Fake Eggs, Gold Teeth, & Gary Gilmore

My girlfriend Pinky tells me, 

your attitude sucks, 

whataya mean? I have 1725 friends on Facebook.

Have you ever had a drink with a Facebook friend? 

Shut up Pinky,

she thinks it’s funny, she never takes me seriously, she's childish.

I just took a Facebook photo of my face, using Photo Booth, turning my head to one side, so the gap on my nose left from half-ass cancer surgery doesn’t show. 

My hair is long, white, I pull it back and wrap it with a hair tie, man bun style, putting on a pair of knock-off Ray-Ban Wayfarers for the final touch. Then smiling, an open mouth smile— my gold teeth reflect rays of yellow light.

Pinky says, 

I’m going to cut your gold teeth out when you die before the mortician gets his hands on them. 

You're gonna need a power drill, do me a favor and wait till my body's in the morgue.

Pinky is waiting for me to kick so she can run off with a younger guy and do some serious fucking.

She has been making the three-hour drive from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai to see her orthodontist every month, but I know she goes to see her X boyfriend, who lives there, for a quicky. 

We aren’t exactly in an open relationship, but I screw around some— I'm looking for a respectable lady to ball on the side, like a nurse or a teacher. 

Someone you have fun sex with, without obligation, in Thailand is called a geek. 

When I think of a geek, I think of a carny who's hit bottom, living in a cage, biting the heads off chickens or eating them whole, uncooked, feathers and all. 

I  went to the Ringling Brother's circus with my mother when I was five, in the mid-fifties. There was sawdust and hay spread everywhere. 

Somehow we end up in the freak show walking past the human anomalies who are elevated on crates, sitting and looking out — the Fat Lady, the Lion-Faced boy, who's hirsute, and the Crab boy, who's missing three middle fingers on each hand leaving his thumbs and little fingers which causes his meat hooks to look like claws, ouch. 

In due course we reach a cage where an unsaved man wearing a dirty white shirt and ripped slacks is lying in a bed of straw, stroking a live chicken. Suddenly my Mother yanks my ear, towing me out of the freak show and saying, 

there are some things you don't need to see or know in life, Henry.  

This morning I ordered a small coffee with a fancy Italian name, a blah blah blah day or something at Starbucks, Pattaya City. It cost 115 Baht, 3.35 US Dollars— I felt ripped off paying that much for a bit of coffee.

People go there regardless, enjoying the razzle-dazzle maybe. I bring my laptop and write some— listening to jazz, with my duct-taped Marshall headphones on. 

The Marshall Celestial amplifier gained fame when Eric Clapton plugged his Gibson Les Paul into it for the first time while playing with John Mayall’s band in the mid-sixties. The Amplifier went on to become a rock n roll icon. 

My duct-taped Marshall headphones are falling apart, the sound's good but the plastic framing is second-rate. I just ordered another pair for 17.00 US Dollars which will also fall apart in time, what is the world coming to? 

The Chinese are unrepentant, Chinamen are making fake eggs these days, with chemicals, gelatin, and paraffin. 

The fake eggs are cheap because you can make them fast, and it's not as time-consuming as waiting for a hen to lay one.

Yesterday I watched fifteen minutes of The Executioners Song, a made-for-TV movie from the book of the same name by Norman Mailer. 

It’s a true story about conman Gary Gilmore, who resembles Ronnie Wood with short hair, circa the mid-seventies. 

Gilmore was released on parole from Marion State Prison in 1975 into the custody of his cousin Brenda Nicole, who lived in Provo, Utah. 

Brenda arranged for him to work at her father's shoe repair shop, which didn’t work out because Gary couldn’t remove worn-down rubber heels from shoes without scrapping his hands. 

Eventually, he lands a job at an insulation company and after getting a raise he puts some money down on a used pickup truck.

Gilmore drank continually from the moment he was paroled, failing to check in with his parole officer in Provo, he was going downhill fast the minute he left the joint in Marion, Illinois.  

He meets Nicole Barrett, a confused 19-year-old woman with three kids. Vulnerable, she's easily won over by Gary's talk of reincarnation and soulmates, but, after several months of dating, she becomes fearful of his violent booze-fueled outbursts and breaks it off. 

Gary loses it after Nicole leaves him, spinning out and going on a crime spree, robbing a gas station and murdering the attendant who had complied with his demands, pumping two rounds into his head saying,

this one is for me, and this one is for Nicole.

