7/15/98

The bunny achieves government assistance. God Bless America. God Bless FDR. God Bless LBJ and God Bless Smith's grocery store cause I gots me some FOOD STAMPS. (Net worth: $121 in trailer trash cash, $1.96 in beer and cigarette money) I have a pack and of half of GPCs and its midnight, you know what that means… yes you do…beer tomorrow! I didn't have any today. Sad. I still write though, but it's not the same. Writing without beer is like fucking without a girl. Satisfying but not quite...altogether there.

So like I said, I'm living back at Diane's again. My darling has wife moved back in too. "Yes, I'm married, but we sleep on separate floors." It's hard to pick up on women when that's the line that honestly describes your life.

The Blond cashier at Walgreens on Horne and Main, who sees me every day and all I ever buy there is beer and GPCs ($3.99/12-pack Schlitz Ice, 1.69/pack generic - not bad), looks at me (it's 9 in the morning mind you, and I'm bare foot, wearing horsy pajamas that are too small for me with my wallet sticking out of the shirt pocket and the beer money's in nickels, dimes and quarters in a zip-lock bag) as I set my 12-pack on the counter and she says, "God, you drink a lot, don't you?" and she said it in a way that didn't make me feel as though she was addressing me formally, like my name was God, but was instead pre-punctuating her sentence with verbal disgust. So I said, "Why yes I do. Thanks for noticing." She asked what I did and I told her that I, first off, drink a lot and secondly that I was writing a book about a drunken chain-smoking man who wears a bunny suit and has various short-lived drunken sexual encounters while traveling endlessly back and forth across the country on a greyhound bus and sleeping on people's couches and floors avoiding work until they throw me out. It's an adventure story, I say. She laughs at the speed with which my mouth can produce long strings of bullshit and asks, "This story's made up…right?" I tell her yes, it's completely made up, to the extent that I don't actually have a bunny suit yet. I look down and start counting out my change. I need $4.25. There's $1, $1.10… "You really do that? That's why you're in here three times a day, every day for 3 or 4 months and then you're gone for 2 months?" she asks. I smile and count out nickels, "Naw, who'd be stupid enough to really do that? $2.75. $2.80" She busts up, "You do! That's so sick. Where do you get money?" I tell her, people love me. I'm an urban bunny. "People love you? And they give you money to get drunk because you think you're a bunny?" I say basically, yes. Sometimes they give me beer, sometimes money, sometimes they give me stuff. I say somebody just gave me an $8000 copy machine because they like my other books and want me to keep putting them out. Somebody else is giving me paper for it and another guy is getting me the toner. $3.45, $3.55. "No way." Way-ay! I say and I waggle my eyebrows at her stupidly and ask if she wants to come see it. "I don't think so. How come people never give me anything for free?" Do you ask for stuff? I find that if you don't ask, people don't give you stuff, but if you do ask then they do. I say if you just ask, every day is like Christmas, people giving and me getting, and Christmas makes people happy and that's why I'm happy and that's why people give me stuff. And because I'm cute. $3.60… $3.65… She sees the money pile is getting small and takes over counting herself. Her eyes are down on the counter, counting. "I've asked for stuff and I never get anything." It's probably because you're not as cute as me. She glances up frowning, "You don't think I'm cute?" and goes back to start counting the penny section. I say I think you're extremely cute, but perhaps just not as cute as me. She says she's cuter, and I ask Then why don't people give you stuff? She tells me I'm twisted and wrong and 30 cents short for the beer and that I'm not that cute and I should put the beer back until I can find another 30 cents then she turns around ignoring me and straightens out the tiny airline bottles of hard stuff, booze, the fruit of the hair that bit you, on the shelf behind her. I tell her I'll put her in the book if she'll let me slide for the 30 cents. I say I'll call you the Blonde cashier at Walgreens and then everyone will know who you are and you'll be famous and people will probably give you stuff then because people like giving famous people stuff. She turns, reaches into her pocket, pulls out change and holds up 30 cents saying, "I'll give you this if you say you won't put me in your stupid book. If you even have a book. There! (she flings the change into the register) Take the beer and go back to your cardboard box and have a good time." I inform her that I do not live in a cardboard box at this present time and when she asks where I do live and I say with my wife's mother and she says 'you're married!' and that's when I uttered the phrase that will go down forever in the history of pick-up lines "Yes, I'm married, but we sleep on separate floors"

And that line was the whole point of the long winded story of the Blonde cashier at Walgreens. But it's not the end.

