stool. Hansen strolled into the room, looking down at a packet of papers he was holding. He flipped through several pages. “So your car broke down?”

“Really just a flat.”

“Does the name SweetSassy69 ring a bell?”

“Listen, I know what you’re doing… I know how the show works… but seriously, I need to call a tow truck or AAA or something. I don’t know who that is… honestly I don’t really talk to anyone whose screen name or email ends in 69 anyway. It’s just a bad idea.”

Chris flipped through more of the pages in the packet. “So you’re not ThickNMeaty73?”

I shook my head.

“OnURface32?”

“No.”

“AnalBandito72391?” I laughed. “That one caught your attention?”

“I’m just surprised that there are so many people using the name ‘AnalBandito’ that they have to put a five digit number after it.”

“Well… you don’t really seem like the type of person I’m after,” Hansen finally said, looking me over.

“How’s that?”

“I didn’t see you pull up in a purple PT-Cruiser.”

“Only child molesters drive purple PT-Cruisers?”

“It’s a fact.”

I nodded. “Good to know.”

“I’ve got a half hour until the next guy gets here. Would you like some Mike’s Hard Lemonade?” He opened the fridge, revealing over a dozen Mike’s six-packs.

“No thanks, I don’t have a vagina,” I told him. Hansen shrugged. “I do have a bunch of headies though… if you want to blaze… you know, just throwing it out there.”

* * *
We set about hot-boxing the garage. After one bowl we were pretty baked. The combination of the small garage, good weed and an ad-hoc gravity bong got us fucked up real fast.

“Dude, there aren’t… like… cameras and shit in here, are there?” I asked the Dateline reporter as he hit the gravity bong. He shook his head, inhaled and then stood motionless for several seconds before finally exhaling a voluminous cloud of smoke. “Isn’t there supposed to be a whole crew here… and cops?” Hansen shook his head again.

“Not this time. It’s just me.”

“So… like… what happens if one of these dudes has a knife… or like, a gun?”

“It hasn’t been a problem.” I rolled my eyes and took a hit from the gravity bong. “You know, this is what I always wanted to do: protect people from the evils of the world. There’s just so much evil out there, someone has to bring it in front of the average American and say ‘this is it; this is the face of evil’ so that they can recognize it.”

I exhaled. “The face of evil is a chubby white dude with blemished skin, aviators and a tiny moustache?”

“I guess so,” Hansen said as he went to use the gravity bong, but knocked it over with his leg. Bong water spilled everywhere. His pants got soaked. “Shit!”

“Awwww dude… that sucks,” I said. I spotted a wet-dry vac sitting across the garage, in front of a large cabinet. “I got this.”

“—no wait!” Hansen called as I pulled the wet-dry vac away from the cabinet. Apparently it was the only thing holding the cabinet closed. It burst open the moment I moved the vacuum. Bodies of men in Hawaiian shirts began to fall out onto the floor. I paused to wait for them to stop falling out, but they didn’t. Body after body toppled forward. Occasionally it seemed like they would stop coming, but the bodies were just stuck together; and with a little time they separated and all comically tumbled out. In all it took a good 30-45 seconds for the whole thing to empty.

“Fuck. That’s a lot of dead child molesters, dude.”

“What ashame,” Hansen said, walking toward me. “Now I’ll have to take care of you too.” Fangs suddenly appeared in his mouth as he closed in menacingly, with his hands formed up in front of him like claws.

“Oh shit… seriously?” I backed up. “You’re a vampire? This is just fucking retarded, man.” I was quickly cornered.

Suddenly, a large knife jutted through the garage door. We both looked to it, confused as it was just stuck there in the door. The knife then twisted and pulled away, taking a chunk of the metal door with it. A beam of sunlight pierced through the dark garage and illuminated the To Catch a Predator host. He tried to shield his face from the sunlight, but it quickly overwhelmed him and he burst into flames. In an instant there was nothing left of the investigative reporter other than some ashes.

The garage door began to open. Light from the outside poured in, blinding me and illuminating the smoke that was drifting around the room. As the door lifted more, I saw the man standing on the other side. At first I couldn’t see who it was as the flood of light only let me make out the man’s outline. He approached slowly, like a cowboy at high-noon. When my eyes finally adjusted, I realized that I was looking right at New Jersey’s own Jon Bon Jovi.

* * *
“Fucking shit, man; that was intense!” I shouted at him, gesturing wildly with my arms. “I thought I was fucking dead… then—BAM! Bon Jovi to the fucking rescue; that shit’s crazy!” I saw that he wasn’t paying attention to my reenactment. He surveyed the room and walked around it cautiously, with a certain swagger, while I made an ass of myself. “That was Chris Hansen! To Catch a fucking Predator Chris Hansen! Did you know that when you killed him? Were you thinking ‘oh, just another vampire?’ because that was Chris fucking Hansen!”

“You’re in shock.”

“I know!” I yelled in his face. He backed away. “Sorry,” I said, sitting down on the floor, next to the pile of dead child molesters.

“I knew it was him. I’d been tracking him since October. Hansen was a really slippery son-of-a-bitch, but it was just a matter of time.” He said, sifting through the ashes of a once semi-credible journalist.

“Was he Wanted Dead or Alive?” He didn’t answer. “...sorry.”

“This must be a lot for you to handle.”

“No not really. I ran into Springsteen like a month or two ago… so, you know…”

“Springsteen is way out of his league.”

“Yeah, honestly I thought he was full of shit… but I guess not, if you’re out here doing this…” I trailed off as I began to salvage the spilt gravity bong and pack another bowl. While I went through its remains, Jon Bon Jovi walked off down the driveway. “Thanks,” I called out to him. He just waved dismissively.

As he neared the end of the driveway, another chubby man with a moustache, aviators, a Hawaiian shirt and Mike’s Hard Lemonade appeared. “Excuse me,” he asked the rock legend, “I knocked on the front door but got no answer. Do you know where I could find SweetSassy69?”

In one swift motion, Jon grabbed the man’s chunky head, snapped his neck, let him fall to the group like a rag doll and then continued on.

“Epic.”

And that was the time that I smoked a bowl with Chris Hansen just moments before his demise at the hands of Jon Bon Jovi.

Bruce SpringsteenAmerican Singer-Songwriter

This one time I woke up to find myself laying along side this road in the middle of nowhere with Bruce Springsteen sitting next to me, picking at an acoustic guitar. It took me several moments to clear my head. Springsteen just kept plucking his guitar. There was nobody else on the road and it was getting dark. I stood up.

“Are you—?”

“—the Boss? Yeah,” he said in a raspy voice, nodding his head to the beat of his guitar-work. “That’s me. You’re probably in shock right now; you might want to lie back down.”

“What happened?”

“You swerved to avoid a deer. Your car was badly damaged. I had to get you out of there,” he said, looking down at his guitar.

