Swell Zine: Another One of Oscar's Parties

None of us really like him, except for Oscar of course, and he stands to make his way downstairs after answering his cell. It looks like the ketamine's got him, and he needs a moment to gather himself. He stands in his usual cowboy stagger, like he's wearing a six-shooter or whatever they're called, and in reality he's just standing there in a bathrobe that Oscar had monogrammed for him and we can see the black hairs against the white surrounding his nipples on his slight developed chest and a trail of black hair that leads down to his manliness which is for now--thank God--concealed by the bathrobe barely pulled together with a loose knot. He starts walking to the far door.

Oscar takes the pipe out of his mouth to speak. "Don't worry about going down to get her. Esmeralda will send her up."

Oscar is standing there in the smoking jacket that we think makes him look ridiculous but would never dare voice to him and I know he thinks otherwise because he told me once that while he was growing up he always admired the magazine's founder and wanted to be the queer Hugh Hefner. And he kind of looks like a middle-aged version; he has the same pronounced jaw line and is just as thin but his nose is smaller and he actually has lips. "And now darling," he says, with Kevin, Manny and me sitting around him and a monstrous pile of crystal, "I finally am the queer Hef."

Kevin nods and steps back for a moment, then stumbles, then regains himself. "Let Helen come to us."

We all think it's absolutely inappropriate that Oscar's letting this little heroin junky stripper into the house simply because she's Kevin's last heterosexual relationship. But it's another one of Oscar's parties, and what Oscars says goes.

Kevin gets about halfway back across the room when his legs start to shake a little and then Manny, who's already sitting on the couch, realizes what's about to happen and he jumps up and out of the way and Kevin drops onto the sofa with the ugly paisley design that reminds me of my grandmother's furniture with the plastic covers. His bathrobe opens from the impact. Manny, now standing over him, waves his hand in front of Kevin's blue eyes and when he has his attention points to his crotch. "Could we put away the Lone Ranger for now, dear?" Kevin smiles weakly and pulls the bathrobe back together. We hear a knock at the door.

Helen is short and skinny, a kind of skinny that at one time might've been runway-worthy but is now alarming, with white skin that we're sure at one time must've been attractive but now looks ghostly and big blue eyes that by themselves are striking but set against her pronounced eye sockets become macabre and we assume from these observations that she must've been more of a person at one time, and the heroin must be eroding her, consuming her. We wonder how much longer it will be before she vanishes.

We are introduced and she quickly finds her way to Kevin and sticks her tongue down his throat. Manny finishes his line and looks up at them.

"Oh my fucking Christ--I'm trying to snort k here!" He turns to Oscar. "Oscar, they're ruining my appetite for katie. Get her out of here!" Kevin pulls away from her and smiles.

Manny puts down his straw, walks over to them, and pushes Kevin out of the way. He puts his face in Helen's, his large brown nose touching her small white one. His face tightens; his brown eyes are intense. "You're lucky you're with Kevin. You know what normally happens to pussy around here that isn't feline?"

She doesn't respond; she just stares with those eyes. "They end up buried in the woods out back."

"That's enough," Oscar says and moves towards them. He moves Manny out of the way with a wave of his hand and puts his arm around Helen's shoulder. "Now, while that behavior was absolutely inappropriate my dear, you are a guest in my home" (he looks straight at Manny when says this) "and we need to be hospitable." He looks her up and down. "Now that heroin looks like it takes a lot out of you; would you like a little coke to lift your spirits?"

Helen agrees and puts down the shoulder bag she's brought in with her, then makes her line with one of the razors and takes a straw and snorts and we swear to Christ we can see the powder travel up her nose and pass right under her big right eye into her brain. She's wearing a white tank-top with a black bra beneath and we can't see any track marks so we have to wonder how much cartilage is actually still left inside that nose and why the coke doesn't just fall back out all half-dissolved in snot and blood since those worn nasal passages must be the only gateway for the heroin, unless, of course, she shoots into her leg or better yet between her toes which we have no way of verifying since she is wearing both jeans and shoes.