I said thank you and she asked if I really wrote books and I said yes, I had four now and that this was a really good time to ask, if she wanted something for free. She rocked against the counter, "Can I have a 30 cent copy?" Of course, I say, you're that famous Blonde cashier at Walgreens I've read so much about. I'd love to give you something for 30 cents. She points menacingly at me. "Don't write about me!" I asked her out. She smiled and winced, "No! You're married and you're weird." I filled her in on the marriage thing and said she could come meet my wife any time she liked (when MA wasn't passed out) and be told in person just how much we were truly not married, how much she hated me and how loathsome a human being I really was and she replied, that won't be necessary. "You're still weird. Where would we go? The Salvation Army for dinner then peek through people's windows for a movie? You don't have any money." I say WOW yeah, we could go to Blockbuster, find the movie we want to see, wait until someone picks it out and then follow them home and watch it through their window. "No, I don't think so." She laughs again. So I try, we'll go see my friends' band at Long Wong's on Mill or at Atomic on Hayden (aside: the pooh-boy got arrested and spent Independence Day locked in the pods downtown for stealing a wall hanging from Atomic last summer when we both lived in the dog house with dead-Tommy. net damage: 1 day in jail, $1000 restitution. Atomic Café sucks) or where ever they're playing on Friday. They'll let us slide in on the guest list and I can probably get some free beer tickets or find someone to buy us a couple pitchers. "A total scam date. Wonderful. Just what I need. Why would I want to go out with you?" I reiterate how cute I am and an old black bum comes up in line behind me with a 40 of 'Old English', the preferred tanning solution of the Arizona transient scene ($1.18/40-oz. Malt liquor. SPF 9000). She starts lightly bouncing from foot to foot and smiling, motioning for me to move to the side which I read as a good sign of possible impending sex. I don't move. I ask So you'll go? The bum laughs at my pajamas and calls me crazy white boy. "I have to help this gentleman." She rings him up as he counts his pennies and dimes out and she keeps looking over at me smiling about to bust out laughing again. The bum asks me what I'm wait'n on because I'm standing there watching her and waiting for him to finish. I ask him Are you my dad? She takes his money about to explode. "Hell no I ain't your daddy. You crazy?" I say I just thought you might be, because my mom says she used to like to fuck black guys and I never knew who my real father was. So, I thought I'd ask. Did you used to like to fuck white girls? "There something wrong with you?" He walks off with his 40, looks at me and cracks up, "Shit…I still do. I… still… do. There is something definitely wrong with you boy. Def-finite-ly wrong." He shook his head, shielded his eyes from the morning glare as the automatic doors opened and left. She turned to me with this completely blank face, not saying a word. I ask So can I get your phone number? She goes into subdued hysterics, pacing behind the counter with her hand over her mouth, trying not to attract attention. Are you gonna go out with me Friday? She takes a deep breath and composes herself pulling back her hair with both hands, elbows resting on the counter again blank. A long pause. I smile. She breaks up again and pulls her hair down to cover her face and starts nodding yes. I ask for her number again and she whips out her credit card transaction pen and writes it on the paper grocery bag the beer's in. She wrote her name down too, but I'm not going to use it here. If I don't, maybe Laura won't know I'm writing about her. She hides back in her hair, she says I should go away now. I say ok. She says call me. After 8. I tell her I don't put out on the first date and she sneers and says that’s nice, she doesn't either. I hope she's lying too.