I looked around. My car was nowhere to be found. “Where?”

“A little bit down the road. The crash site is too dangerous…”

“Shit man, well thanks,” I said, going to shake his hand. He didn’t even look up at me.

“Don’t mention it,” he said.

“So where are we?”

“A little place nobody knows called Lincroft.”

“Lincroft, New Jersey?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Where Brookdale Community College is?”

“…yeah.”

I looked around again. “Wait, are we in Thompson Park?”

He got up and slung the guitar over his back. “I wouldn’t be as concerned with where I was… I’d be more concerned that we’re safe.”

“Okay, that was sort of a weird thing to say. Safe from what?” I asked.

Springsteen took a few paces around the area. He didn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular. He’d occasionally stop and tilt his head as if he were listening for something, but then he’d just go back to pacing around.

“Alright man, you’re starting to freak me out,” I told him. “How about we just sit down and smoke a little bit of this?” I pulled out a piece and an eighth of mid-grade weed. Springsteen took to pacing for a little longer and then sat down next to me. I packed the bowl.

* * *
We smoked in silence for a minute or two, and then Springsteen started humming a song. The humming turned to some light singing. Eventually, the volume increased and Bruce was intensely wrapped in the performance of the song. He got up and started dancing back and forth, adding some clapping to the mix. At the time I didn’t recognize it, but now I know that it was "Dancing in the Dark.” I just nodded the whole time, desperately hoping he would stop.

He finished and sat back down. “You like that?” he asked with a smirk. I nodded my head and tried to smile as genuinely as possible. “So tell me…” he suddenly commanded, picking up the bowl again. “…what’s your favorite part of New Jersey?”

“Physically?”

“Anything; it doesn’t have to be physical.”

“I don’t know man,” I said. I thought about the question. “I don’t know if favorite would be the right word.”

“Oh come on, there are a lot of great things about Jersey. I’ll tell you what I like, it’s the people. The common New Jersey working men and women, they’re what makes Jersey great.”

“Listen,” I told him. “I’m from Jersey too. I don’t know what you expect me to say. The people… I don’t know. I like that my hometown doesn’t smell like ass, the way that other parts of Jersey do. I like that my drinking water doesn’t catch fire anymore. I like that the state has enough confidence in me as a driver to expect me to cross two lanes of traffic to get to an off ramp. Other than that, I can’t really say.”

The Boss shook his head. “How can you say that about New Jersey? There’s plenty of greatness in this state. Just think of Princeton, and the Stone Pony… the Meadowlands… Giant’s Stadium… the shore… hell, the first college football game was held in this state.”

“I know. My 4th grade class did a play on how great New Jersey is. I get it. But all of those things you just mentioned: Central and North Jersey,” I told him.

“It’s all just New Jersey, man,” he said, passing me the bowl.

“It’s not, trust me. You’ve got that shit; South Jersey, we’ve got Atlantic City and the Cowtown rodeo.”

“Well,” he said, adjusting the way he was sitting, “I don’t know if there’s really much different between North and South Jersey, from how I see it.”

I saw that the bowl was beat and tapped out the ash onto the ground. “Do you say sprinkles or jimmies?”

“Sprinkles.”

“Go fuck yourself,” I told him, getting up to leave. I headed down the road, away from Springsteen. For several minutes I wandered through Thompson Park, unsure of exactly where I was going.

* * *
Suddenly, a man jumped out at me from the tree line like a wild beast. I reeled back and ended up tripping over my own feet. The man stood over me and hissed menacingly. There was something terrifying about him. I was about to shield my face from him, when a wooden stake suddenly blasted through his chest, being plunged in from behind. A liberal helping of blood splattered on my face. “Fuck!”
The man fell over right next to me, clutching the stake through his heart. Bruce Springteen was standing there, aiming a crossbow at the spot where the man was just looming over me. “Checkmate,” he said, relaxing his aim.

“What the fuck was that?!”

“Vampires,” he said, loading another stake into his crossbow. “This place is crawling with them.”

“Thompson Park is crawling with vampires?” The Boss nodded. I looked over at the corpse of the vampire. “Aren’t they supposed to explode or catch fire or turn to dust or something?”

“That’s just the movies.”

“So what happens when the police get here?” I asked.

Springsteen shrugged. “It hasn’t come up yet.”

“It hasn’t come up yet?”

“No.”

“You know what; maybe I’m just approaching this from the wrong angle,” I said. “…since when are you a vampire hunter?”

“Remember that movie where Bon Jovi was a vampire hunter?”

“Vaguely… something like a direct-to-video sequel to John Carptenter’s Vampires.”

“That’s it,” he said, pointing at me. “So I figured, if he can do it, why can’t I?”

I nodded a few times. “Alright well, there are so many things wrong with that statement that I’m not even going to address it. You’re holding a crossbow; if you say you’re a vampire hunter, fuck it, you’re a vampire hunter.”

“Now you’ve got it,” Springsteen said, slinging the crossbow on his back and pulling out his guitar. “How about a song for the road?”

“Oh… no… no that’s cool,” I said.

“Oh, okay…”

He stood there a minute, holding his guitar.

“Great…” I said. “So, I’m going to leave… now.”

“I’ve got your back,” he said in his raspy voice.

“Nah, that’s cool. Don’t cover my back… seriously.” And with that I walked away. After some distance I looked back and he was gone. Despite some mysterious rustling in the trees, my trip out of the park was uneventful. Eventually I located my car and called AAA. As I was reporting the problem to them, I faintly heard an acoustic guitar.

And that was the time that Bruce Springsteen and I smoked a bowl, then he either saved me from a vampire or committed first-degree murder.

LeninRussian Revolutionary and Politician

Sometime in my second year of college, Cassandra and I were supposed to meet up with a friend of mine at the Tropicana in Atlantic City. The whole adventure started because I hadn’t been doing much that week except smoking weed and failing to go to most of my classes. I called up my friend Eagleman, a Philadelphia Eagles fan who had also gone on the road with the band Eagles for some time. I don’t know exactly what his real name is. Eagleman worked as a chef at Cuba Libre, a Cuban-theme restaurant within the Tropicana, and had given me an open invitation to stop by and have dinner on the house.

After class, which Cassandra had finally started showing up to, we drove out to Atlantic City. At first, she didn’t want to go. She was usually afraid to do anything outside her room. Most people and places terrified her, thanks to her precognition. I told her that it was fine at first, but then tried guilting her into going. It didn’t work until I mentioned that I had bought her a gift; she immediately perked up and agreed to go.

On the way we smoked something around half a dozen joints. It wasn’t very good weed, so we made up for quality with quantity. It didn’t really matter; we were already stoned. Whenever Cassandra decided to come to class, she’d meet me outside the building to smoke a joint first. It was our compromise. “Puff to pass,” I called it. According to her, getting stoned was the only way to turn off her gift of prophecy. Just to be sure we always smoked excessively.