The drugs were set up earlier in two large piles and labeled "coke" and "katie" with these lovely place holders in brown and pink--it's a project that Oscar always gives Esmeralda full artistic carte blanche for at all of his parties--and next to that sit two smaller plates, one with razors and one with straws. Next to this is a bowl of fruit. I hate ketamine so I take some coke along with Oscar. When I cut it I ask Oscar what the deal is with the fruit and he says they're actually wax, and that Esmeralda had bought them along with the place cards; she thought it was clever that a bowl of fruit would be placed at a party attended by fruits. After we're done Kevin takes some more ketamine. Then we all sit. I am at one side of the couch in an uncomfortable chair whose cushions have the same pattern as the couch and wooden arms with grooves that curl around and create swirl designs at the ends and Oscar is on the matching chair at the other side. Our chairs are angled in to face the couch and Helen, Kevin, and Manny are on the couch. Kevin is paralyzed in a k-hole and stares straight ahead. Manny turns and leans over Kevin. The diamond in his earlobe sparkles for a moment when he moves and I can see some black stubble starting to break through his cheek.

"Angel?" He moves back to his original sitting position and turns his head to Kevin. "She looks more like a demon wouldn't you say?" Kevin doesn't move or respond so Manny waves his hand in front of Kevin's face. "Hello ....God, you're fucking boring when you're in a k-hole."

"Manny," Oscar says, "stop making fun of our guest." He turns his attention to Helen. "Would you like some more coke, dear?"

"That would be very nice, thank you," she says. She tries to get up but Kevin has his hand in her lap and she can't move it. Manny slaps Kevin and his blue eyes widen and he sits up straight and pulls his hand away from her. Kevin rubs his cheek and says "What the hell was that for?" in that whiny voice that makes him sound like he's five and we all hate, and then he tells us he has to take a leak and leaves the room.

Pretty soon Helen wants to know what kind of music we listen to and makes her way to the open laptop hooked up to the stereo in the far corner of the room whose entire digital memory is devoted to Oscar's music library. Right now the screensaver is running, displaying images of naked young men that change after a minute or so and when she sees it she turns back to Oscar and says "I like it," and then touches a key to bring up the library.

Kevin comes up behind Oscar and puts his hands around Oscar's arms and slides them up to Oscar's shoulders and massages them. Then he tilts his head in and says into Oscar's ear, "Please let her stay. I'll make sure she behaves," and then he kisses the nape of Oscar's neck.

Helen starts looking through Oscar's music library and plays all different house remixes of pop songs. She only listens to a few seconds of one song before trying another. Then she decides to put it on random and sits back down. Kevin starts in with the ketamine again and Helen does some more coke and after we're all done taking lines again she sits and talks about stripping more, how much money she makes, the men she's strung along, the rich ones she's milked for a few bucks here and there. By now her shoes and socks are off and we try to inspect her toes for track marks but of course it's impossible to see in-between her toes and we give up. She tells us her dream is to end up like Anna Nicole, well not the dead part she says to us, but the whole marrying a really old guy with a lot of money and waiting for him to die.

"Is that why you left Kevin," Manny says. By now Kevin is in another k-hole and sitting stone-like in Oscar's lap. "God knows he doesn't have a dime to his name."

"Kevin left me." A new song comes on and her big eyes get bigger and she tells us that this one of the songs she strips to.

When she says this Kevin reacts by looking in Helen's direction and then tells her to show us all something. Then he turns to Oscar and runs his fingers through Oscar's hair. "Do you mind?"

Oscar shakes his head no and Helen starts. Her movements are liquid; we can tell she wasn't lying when said she's been doing this for years and she slowly takes off her tank-top. She turns a few times, walks up and down the space in the room between our seating arrangements, and she takes turns staring at each of us with those big eyes and we wonder if some of her allure for straight men comes from not knowing whether she's going to ultimately fuck you or cut off your dick. She slowly takes off her jeans and tries to make this look sexy but she has trouble getting the top of them past her pubic bone and pulls them off in sort of jerky stop and go motions. Her panties are black also and she dances some more, and we inspect her as best we can again for track marks without letting on to her that that's what we're doing and we see nothing so we decide for once and for all that she must snort the shit by the truckloads. Then she locks those eyes on Kevin and moves over to him and starts grinding in his lap. He grabs her hips and smiles and guides her grinding. Oscar grabs the wooden chair arms and uses them for support to stand up, pushing the two forward and knocking Helen's head on the wooden trim of the couch. She yells in pain, then stands up straight and Kevin stays crouched over, his open monogrammed bathrobe hanging over him, with his hands still out as if they're still guiding Helen's hips, and Oscar waves his hand in the air and announces that we've seen enough. By now the song is over anyway and there is a few seconds of silence before the laptop picks something new.