The following day, while his pickup truck was being repaired in Provo, he walks into a nearby motel and fatally shoots the manager, Ben Bushnell. 

Bushnell’s wife sees Gilmore as he flees with the motel cashbox. While attempting to discard the gun, he shoots himself in the hand, leaving a wound the garage owner notices when he returns for the truck. Then, when Gary calls Nicole for help, she turns him into the police. 

Gilmore’s murder trial began at the Provo Courthouse on October 5, 1976, and it lasts two days. A motel guest testified that he saw him in the motel office where he shot Ben Bushnell that night. Gary gets the death sentence.

Soon, America’s news networks were in Provo, covering the Gilmore story because unlike most on death row, he didn’t want a retrial and asked to be executed as soon as possible. 

His grandmother was a circus performer and psychic who was known as Baby Fay La Foe. She often hinted that Gary was the lovechild of Erich Weiss, aka Harry Houdini. Later his youngest brother said Fay made the shit up. 

In his teens, Gary was a leather-jacketed reform school kid who hated authority figures.

He would chug cough syrup and hot wire 57 Chevys for joyrides, abandoning them when they ran out of gas. 

Gilmore robbed pawnshops, grocery stores, and his friend's houses, going to jail for the first time at 16. Gary would be in the joint for all but two years of his remaining life.

No model prisoner, Gary behaved like Wild Bill in the film The Green Mile, dismantling everything in his cell, flinging pooh at the guards, and peeing on them when they weren’t looking.  

When he was on death row, his soulmate, Nicole rekindled her relationship with him and they exchanged hundreds of letters.

During his three months on death row, Gilmore who was a lowlife for the first three decades of his life became a cause celebrity— he received stacks of fan mail, and his hero, Johnny Cash called him on the prison telephone.

At dawn on January 17, 1977, Gary Gilmore walked the green mile to an abandoned building and was strapped into a chair.

When asked to make an official last statement he said,

Let's do it.

The bit on Gary Gilmore has been exhaustive for me, but I can’t complain, Norman Mailer's book The Executioner’s Song is 1136 pages. 

Sadly, 65% of This is About Fred Exley

 

It’s always the same, I do it the same way, stretching like a sprinter, cracking my knuckles, warming up to write a new story, nine pages of lies, the more irregular the better.

I go to PDF Drive and download a shitload of books by authors I like— Thompson, Parker, Cheevers, Robbins, Bukowski, Hemingway, Carver, Baldwin, anybody familiar, reading bits and pieces, until I’m ready to go. 

I like to listen to music when I write, so I'm listening to Art Pepper's album, Smack UP, which he recorded while high on junk.

People on Twitter, mostly those in the writing community, tweet questions, which seems like an attention-getting gimmick to me, but I’d like to ask— 

Do you listen to music when you write? 

Stephen King seems down to earth, I don’t know him personally, but I like his interviews, anyway, he listens to Megadeath, AC/DC, and Anthrax, real loud when he writes, or he used to, likely he's grown out of heavymetal.   

When it comes to writers who don’t listen to music when they write, my guess is their work is barren— I'm a Cancer so don't think for a second about questioning my sixth sense. 

Hemingway listened to music from the different periods he lived through, Josephine Baker, Cole Porter, fight songs of World War I— Let’s Bust up the Hun, Over There, You Can’t Beat Us (music that makes you wanna jump outta bed and salute). 

The next question I would post on Twitter is—

Do you listen to music when your fucking? 

Listening to music while fucking doesn’t do a thing for me, it’s intrusive at a time when all I want to do is deep focus on my taco inside my ladie's guacamole. 

And the last Twitter question is—

Do you like the way your personality comes through on the written page? 

If you don't like the persona oozing through the lines of your work, box it up, baby. 

A Brit I know who likes my blog has told me over beers, that I write with confidence as if writing confidently is unique for authors. Anyway, my reply is always the same, 

thanks.

This guy, Peter, talks nonstop, and it’s nearly impossible to follow him because of his English accent. 

His conversation jumps around the globe from Australia to England, then to Thailand, seemingly changing the enumerations of events from day to day. 

If I attempt to get the numbers straight he says in a spin, grimacing,

wait, I’m getting to that now. 

I have given up trying to make sense of his monologue, simply nodding my head— I will go to a different bar to drink in peace tonight. 