We parked in the Tropicana’s labyrinthine garage structure and headed through the casino floor. Cass didn’t like it, but it was the only way to get anywhere within the walls of the Tropicana. We arrived at the Red Corner, where Cuba Libre resided, and tried to claim our free meal.

“I’m sorry, but there’s nobody working here named Eagleman,” the hostess informed me.

“It’s not his real name.”

“Then what is his real name?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“And yet you know him well enough that he’d give you a free meal?”

“Couldn’t you just… I don’t know… ask around the back?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “There are over forty workers back there in a very noisy environment. I’m not going around asking if anyone goes by the name Birdman.”

“Eagleman.”

“Whatever. Please move aside,” the hostess asked. There was a line forming behind me.

Realizing the futility of my situation, I stepped back. Cass was waiting for me by the edge of a large fountain that was within view of the restaurant. I sat down with her. “You already know, don’t you?”

“What?” she asked, perking up. “That we can’t get in? I know. I was just thinking about how that hostess dies in a terrible bicycling accident in three years time.”

“Are you serious?” I asked. She nodded. “That’s fucking crazy!” I looked over at the hostess for a minute. When not telling me what I didn’t want to hear, I really had nothing against her. It was eerie to watch her do her job, dwelling on how this woman was inevitably going to die. “And there’s nothing we can do, is there? That’s fucked up.”

“Nobody listens to the damned.”

“Whoa,” I said. “That’s some dark shit there. Let's listen to Morrisey and write dark poetry about how unfair life is.”

She smiled. “Shut up.”

So we hung out there for several hours, hoping that Eagleman would peek out of the kitchen and see us. I texted him a few times, but I got no response. It actually wasn’t that bad. Cass and I rarely got to hang out for any length of time. We took frequent breaks to go smoke a joint in the car. There was enough going on in the Quarter, the Tropicana’s reconstruction of Havana circa Godfather part II, to keep two stoners like us occupied. In front of us were a massive statue of Lenin, a vintage 50's convertible painted like the Cuban flag and a giant terracotta horse.

As the time passed, the lighting in the Quarter dimmed, simulating nightfall. Cass and I were so wrapped up in talking about Cuba and communism that we didn’t notice that everyone else had left. I had to interrupt Cass during one of her anti-capitalist rants to point out that there was nobody else around.

We got up and searched the immediate vicinity. There was no one. The lights in the restaurants were on and the tables were set perfectly, but we couldn’t find anyone. I even checked the kitchen, failing to find a single soul. We both sat back down at the edge of the fountain.

“Soo… did you see this coming?” I asked her. She shook her head. As we sat there, I thought I heard some singing in the background. It sounded sort of like the Soviet National Anthem, like in The Hunt for the Red October. I pointed it out to Cass, but she didn’t hear it.

Just then, the statue of Lenin that had been towering over us the whole time started to move. At first its motions were labored and mechanical, but soon it seemed to be able to walk regularly. We watched in astonishment as the statue sat down next to us at the edge of the fountain.

“Hey man, you holding?” the statue of Lenin asked me.

* * *
So we smoked up with Lenin, right there in the middle of the Quarter. I checked around us. There was nobody to complain. Lenin passed the joint to me with his massive stone hands. The fact that the former communist leader could manipulate the joint between his fingers was almost as fantastic as his presence.

“This is good shit,” Lenin told me as he exhaled. I nodded. Cass just kept staring up at him in amazement. “Where’d you get it?”

“Some Jamaican dude,” I said.

“Sick."

“So what do you think of this place?” Cass asked him, never breaking her star.

“Hmmmm? Oh yeah, this place. It’s cool, I guess,” Lenin sputtered out. “I mean, it’s really a… uhh… symbol of the proletariat elite’s oppression of the workers.” Cass just nodded. “You know, greed is a product of societal excess; but the truth is that only political freedom with satisfy the masses.”

“You’re not really Lenin,” she said. He turned to her with wide stone eyes.

“No, I’m him,” he said, patting himself down. “Just look at me.”

“You quoted yourself wrong,” she told him. “And you mixed up proletariat and bourgeois.”

“Really?... fuck,” he said, scratching his head. “I'm always doing that. Alright, I’m gonna level with you bros…” Cass and I leaned closer. “…I’m not who you think I am.” Cass rolled her eyes. “No seriously guys, hear me out. I’m actually a grad-student from the year 10191 who’s doing his thesis on socialism.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever fucking heard,” I said.

“I’m serious. I needed a project to get my masters, and I wagered that I could go back in time and implement socialism during the 1918 Russian revolution. I mean, the whole thing took a shit-ton of prep work… and I had to read that Marx dude’s book like over and over again… but you know, in the end I totally got a C+ for it.”

“You got a C+ for converting Russia to communism?” I asked.

“Yeah… well, I would have gotten an A, but my partner totally boned me on the grade.”

“Your partner?”

“Stalin. Big Joey S, as we called him on campus; total crack-up. I mean that dude was awesome. This one time, he set up this bitching kegger on the Dean’s lawn. That guy was fucking hilarious, man! This other time, he had the entire service staff at the University executed for an overcooked burrito. It was a fucking awesome! He’s all like, ‘line up!’ and they’re all…” he stopped and thought for a moment.

“…well anyway, he majorly fucking ganked the idea right out from under me and then took credit for the whole thing. He even got extra-credit for defeating Hitler… god, what a dick! It was my idea to beat Hitler. I said to him in the car, ‘Fuck, we gotta fucking kill that Hitler guy,’ and Joey was like: ‘yeah.’ He just used all my notes and shit. Fuck man!”

“I’m sorry—ganked?” I asked.

“No, shut up,” Cass said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “So it was all just your final project then… communism, the cold war, the gulags… all of it. You’re just some time traveling undergrad.”

“Graduate student… but yeah, pretty much.”

I turned to Cass, “I don’t know how you can focus on that and not how this statue just came to life, or where everyone went. It’s like Mannequin or something.”

“Umm, Night at the Museum?” Lenin interjected.

“Yeah,” Cass said, “Night at the Museum. It’s not like Mannequin at all. What are you talking about?”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I got my movies about weird shit coming alive all mixed up. In the future I’ll try to be more careful about mixing up those two,” I said, throwing my hands up.

Cass lapsed into deep thought for a moment. “No you won’t.”

“What a bitch,” I said. She punched me in the arm.

“So what made you think that you could introduce Marx’s vision onto early twentieth-century Russia, of all places?” Cass asked.

Lenin shrugged. “Can’t think of anywhere better.”

“Well Marx specifically said Russia was a poor candidate for socialism. There was no middle-class.”

“No middle-class,” I repeated, nodding.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. We talk about it all the time,” Cass said, pointing to me.