Helen sits back on the couch and Kevin regains himself, closes the robe, and sits down next to her. Manny turns his head towards them. "Well, that was interesting. I can check 'het strip tease' off my list of things to do now. Too bad you didn't motorboat me; then I could've checked off two things at once."

Oscar makes his way over to the laptop in the corner and shuts off the music. "Kevin, dear, I bought you a present. Would you like it?"

Oscar disappears for a moment and comes back with a box, gift-wrapped in the same pink and brown color scheme as the place cards. Oscar hands the present to Kevin and then sits back down in the chair, with this big dumb smile on his face, showing the teeth he had fixed and straightened back when his movies made money. Kevin unwraps the present and pulls out a revolver.

"What the hell is that?" Manny says. He jumps out of his seat and moves backwards and bumps into me.

"It's what I've always wanted," Kevin says, "ever since I was a little boy." His face looks like he's in a k-hole again but he's not; he looks like the stunned little kid in all those nauseating movies that run around Christmas where, after a lot of hard work in behaving and getting on Santa's good side, the kid gets exactly what he wants on Christmas. He points the gun towards one of the lamps, pushes out the cylinder, spins it, and watches the lamp's light filter through the spaces. Then he clicks it back in and looks in the box again. He pulls out a box of bullets.

"Maybe shoot cans out back. Or small game," he says, then looks up at Manny and smiles.

"Oscar," Manny says, "did I miss the memo detailing the white trash chic you've got going on in this house now?"

"Oh shut up Manny." He gets up, moves over to Kevin and kneels in front of him. "Making Kevin happy makes me happy." By now Kevin's hand is back in the vicinity of Helen's crotch and Oscar pulls it away and locks his fingers inside Kevin's. "Are you happy?"

After this we get back to our drugs and Helen pulls some heroin out of her bag. Our suspicions are confirmed as she makes herself a few lines and snorts it. Kevin asks her for a line and she obliges and after an initial flush that they tell us is better than an orgasm they talk a little more about their relationship and the drugs they did and the criminals they ran with. By now they are lounging on the couch together with her head on his chest.

"It was," Kevin responds. He shoots up and off the couch and startles Helen. She quickly composes herself and sits up. "Why don't we play William Tell?" he says.

"Yeah, like we used to you know?" He picks up the revolver. "We can try it for real this time."

She hesitates but finally nods and she moves the now empty coke and ketamine platters off the serving table and climbs it. "What will I put on my head?"

Kevin scans the room. "There" he says, pointing in her direction and takes a wax apple from Esmeralda's bowl and hands it to Helen. She places it above and tries to balance it on her head while standing on this table, still in only her black bra and panties. Then Kevin loads the gun, spins the cylinder and pushes it in position.

"You can't be serious--I mean you've been snorting ketamine for hours and you just had some heroin; you're in no condition to shoot a gun."

"I've done this a million times back when I was a kid--and on more drugs. Don't worry about it. I'm a perfect shot."

"Manny, he told you, he's a perfect shot. This won't ruin any of the furniture, will it Kevin?"

"Nope." By now he has his finger on the trigger and is aiming with his free arm underneath the gun to level it and has one eye squinted shut. "I'm going take that wax apple right off her head."

"All right then. You heard him Manny, he's going to take the wax apple right off her head." Oscar smiles his big dumb smile. "My God this is so much better than my other parties!"

I'm looking at Kevin and Helen is out of view. There's a pop, like a painfully loud firecracker, and a flash of light. Then the faint smell of something burning. I feel something on the side of my neck. I pull it off and look at it. It's slimy and red and has a few black hairs attached to it. I think it's a piece of skull.

Robert Hyers lives a pretty boring life with his partner and their pets. He's been published here and there on the internets and has been known to spin an occasional record now and again around Philadelphia and New York. When he's not spinning records, he's working on his MFA. If you'd like to read more of his work and listen to some badass mixes, just go to www.roberthyers.com.