Have you read Fredrick Exley? He was a wild man, round the bend, and out the door.

In 1968 Harper & Row published A Fan’s Notes, a fictional memoir by Exley.

The book was so unorthodox that it captivated the reading public. Exley was an unknown, a drunk, a fantasist living in an invented world struggling to adjust to the demands of society.

He once said, 

I’m telling you from my heart, that I will always be the drunk, the poet, the prophet, and the criminal— in company with those whose focus is insulated from the humdrum business of life.  

Exley is pointing a shaky finger at the transgressive nature of his work here.

He was the son of a telephone lineman who grew up in Watertown, New York in the forties— a dying industrial town close to the Canadian border. His old man was known in town as a star athlete and barroom fighter. As a kid, he adored and feared his father, who’d come home drunk and strapped young Fred.

Anguish dogged Exley throughout high school in a town where football was bedrock. 

He once blew a playoff game getting flagged for illegal holding in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter. 

After graduation, he went to the University of Southern California, a glowing campus awash in the California Sun. 

Rain or shine, Fred felt like a leper on the USC campus, ignored by the priggish Greek set he hung out at local saloons in the company of an aspiring literary crowd, fellow misfits.

The future author would watch Trojan football games at bars with his pals, beguiled by Frank Gifford who was everything he wasn’t—  a popular, gifted athlete with movie star good looks. 

Gifford later became an enigmatic character in Fred’s book A Fan’s Notes, a character he couldn’t come to terms with, but was a driving force nevertheless.   

In the fall of 1953, Fed Exely rode a bus across America from LA to Manhattan with his BA degree in hand, renting a room at the YMCA, and getting a job as a PR man for the railroad. 

Night after night, Fred would carouse the bars in Greenwich Village, drinking alone, perched on a barstool, dreaming of being famous like Frank Gifford.

In due time Fred lost his job, so he moved back to Watertown where he spent his days at his widowed mother's house tidying the house up and walking the family dog.  

He lived for Sundays when he’d watch the Giants and Frank Gifford play on TV. Cheering Frank on kept Fred going— in a weird way when Gifford scored a touchdown Exley scored too. 

Fred trained the family dog to sit with his back to the couch, so they could watch the Giant’s games together like two pals. 

Soon he was drinking alone in the house and talking to his dog. 

Having gone mad, his mother has Fred admitted to Wingdale Asylum where he enjoyed playing cat and mouse with the shrinks and began to write, reading his work to patients who'd listen.

Later, on the outside, he told friends that he loved the asylum and could live out his life there.

Fred was his own teacher and editor, educating himself by reading Edmund Wilson, and Flaubert. He particularly loved Nabokov’s Lolita, reading it over and over till the pages fell out. 

Out of the asylum he holed up in his mother’s attic typing away on the book that would become A Fan’s Notes. 

By 1964 the book was completed and he moved back to the YMCA in Manhattan where here would shop around for publishers, rejected by Random House, Houghton Mifflin, and others. 

The publishers told him a book about football wouldn’t get reviewed and they were worried about being libeled by the Giants or Gifford. 

A Fan’s Notes was much more than a book about football— it was a travelogue, from bar to bar in the Big Apple by a psychotic drunk who was an obsessive Giants fan.  

Finally, Fred found an agent, Lynn Nesbit, who specialized in off-beat writers. Lynn gave the manuscript to Harper & Row editor David Segal who had an eye for the avant-garde. He liked the book's searing honesty, advancing Exley three thousand dollars for it.

A Fan’s Notes was published in 1968— a victory for every nearly do well author swallowed up in the canyons of New York City, the broken hearts that never mended, and people whose voices were never heard— because the madness known as Fred Exley roared above the crowd, hear tell. 

I'll never write another word about Exley and his fucking book. I’m in bed, ill, after dashing off the bit about the loser— of course, it's plagiarized some, which is lucky for you because the original is ham-handed, like a hoofer with two left feet.  

Whereas my girlfriend, Pinky, is living testament to the aforesaid proclamation in that she's lying on her back motionless and uncovered next to me in bed, looking like a dimestore mannequin ready to be lifted and dressed in some kooky outfit. 

Spaceships, Madonna, & Seraphim

 

The most difficult part of beginning a new story is beginning— the rest flows.

Writing to me is simply thinking through your fingers. 