“Two or three times a day,” I said, “at least. ‘No middle-class,’ we say. It’s kind of weird. I didn’t know what she was talking about for the longest time.”

“You know what?” Lenin asked, holding the joint between his massive stone fingers. We both perked up. “Fuck it,” he said, inhaling deeply. He burnt through most of the remains of the joint in a single hit. “I really don’t give a shit. I just joined the class to get with this chick. It’s totally just not worth it now, you know?”

I shrugged.

Suddenly, one of the sets of double doors into the Quarter burst open behind us with a terrific explosion. We ducked the initial blast by hiding behind the fountain. As soon as the smoke started to clear we emerged to see a large statue of a Roman leader walking in carrying a streetlamp as a spear. “Lenin!” he cried out.

“Caesar!” Lenin replied, rising to meet him. They charged at each other. Lenin brushed aside Caesar’s streetlamp with ease and tackled him to the ground. The two statues struggled on the floor of the Quarter, smashing everything in their way. Cass and I, keeping our heads down, made our way to the second floor where we appeared safe from the melee.

“Why would a statue of Lenin think that he’s a time-traveler?” I asked Cass. She just kept watching the fight. “That’s just weird. You’d think that the personality of the statue would be related to what the sculptor envisioned, not who the person really was. If you—”

“Shut up,” Cass ordered, grabbed my collar and kissed me briefly. She then went into my jacket pocket and pulled out a CD that had been gift-wrapped. She smiled and put it in her jacket.

On the first floor, Lenin had mounted the terracotta horse from P.F. Chang’s and charged into Caesar with the streetlamp, knocking him down. Lenin stood over the fallen Caesar statue and cried out like a wild beast. The cry startled me and Cass, and brought things back into focus. We decided that was time to leave as quickly as we could.

And that was the time that I smoked a joint with Lenin and then got cock-blocked by a fight between statues.

George S. PattonGeneral, US Army

A few years ago I was playing Warhammer 40K, the miniatures war game that involves buying armies of tiny plastic soldiers at budget-killing prices, at a gaming convention at the Hilton in Iselin, New Jersey. As I was starting my first turn, a man walked in the war gaming room (aka Hitlon Ballroom C) wearing khaki riding pants, a crisp WWII American officer’s jacket and a shiny M1 helmet sporting four golden stars. It looked as if he had just walked in from 1945. He strolled around the room looking at the various games being played with his head held high. When he finally came by my table, I noticed that the man was a dead-ringer for General George S. Patton.

He reviewed my Imperial Guard army of plastic men. “Those are some sharp boys you have there,” he said, pointing to some of my more poorly painted guardsman with a riding crop.

“They’re just regular guardsman. They suck,” I said. Patton stared me down for a minute.

“Let’s talk over here for a minute, son, ” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder and guiding me away from the table. As soon as we were a good ten feet away, he stopped, took off one of his riding gloves and slapped me in the face with it.

“Ow! What the fuck man?!”

He grabbed my head with both of his hands. “Don’t you ever say that in front of the men again! Do you hear me? Those boys have to go through enough. They’re tired, scared… hell, just look at those bastards they’re up against, some sort of bug-lizard monsters. They don’t need to hear their CO talking some bullshit like that!”

“Okay…”

“Good,” he said, straightening up. We headed back to the table. He looked the battlefield over again. “Now what’s this ugly sucker right here?” he asked.

“That’s a Tyranid… something-fax… I don’t know. It’s like a giant-bug tank-thing,” I told him.

“Sounds like an intelligence failure to me. The bugs probably set a trap for you. Your old plan, throw it away!” he commanded, taking the paper that I had my army list written on and ripping it to pieces.

“Okay… I needed that, but okay…”

“Where’s your cavalry, son?”

“It’s an Imperial Guard army, there’s no cavalry," I told him.

“No cavalry?! What a load of bullshit!” he shouted, alerting everyone in the room that he was still there and still loud. “You’ve got to have something you can exploit a goddamn breakthrough with!”

“I’ve got three of these Sentinels,” I told him, pointing to my futuristic squadron of lightly armored walkers. “But they’re pretty flimsy. You could kill them with… harsh language.”

“Doesn’t matter, they’re there to die for their country. Send them forward and give them some marching fire! We’re going to punch a hole in their line right there,” he said, pointing at a swarm of four-armed aliens with his riding crop.

“Charge into their Genestealers? Have you ever even played Warhammer 40K before?”

“War never changes,” he said, stoically.

I rolled my eyes.

“What’s going on?” asked my opponent, a fat kid with a severe eczema outbreak covering his neck. “Are we still playing?”

“Shut your mouth, you traitorous, fat little son-of-a-bitch! I’ll teach you to work for those bugs!” Patton said, lunging for the eczema kid. It took all my strength, but I held him back. The kid ran away, leaving his army of alien bugs behind. “Coward!” he yelled after the kid.

After I calmed him down, Patton sat down at the table. He shook his head. “Goddamn kids want to fight for the damn aliens!” he uttered, smacking his knees. “I drove those fucking Krauts out of Western Europe, and is anyone playing games about that? No... well, just those two fat losers in the corner.”

In the back corner of the room, a 400+ pound gamer stopped moving tiny metal tanks and raised his head. He began to hobble towards us with an angry expression on his face.

“Holy fuck! Enemy counter-attack!” Patton cried out, pointing at the obese gamer now barreling towards us. “Fighting retreat!” he commanded as pushed me at the gamer and then ran for the exit.

“And how do we perform a fighting retreat here?” I asked him, when I caught up.

Patton stopped, turned to the gamer chasing us and yelled, “You’ll never catch us alive, you fat fuck!” And then ran like a madman until he had caught back up with me. He grinned.

We ran through most of the hotel’s parking garage before we were sure that we had lost him. For several minutes, we stood around trying to catch our respective breaths. Patton sat on the curb and pulled out a cigar.

“You’re a smoker?” I asked him.

“Only cigars, and only the best,” he said, clenching it between his teeth.

“If you’re about quality, try this,” I told him, pulling a finely rolled blunt out of my pocket.

“It looks a little lumpy.”

“Craftsmanship,” I told him.

* * *
“What if we could start a war and like… hear me out here... we got everybody to show up: fascists, commies, chinks, beatniks… and we just blow them all up. BOOM!” He said, chuckling.

“That’d be pretty fucking crazy,” I told him.

“I've got another one,” he said, nudging me with his elbow. “What if we took all the Negroes, put them on a rocket, and shipped them off to the moon?”

“Alright, that one’s a little bit over the line, dude.”

“Nawwwww,” he said, waiving his hands dismissively. “I don’t think so. We’ll give them some deep-sea diving equipment, some excess food grain, they’ll be better than fine—”

“You can just stop right there, this isn’t going in a healthy direction. We should just stop and move on to something else,” I told him.

“But—” he tried to spit out, but I just shook my head and took another puff of the blunt, then handed it to him. “This is some cigar. Where’d you get it?”

“Jamaica.”

Patton nodded. “I knew those Negroes were good for something.”

“Alright dude, you’ve got to stop that,” I said.

“What?”

“We don’t call them Negroes anymore.”

“Well ain’t that a whore. What do we call them nowadays?" he asked.

“Blacks.”

He scowled. “That sounds worse to me. Negro has a sort of bourgeois to it.”

“…And even then, you don’t want to be saying shit like ‘them’ or anything like that; especially around them. It’s kind of a touchy issue these days.”

“What a world,” he said, exhaling some smoke.

“You’ve got that right.”

“So sixty years after the Great Crusade and all we have to show for it are obese man-children playing games and uppity ne—” I frowned. “uhhh… ethnics.” I shrugged.

“There’s an upside,” I spat out, choking on a hit.

“What’s that?”

“We can get porn at like light speed, man.” I told him, when I’d regained by breathe. Patton became lost in though.

“My god, what a world,” he said, then took another hit of the blunt. His eyes were becoming droopy. “You think you’ve seen things… fantastic things; Great empires rise and… uhhh… fall, that’s the word, and… wait what was I saying?”

“Something about getting back to that game in there,” I said, pointing at the table where the Eczema kid had now returned.

“Right. Okay, so when we get back in there, we’ve got to stick it to those alien… bug… motherfuckers. It may seem like suicide, but our… guys… need to stay on the attack. You can’t make any progress if you… ummmm… stay in one… what’s the word I’m looking for here?”

“Place? Spot? Locale?”

“No no… spot,” he said. “We’ll take the infantry company on the… left…” he thought for a minute. “…left flank, yeah… and hit those four-armed… things… head-on. Then, our heavy guns and those tanks’ll blast that big bastard right up there in the… ummm… center. As soon as the big guy is knocked out, those chicken-walker… ma-jiggers will cut across the…umm… center and hit that squid-looking fucker in their rear-area. After that—” he became distracted by a man dressed in a full suit samurai armor walking by. “…what was I talking about?” he asked.

“You know, I don’t think either of us really knows,” I said, checking my watch.

“…porn at the speed of light,” he mumbled, trailing off.

“Great, so let’s get back,” I told him, snuffing out the remains of the blunt. Patton blocked me with his arm.

“Hold on,” he said. “I’ll take care of all that, you get us some snacks.”

“What?”

“Snacks. You know… maybe some hamburgers… hotdogs… pies… good old American food. You just go ahead and get some food—drinks too. I’ve got the plan all up here,” he said, tapping his helmet with the riding crop. “…you know what, maybe some… uhhh… Mexican food too. Those beaners can really stir up some good chow.”

“Alright, I’ll do it if you’ll lay of the racial slurs. Okay?”

“I can’t say ‘beaner?’ Oh for Christ’s sake…” He shook his head. “So you go ahead and get the food… some Chinaman-food too… and I’ll take care of those bug fuckers until you get back.”

Being hungry, and not really wanting to play Warhammer 40K, I agreed.

* * *
When I returned with a United Nations of snacks, Patton was gone. My Imperial Guard army was also gone. Eczema kid was packing away his army. I was going to ask him what had happened but I already knew. Also, I really didn’t want to talk to this kid. It was seriously the worst eczema outbreak I’ve ever seen. I don’t really know how he could function. I’m not kidding, it was that bad.

I went to Joe, the convention security guy. He had a radio and shoulder-mounted mic/speaker. He stood with his arms folding as I told him how Patton stole my Imperial Guard army. When I finished he looked me straight in the eyes asked: “Are you high?”

I decided to drop the issue.

And that was the time that I smoked a blunt with General George S. Patton just minutes before he stole hundreds of dollars in plastic army men from me.

CassandraGreek Prophet / Metaphor

When I first moved away to college, I had a mysterious neighbor who never left her room. Her roommates told me that her name was Cassandra, she was agoraphobic and that she rarely ventured out. I didn’t really care until classes started and I learned that she was in most of mine. Nonetheless, she never left her room, even to go to class.

Being the nosy neighbor that I was, I decided to stakeout her apartment one weekend. Her roommates told me that they’d all be away, so I figured that if I heard their front door, it would have to be her. As the days rolled by and I heard nothing, I even went so far as to sit outside and read within view of their door. None of it worked.

Late on Sunday afternoon, just as I finally gave up, I decided to peer in to the apartment window. This was harder than it sounds. The apartment was on the second floor and only a small flight of stairs led to its front door. The window was next to the front door and had absolutely nothing under it. To look in, one would have to climb the railing of the stairs, lean over, and brace themselves on the windowsill. It would be difficult, dangerous and look extremely suspicious; nonetheless I ended up doing it.

When I peeked through the window, I saw a figure of a young woman in the apartment. I knocked on the door. It startled the woman. She turned to the window, saw me, and shrieked. She ran for her room and shut the door.

I dismounted the railing and sat on the landing that both our front doors shared. For a minute, I contemplated exactly what I was going to say to the police when they arrived. Then, the door opened. A girl with freckles and long-brown hair peered out and said “hi.”

“I’m sorry, I thought everyone had gone home,” I said.

“They did, just me,” she said, brushing away her hair. “I’m Cassandra.”

“The prophet of Troy?” I asked, I’d been saving it for a while. It didn’t sound as clever as I thought it would.

“Yes,” she smiled. “Do you want to come in and blaze?” she asked me. With that I realized that one way or another I had met someone who would change my life.

* * *
We went to her apartment's common room. She went to the couch and began packing a small pipe. I looked around the apartment then sat down next to her. “Why didn’t you go back home?"

I shrugged. “I guess I thought I’d meet some people on campus.”

“That’s cool,” she said, taking the green hit from the pipe and then handing it to me.

“…so you can see the future then?” I asked. She nodded. “That’s got to be pretty rough.” She nodded again. “People still don’t believe you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t warn people anymore. There’s no point. It just causes them harm, no matter what I do.”

“Is that why you stay inside?”

She nodded and tears began welling in her brown eyes. “I tried. It’s like everyone else is blind and only I can see the train coming. I feel like I’m supposed to help them get out of the way, but they just won’t listen.”

“But you can’t help them; that’s part of your curse, right?”

“I know,” she dropped her head. “It’s hard to make friends when all you see in people in the way they die.”

I looked up at the ceiling. “Well, I know exactly how I’m going to die. Does that make it any easier for you?”

“Well I don’t know…” she said, looking into my eyes. She jolted, then looked confused, “…I don’t get it, why?”

“I’m a big Natalie Wood fan,” I said, with a goofy smile. She laughed. I took another hit from the pipe. “So then are you thousands of years old?”

“No. I’m the reincarnation of Cassandra.”

“Ohhhh, reincarnation,” I said, nodding as if any of it really made more sense than the rest. “And do you only see how people die?”