I didn’t say it Isaac Asimov did— duck soup with teeth. But, I could think through my fingers for an eternity and never write a sentence of science fiction. 

I'm not disinterested in the stratosphere, occasionally I gaze at the stars like an ant looking up at a giraffe. 

But, my take on outer space is twisted, look for yourself, here’s a bit from a story I wrote a couple of years ago, Missiles, Fruit Flies, & Psychosis—

Further out in left field, let's mix Heaven with rocket science. 

As the Discovery shuttle jets through the outer regions of the thermosphere, it blows spent rocket fuel and ghastly smoke out of its propelling nozzle. 

The astronauts are altitude sick, puking spent residues of their wet food lunch into paper barf bags, unaware their craft is soaring uncomfortably close to the doorway of Heaven because it doesn’t show on the radar. 

The intrusion rattles the Angels, the sentries at Saint Peter’s Gate— Like Roman warriors, the Seraphim execute a simultaneous action. God’s Guardians lock arms, forming a circle around the thrusting craft, flapping their wings, generating a strapping force, and pitching the rocket out of Heaven’s sphere.

I don’t think you can call this science fiction, moreover, it’s an example of what happens when the working wheels of humankind enter the realm of Heaven uninvited— as you would expect God and His Guardian Angels have the last laugh on the hapless Homo sapien sapiens. 

There’s a recent snapshot of Madonna attending the student fashion show at the eminent art school Central Saint Martens in New York City.

The one-time material girl, who was materialistic before it was cool, is wearing her hair in double braids. A hairstyle I’m partial to, more than partial really— my heart goes boom, boom, when I see a woman with double braids. 

While Sean Penn was married to Madonna in the eighties, the couple visited his longtime pal, Charles Bukowski one afternoon, who was living in his two-story house in San Pedro, California with Linda Lee. 

The newlyweds show in a limo— as they get out a neighborhood kid spies Madonna and in no time there’s a mob of striplings standing in front of Bukowski’s house, hooting. 

Buk walks outside in his bathrobe to see about the racket— his neighbors weren’t aware he was a world-famous author because they were strictly whitebread.

One of the rug rats walks up to Buk, who's standing on the driveway, tugs on his robe, saying excitedly,  

Uncle, it's Madonna, Madonna's here.

The scene humbles Bukowski as he realizes his grapefruit-size balls only beguile a few, and when it comes to groupies, Madonna wins in a walk.

I couldn’t find a thing on the internet about the Bukowski, Penn, and Madonna meeting. So I made the preceding scene up, impetuously adding the bit about Buk's balls, nervous it might not go over.

As a jazz buff, I couldn't name one of Madonna's songs, but I’ve been falling for her for a couple hours now— regardless of her age and the nip and tucks, that fucking face dogs me to the bone. 

She owes her plastic surgeon one for the chiseled features, and those kissable lips, because the doctor created a masterpiece.

I followed @Madonna on Twitter half an hour ago and got a notification she followed me back—  my heart jumped, then I realized it was a copycat profile, without the blue verification badge. Going on to message me, a Janus-faced Nigerian says he's sending me 6000 dollars, seconds later the account disintegrates before my eyes, melting away, busted by the Twitter police, and banned.

I’m gonna steady my machete and say goodnight to the Queen of Reinvention.

It’s a new day and I’m back to not giving a tin shit about Madonna, the way it’s always been.

Here's a list of nine writing styles I'll loosely cover at this time, without a shred of seriousness. 

Comedy, drama, horror, realism, romance, satire, tragedy, thriller, and fantasy.

Horror— does nothing for me, take the worst nightmare you've ever had, do you want to relive it? Daily life is enough of a horror show. 

Comedy— most comedians aren’t funny, particularly stand-up comedians. 

Take Ricky Gervais’s stand-up hit, Supernature, it leaves you flat. 

Ricky’s introduced by Warwick Davis, his dwarf pal, can I say dwarf? Announcing, 

ladies and gentlemen, here’s a man who doesn’t know why he’s here, RICKY GERVAIS!

Indeed, why was he there? 

Gervais's handlers should have let Warwick do the stand-up routine, people are gaga for pygmies, going stark mad when they dance.

Or Seinfeld, maybe he and Larry David think being Jewish is a ticket to funny paradise. I never got it, there was nothing funny about the sitcom Seinfeld. And, the show had canned laughter, which is odd, like the guys in the control room are letting you know it’s time to laugh even though the bit is dying on the vine.  