“No, I see all time at once.”

“Well that’s a bitch,” I said.

“I know,” she smiled.

“So then how does it all end?”

“With a handshake,” she said.

“Is that prophecy or a movie quote?”

“From where I stand, there’s no difference.”

“That’s way fucked up,” I said. She laughed again, less this time, and took another hit.

There was enough of a lull in the conversation after her laughter that she decided to get up and put on some music. It was a CD of avant-garde jazz. She came back to the table, smiled, and handed me the pipe.

“I can’t quite get a handle on this kind of jazz,” I told her. “I like a lot of different kinds of jazz, but this stuff is just all over the place. I don’t know how people can really enjoy it.”

“You give me this CD in a year’s time,” she said.

“What?”

“In a year, you give me this CD as a gift,” she stated. “That’s where I first learned about it.”

I sat there stunned for a moment, contemplating her words. “It works like that? That’s fucking crazy!” I boomed. She looked away and said nothing. “Well okay, what’s the CD? I’d better learn it now,” I said, reaching for the CD case.

She snatched the case away, “No, you don’t get to know. You have to choose it for yourself.”

“You’re a tricky one, Cassandra,” I said and then took another hit.

“Just Cass.”

“Here’s a question that nobody likes: what do you like to do for fun?”

“I like to get high then watch movies or listen to music or something,” she said.

I looked at her in disbelief, “oh you’re something special alright…”

“Thanks,” she said in a bored tone. I frowned.

“So is it just pointless for me to try and flatter you, Cass?” I said.

“It is,” she said. She came over and sat next to me. As I looked into her eyes, she leaned in and gave me a quick kiss. She pulled away. I smiled at her. Her grin was a lot wider. I went in to kiss her, but she jumped up and sat on an opposing chair. “And that’s as far as we will ever get.”

I frowned, “Well that takes the fun out of it, now doesn’t it?”

“Welcome to my world,” she said. “But now the real question is: knowing that, does it change everything?”

I thought for a minute, “I don’t know. Does it?”

She shrugged while holding in a hit. “I can’t answer that, it’s really up to you.”

“Oh,” I said. “I figured that you could… you know, you could see in to the future and know if telling me that eventually changes what I do.”

“Honestly,” she said, handing me the pipe, “I was trying to be flirty. I don’t think it came off right. I’m sorry.”

“Oh… well that was me trying to flirt back, so I guess we both suck at it.” We both laughed. “…but seriously, never more than a little kiss, huh?”

She looked up at me, about to answer, when we heard the front door unlock. I turned and saw two of her roommates coming back from being home for the weekend. They saw me and stopped in their tracks. As I said, “hey,” I heard the door to Cassandra’s room close. When I turned back, she was gone, of course. I didn’t see her again for months.

And that was the first time I smoked with, and tried to score with, the prophet of the downfall of Troy.

Matthew McConaughey Actor

Back in April, I was involved in an anti-drilling protest in the Gulf of Mexico. After assembling in Venice, Louisiana, our group took a small flotilla of zodiacs, small yachts and a fishing trawler to an oil platform about 50 miles off the coast. It seemed like a lot of fun at first; like corsairs of an earlier age, riding the high seas looking for adventure. After a few early-morning hours we arrived at the oil platform and stormed it in flawless pirate fashion. Brandishing clever signs and shouting rehearsed slogans, we took the high ground.

The crew of the oil rig, watched our antics for a few moments, and then continued on with their work. They were our only audience. There were supposed to be camera crews from the associated press, but it seemed like they were a no-show. Some arguments broke out amongst our ranks regarding how nobody else thought to bring video equipment. One of the oil workers interrupted us by asking if we were with the other protesters. He explained that the oil rig was already being hi-jacked by another group of activists.

On the other side of the rig, we found a group of about two dozen people dressed in makeshift cardboard sea turtle costumes. They had a camera crew, a bullhorn, and appeared very well organized. As we approached them, we learned via bullhorn that “…the activities associated with developing offshore oil and gas resources seriously disrupts and even destroys the nesting and foraging habitats of sea turtles.” They went on to explain that offshore drilling is just one of the many threats that humanity has imposed on these critically endangered turtles.

As we got to the turtle activists, one of our protest organizers interrupted them and began to argue with their organizers over the scheduling issue. As both groups of protesters stood around waiting for new orders, they decided to do what they knew best. Slowly at first, they began to wave signs and shout slogans at each other, and within minutes it had turned into a full-scale demonstration-off. Our side was at a disadvantage since we didn’t have a bull-horn or costumes, so someone decided to even the odds by throwing a shoe, which clocked the turtle holding the bull-horn right in the face, knocking him over. I watched as the scene turned into an all out melee.

I tried to get away from the violence, ducking around the outskirts of the battle until I found a clear route out. In front of me, one of the anti-drilling protesters curb-stomped a downed sea turtle protester and then ran off. I went to help the turtle activist, but was grabbed by two other turtles, who hauled me to the side of the rig. As they were about the heave me over the side, someone shouted: “STOP!”

I turned and saw that it was Matthew McConaughey, shirtless and carrying a set of bongo drums. Matteo, who had arrived with the sea turtles, explained he was playing hacky sack on the helipad until he heard the scuffle. He reasoned with us, that protesters didn’t need to fight amongst themselves when the real threat is what they’re protesting. The turtles put me down. A round of applause for Matteo broke out from everyone on the rig. He then started a bongo drum circle on that exact spot.

* * *
Hours later the sun was rising and the drum circle was still going strong. Hoping to smoke a quick bowl, I left the drum circle and went to a remote area near the helipad. I pulled out a poorly-wrapped joint that I’d been saving all day. As I made my first attempt to light the joint on the windy deck of the oil rig, I realized that I was way under prepared for what I was attempting. Then, while trying to form a shelter around the lighter with my body, someone put a silver lighter in my face, lit it with spectacular effect, and then proceeded to light my joint for me. When I looked up, I saw the man holding the lighter was McConaughey.

“You need some help, bro?” he asked.

“I think I’m good now,” I said, causing the joint to fall out of my mouth and then be taken far out to sea by the wind. McConaughey laughed.

“Y’all wanna see something really cool?” he asked me. I nodded. He reached into the pocket of his cargo shorts and drew a small plastic cylinder that then telescoped out to about a foot in length. Matteo capped one end, inserted a bowl and piece into the side, and said: “voila.”

“Awesome,” I said. “We just need some water.”

“I don’t have any. Do you?” McConaughey asked me completely straight-faced. It freaked me out. “Well don’t that just beat all. Surrounded by water and we got no water for the bong…” he smiled, “…watch this.” He let out a piercing whistle and then called out: “water bottle!”