Romance— honestly I don’t have a romantic bone in my body, my relationship with my girlfriend is habit that's all. Good sex for us has been over for a long time, and our conversations are limited to the dogs, what did you eat, and where are you going?

But of course women crave romance and men just wanna fuck. Take a long-term marriage when wifey, out of desperation, dresses like a whore to turn hubby on. Proof that romance is a fading commodity, headed downhill at the alter. 

Satire— now, that moves me, here's the dictionary definition.

The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in topical issues.

Have you met many stupid people? You won’t because there aren’t any, and by chance, if they admit to being stupid, trust me they don’t believe it.

Most stupidity is a put-on. 

Take the Southern Belle in Gone With the Wind, who’s wooing a gentleman caller, oozing diffidence, trying to reel the guy in, falling over everything he says, as though she doesn’t have a thought in her head. Who in reality is wicked smart.

As for people's vices, only a few divulge the secrets of their nasty fantasies. I'd rather hear about their fetishes and eating disorders.

Anis Nin made it clear in her writing that her primary concern in life was cuming. That was fifty years ago and things haven't changed, people still love to cum, OH GOD, DON'T STOP, OH MY GOD I'M CUMING.

Fantasy— take Disney's animated movies, favorites like Bambi, Pinocchio, or The Lion King, all of them are tragic, even the puppet Pinocchio was duped into a life of sin by Happy John, making a few bucks, then cursed by the Blue Fairy for lying about money with a nose that grew when he lied. His reality was a freakshow, blame the puppeteer.

Realism—  real writing about people's lifes. Personally, I don’t want to know the details and don’t want to look too closely.

Thrillers— there are too many Hollywood action films that are remakes of the same basic plots. Take Top Gun Maverick, can you believe they're digging the dinosaur up? It's all about money, like most things. Val Kilmer is half in the grave and the makers of TG 2 or Butt Wipe 2, are reviving his character using an expensive camera with 6 lenses.

The film has as much chance as pigs do flying at winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

If you’re looking for cheap thrills, go home and role-play with your old lady. Dress like whoever you want, a plumber, maid, bellboy, nurse, milkman, or your favorite Muppet. I liked Oscar the Grouch who lived in a garbage can because somebody thought he was deposable. No wonder he's a grump.

I’ve plum-tuckered out folks, time for some red curry soup and rice. 

Monkeypox, Living Rough, & Indian Trains

 

There’s a new virus in town, a real freak show, that makes Covid look like Bambi. Introducing Monkeypox.

Monkeypox is novel—  everyone in the world knows you have it because your face and body is covered with lesions.

The origin of Monkeypox is a matter of speculation by officials, who initially declared it was sexually transmitted, which always seems to be the first culprit.

You would think the genesis of the virus is the usual stuff— animals, bats, monkeys, hyenas, eating them or getting bitten.

Eventually the officials— have you seen an official lately? Do they wear lanyards with cards reading— OFFICIAL? 

Anyway, the officials have now decided there are no documented cases of Monkeypox being spread by sex— instead, more conventionally, it’s transmitted through close contact with infected people or contaminated materials.

So Monkeypox is spread the way covid is when viral droplets in the air get into bodily openings— mouth, eyes, and nose. 

Lucky for us, Monkeypox, discovered in a lab in 1958, will only have fifteen minutes of fame, this time around. 

I have been struck down by the making ends meet blues—  payoff for a lifetime of failing to prioritize money, but I ain’t busted yet. 

When I go broke you’ll see a blog post here reading, 

Figaro Lucowski has offed himself, overdosing on laughing gas slash Nitrous Oxide— busting a gut all the way to Heaven. 

Being destitute is the heaviest burden imaginable. 

The homeless, who are everywhere, have the hearts of lions— how else could they endure? 

Street people live to drink and dope, it’s all they have, and most likely the shit’s the reason they’re down.

For some unorthodox authors, living rough, drifting, and using is the wellhead of their writing. 

When Charles Bukowski’s father discovered he’d been writing stories on the typewriter they bought to help with his college work, his old man tossed the manuscripts, the typewriter, and his son’s clothes out onto the lawn. Bukowski took ten dollars from his mother and caught a bus to downtown LA where he rented a cheap room.

After working menial jobs in LA for a few months he caught a bus to New Orleans, finding work in a warehouse and saving his money until he had enough to quit and pay his rent in advance so he could stay in his room all day and write. 