A few moments later a gangly college kid showed up with a fresh bottle of water in hand. Matteo took it, thanked the kid, winked at him, drank half the bottle and then filled the bong with the rest. The kid walked off.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“A water bottle guy,” he said with a shrug. “Hire them for parties, protests, events, whatever… and they just keep handing you bottles of water whenever you’re thirsty. I just found out about them last week. It’s cheap too, bro. I think they do it for college credit or something. I don’t know.
“…Anyway, let me introduce you to Captain Bowlsworth,” he said, packing the bong from a baggie that he suddenly produced. “The good captain is always there when you need him, alright?” I nodded. He took a hit and held it.

“That lighter is pretty awesome,” I said. “Where’d you get that?”

“Outer space, man… space, man…. spaceman,” McConaughey cracked up, spewing smoke everywhere. “But nah man, seriously, Buzz Aldrin gave it to me… first man in space himself. He told me the damn thing works anywhere, even in outer space… man.”

“When did you meet him?”

“Aw man, he was just there on the set of EDtv… like a technical advisor or something.” He laughed. “You know, for the whole part at the end where it was all on some space station and there was this dude who was gonna drop some virus on Earth. It was pretty cool. There were all kinds of special effects and lasers and that big bro with the metal teeth.”

“Are you sure, because that sounds an awful lot like the end of Moonraker?” I asked.

“Maybe… I don’t know,” he laughed. “Was I in that?”

“No. Not at all.”

McConaughey laughed. “Moonraker… wow… what were we talking about?”

I thought for a moment. “I don’t really remember,” I said.

“I’ll blaze to that,” Matteo said, taking a hit from the Captain. “What do you do bro? Are you like a professional activist; doing your thing, saving the world?”

“No, I just smoke a lot of weed,” I told him.

He nodded, “I can get behind that.”

“…I’m a writer too. It’s not professional or anything; just a hobby.”

“Well now don’t that just beat all,” he said, slapping his thigh. “I’m in talks for making a comedy on the FX; maybe I can run some ideas past you. How about that?”

“Sure,” I said. “I mean, that’s really more of a producer thing, not really what I do, but yeah… shoot.”

“Alright,” he said, putting down the bong. “So this guy Fred is living in Hawaii with... get this... a rhinoceros.” I nodded. “The rhinoceros is named Randy and works as a dentist—”

“Hold on a minute,” I interrupted. “Is this a cartoon?”

“No.”

“Alright…” I scratched my head, “…so how are you going to do the rhinoceros? Is it like a puppet?”

McConaughey shrugged. “He’s just a Rhino. It’s like that Family Guy show with the talking dog; it’s funny. Folks aren’t gonna question it.”

“Okay right. That’s a cartoon though… You haven’t actually talked to anyone about this yet, have you?”

“No,” he said.

“Right…” I said, deciding not to finish my sentence. Trying not to be rude, I couldn’t think of what to say next.

“Just say it,” Matteo said. “If you’ve got a suggestion, let’s hear it.”

“You’ve got to drop the rhino.”

He waved his hands. “No way. The rhino is the whole project. Without the rhino, there’s nothing—”

“It just doesn’t make any sense. You’ve got a live-action rhino doing dentistry; people aren’t just going to accept that. Viewers will be confused.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” McConaughey said, getting up. “I appreciate the input though, you’re alright.” We pounded fists.

“Thanks for the light,” I said to him, as he walked away.

He turned. “This old thing?” he asked, looking at his lighter. He smiled and tossed it to me. I went to catch the lighter, but realized that I was dangerously close to the edge of the platform. The lighter missed my hand, clipped a railing causing it to light, and then plunged into the Gulf of Mexico.

McConaughey joined me to watch the lighter plummet into the water while still lit. As it disappeared beneath the waves, we looked at each other.

“You don’t think it really stays lit anywhere, do you?” I asked. He shrugged. As I looked down, I noticed something peculiar. “What happened to your other shoe?”

“Hmmm? Oh hey, I’m missing a shoe. Must have slipped off playing hacky sack. I’d better get going.” He said, walking off. “You keep on writing, man. Okay?”

“Sure,” I said, and then went back to staring down into the Gulf of Mexico, where the lighter had just vanished.

We left the deep-sea drilling rig Deepwater Horizon at about 9:30am on April 20th of this year. And that was the time that I smoked a bowl with Matthew McConaughey and possibly started the greatest ecological disaster in history. McConaughey is still developing a scripted comedy for FX. There is no word at this time on whether or not it contains a rhino.

Ernest HemingwayAmerican Writer and Journalist

Some years back, I was at a college party in Roseland, New Jersey. I wasn’t in college at the time and neither were the guys who were throwing it, but the invite featured a red solo cup and what appeared to be a beer-pong table, so I feel fairly confident in labeling it as a college party. It also progressed just like a college drinking party in that there was a lot of awkward standing around while watching beer-pong, someone locked themselves in the bathroom moments before passing out, and it ended in a Guitar Hero hangover.

Somewhere in-between the beer-pong and the Guitar Hero, I was having a discussion a friend-of-a-friend on the front porch at about midnight. She was a teacher and I was working on becoming certified to be a teacher, so the obvious topic of conversation was the impending 2012 apocalypse (this was years before the movie, so the concept hadn’t finished jumping the shark just yet, or so I like to think).
We were interrupted when some ripped-out-of-his-mind meat-head bumped into me and as a result he spilled some beer. The meat-head, who seemed to move and gesture in an exaggerated way, much like a professional wrestler, asked me what my problem was, informed me that I lacked respect, and then explained to me that I was, in fact, a “faggot.” I apologized and offered to suck his dick if it would make him feel better. He got uncomfortably close and breathed heavily at me with flared nostrils and told me that I knew what he meant. I stood there, keeping eye contact but wincing since his breath was drying my eyes. Eventually he pushed me like an irritated older brother and went away.

When I got back to my teacher friend-of-a-friend, she moved our conversation to the overuse of the word faggot. “Oh don’t worry,” I said dryly, “I’m sure he just meant faggot as a generic insult.”

“But that’s just it,” she said, “the children in my class call anyone they don’t like a ‘fag’ or ‘faggot’ and most of them don’t even know what it means.”

“What ever happened to the good old fashioned insults like ‘retard’ or even ‘fuck-face’?” I asked.

“I’m serious.”

“I am too!” I said, throwing up my hands. “Alright fine… its homophobia. That guy was way too into being manly. Usually someone like that just wants to talk about how he’s banging chicks and going to the gym to get ‘big’. They’re so into themselves that they feel threatened by anything homosexual because it could mean that’s what they’re into, and we all know how Jesus feels about that.”

“That’s an interesting outlook,” she said nodding her head.

“Yeah… I don’t know, I was watching American Psycho last night, so I’m thinking of that meat-head from violently banging a chick from behind while pointing at himself in the mirror.
“Anyway, I could be completely wrong, but there are a lot of closeted guys out there. I mean, hell, they say Hemingway could have been a closeted poof. It would explain a lot.”

“I never heard that,” she said.

“Oh sure, he pretty much always portrayed homosexuals in bad way in his writings. Here’s a guy who writes with masculinity being a major factor in his voice and then suddenly it changes to a childish, insecure voice when dealing with sexuality, add in there that he writes gays as cliche sodomites; I think it all points in one particular direction…”

“I don’t know,” she said, rolling her eyes, “I feel like that’s the sort of thing that people just assume and then spread around as fact.”

“Could be,” I said, “but Gertrude Stein had said that she talked to Hemingway about homosexuality and that he seemed like he was hiding something.” She shrugged. “You know, just saying… Gertrude Stein… besides, I’m sure there’s a good number of guys like that who go through their whole lives living in a closet of masculinity like that and don’t even know it.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“Sure, maybe. I’ve had bad relationships with women… overbearing mother… calling dead authors poofs… yeah, sounds like I could be pretty deep in the closet.”

“Well I know a guaranteed way to tell if you’re gay or not,” she said.

“Does it come with a money-back guarantee? …because that could be a deal-breaker right there.”

“If you make out with my sister and get a boner, then you’re not gay,” she said and then called across the room to her sister. While the idea seemed sound in principle, I don’t think she had thought it out all too well. It was awkward. Her sister came over and was immediately confused. Even when she had everything explained to her, the sister still seemed uncomfortable.

At that time something, that I still don’t quite understand, happened in my stomach.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” I said. The friend-of-a-friend and her sister backed away from me. “Unrelated, I’m sure. If I weren’t about to heave, I’d totally make out with you…” the sister’s response wasn’t exactly a smile. “…you know, if you were up for it and all… just saying… I’m Lou, by the way,” I blurted out, shook the sister’s hand, and then stumbled off the porch and into the street.

* * *
As I already stated, I don’t exactly know what happened with my stomach, but for several minutes I was in a constant state of ‘about to vomit.’ It wasn’t very pleasant. I had broken out into a cold sweat and there was a lot of pain in my intestines. I had no concept of where I was going or what was going on, only that I was about to vomit but it just wasn’t happening. Finally, I ran into a trash can and regurgitated the night’s snacks and beverages into it.

Relieved, I stood up and took a breath, and then was struck in the face by a hard right-jab. It knocked me down and disoriented me further. I realized there was a man standing above me. He kicked me while I was down.

“I’m sorry, man! I’ll clean it up,” I yelled between kicks.

“Call me a faggot, will you?!” the man shouted at me. I looked up at him and saw that it was an old man with gray hair and mustache but a white beard wearing a comfortable looking knit sweater. He continued to kick me.

“Hemingway?! Are you fucking serious?!” I shouted.

“Believe it, you son-of-a-bitch!” he yelled, kicking me again in the ribs.

“But you’re dead and shit!” I eloquently replied.

He stopped. “What?”

“You’re dead, dude… like 50 years ago dead.” I said. He stumbled backwards, but caught himself. “…the sixties… I think. I don’t know, man. I never really paid attention in school.” He sat down on the curbside. After picking myself up, I sat down next to him. “So wait, you’re seriously Hemingway?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well that just doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “You have to be the ghost of Hemingway, or something like that.”

“You think?” he asked.

“Sure… I mean, you think you’re him, you’re beating the shit out of some dude in his name, you look like him, and yet you don’t really know why you’re here… sounds like you’re some kind of ghost, dude.”

“This is a lot to take in,” the ghost of Hemingway said. I nodded.

“You want to smoke some pot?” I asked him.

“Sure…” he shrugged, “can’t hurt.”

* * *
We looked for a place to blaze, since the open street wasn’t an option, and eventually settled on a tree house we found behind someone’s house.

“So people are saying I was a poof, huh?” Hemingway asked after a few passes of the one-hitter I had brought.

“Yeah… sort of,” I replied. “There’s no real proof, but scholars have psycho-analyzed the shit out of your writing. Psychiatrists seem to think any guy who shows off his masculinity is hiding something. Also, Gertrude Stein—”

“—that fucking cunt!” he cried out. I paused for a moment. “Sorry, I just knew it was her the moment I heard people saying I was a poof. Of course that bitch would spread those rumors about me.”

“Why?” I asked.

“She stole a book idea from me this one time and nobody ever believes me,” he said. “That bitch.”

“What book was it?”

“The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” the ghost of Hemingway said.

“Okay that’s a little odd.” I said. “Was it originally your idea or something? What part of it did she steal?”

“All of it,” he said.

I paused for a moment to see if he was serious. “So let me get this straight…”

“Shoot,” he said.

“You had the idea to write The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas…” he nodded, “…which is a fake autobiography…” he nodded again, “…about the lesbian relationship between Toklas and Stein…” he nodded, “…which makes sense if it’s written by Stein, but you’re saying you were going to write it?” He nodded again. I looked up at the stars for a moment. “Yeah, I can’t see why people wouldn’t believe you on that one.”

“Whatever,” Hemingway said, passing me the one-hitter. “It doesn’t sound very believable, I know. To be truthful though, this being a ghost thing is kind of freaking me out. I’m feeling really weird, man. First I find out I’m dead, then I learn that people are saying I’m a homosexual; it’s a bit much to take in.”

I nodded. “It’s cool dude, you might not be the ghost of Hemingway,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, first of all I’m about 99% sure there aren’t ghosts. I mean, I’ve seen that show where the plumbers are chasing after ghosts on the Sci-fi channel… you know… they never really find anything except unexplained blips in camera footage, weird noises, and idiotic help…”

“Okay, I know those words you’re using… it doesn’t quite make sense to me, but I’m listening,” Hemingway said.

“…also, you’re not at all talking like Ernest Hemingway probably would. You sound more like… me, really. You’re probably just a representation of Hemingway that my drug and alcohol addled brain has come up with.”

“That’s deep,” my manifestation of Hemingway said.

“Yeah, I mean it must be,” I said. “Like poof… I like the term poof. It seems kind of silly and derogatory all at the same time. What’s the chance that the real Hemingway would favor the use of the word poof?”

“It was one of my favorite insults,” he insisted.

“Yeah sure it was,” I said, standing up. “Listen, I should get back to the party.”

The Hemingway illusion stood up and shook my hand. “Good evening to you sir; you are a gentleman and a scholar,” he said. I humored him and shook his hand.

“Sure whatever… I’ll see you in hell,” I told him, then headed back to the party.

* * *
When I got back to the party, everyone asked about the cuts and bruises I had acquired during my absence. I told them that I ran into Ernest Hemingway and that he beat the shit out of me.

“What was he like?” the friend-of-a-friend asked me.

“Alright,” I said. “Honestly, he came off a little gay.”

And that was the time that the ghost of Ernest Hemingway beat the shit out of me for calling him gay and then smoked with me.