When he ran short of money, he tried to live on candy bars to postpone getting another— eight-hour job of nothingness.

Jack Kerouac used drugs like amphetamine, marijuana, and alcohol, to fuel his writing. He wrote Dharma Bums in three days, jacked up on bennies. 

The Beat icon drank cheap wine and wrapped himself in a canvas tarp to keep warm at night in the Big Sur wilderness— living rough as he traveled the US, later writing On the Road. 

Hunter S. Thompson used everything imaginable to fuel his riotous writing, but, he wasn’t one for living rough on the road, preferring luxurious hotels if the bosses at Rolling Stone Magazine would flip the bill.

For the last month, I’ve been living in a dump in Pattaya, Thailand, coming to terms with it by telling myself a great artist has to suffer—cough, excuse me I've choked on a peanut shell. 

Yet, feeling sublime, working on my laptop, listening to epicurean jazz, roasted on Tramadol— writing, a little dope, and good music can elevate you above the milieus of life

I live in bed, sitting up, inclined on a few pillows set at an angle against the headboard, with my laptop on my forelegs.

Everything in the world is at your fingertips on a computer— the breathtaking, the laughable, and the grotesque.   

I eat in bed too, because I’ve lived in small rooms most of my life. But, the only thing I don’t do in bed is screw— sad, isn’t it? Beds are made for sleeping and screwing. 

As for sleeping, sleep hallucinations freak me out. They are different from dreams— you know right away when you wake from a dream that you were dreaming. In a sleep hallucination, you may not be able to figure out what is real and what isn't for several minutes. 

Several minutes of hanging out to dry on a clothesline in gagaville— your head feels like mush as it’s sending a message to the rest of your body to keel over. 

When I get out of bed in the morning, I put on my jockey shorts and go to the kitchen to make coffee, mixing it with hot milk. 

I think most people in the world need the jolt they get from caffeine, be it coffee or tea before they begin their day.

Starbucks is out for me because lattes are pricey, and their brew is overrated. There's a chain of coffee houses here in Thailand called Amazon, which is half the price and less pretentious than Starbucks. 

Years ago while traveling second class by train in India, just a bump above sleeping on the floor, I was wakened by the sound of squeaking brakes, getting out of my wooden seat and walking the aisle, looking for the privy. 

As you would guess, the water closet was rank— a hole that opened up right onto the tracks. If you're traveling in India second class on a tight budget it helps to have a sense of humor. So, I drop my cut-offs and let it fly, pitying the Untouchables living near the tracks in tar paper huts, polluting their groundwater. 

I wash up at the sink outside of the WC, splashing my hands and face with brown water— afraid of catching cholera if I brush my teeth, and rinse. 

Walking the aisle of the succeeding car I spy an animated brown man in a white robe squatting near a large black pot of boiling milk, Masala tea, sugar, and freshly, chopped ginger. He’s one of the trains Chaiwallahs, tea makers.

He hands me a large metal cup, it's Masala Chai tea. I drink two more cups of the savory brew standing astride in the aisle of the shaky train. 

Back at my seat, an old Indian woman is sitting in my place, I surrender without a fuss, sitting on the floor. Eventually, for kicks, I climb on the moving train's rooftop— sitting there holding onto a vent for dear life as the Indians who are jam-backed by my side laugh at me.

Soon the train reaches Pondicherry Station, my destination. I grab my canvas bag and get off, at the station entrance I get in a bicycle rickshaw, taking the slow road to the Butterfly Hotel, next to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. 

I take a cold shower, and change my clothes, wearing light cotton slacks, a t-shirt, and rubber slippers.

In the area outside the hotel, I notice a group of European devotees from the ashram, exchanging blissful looks, knowing they are too high for me, I avoid them.

Downtown, walking the bustling city streets I look for Shantytown, where the poor live. 

At Shantytown, I follow a water-logged pathway passing dried mud huts with blankets as doorways, in no time smelling burning hashish, scoring a tola for a thousand Rupees. 

Back at the Butterfly hotel, I lay in bed, tuning in a cheap plastic radio as I puff burning hashish in a clay chillum, listening to sitar and tabla music on the local radio station, getting higher and higher until my body is hovering on the ceiling looking down at myself in bed. 

This is a good place to end this story within a story, on the ceiling of the Butterfly Hotel.