Surprise for Luch

Surprise for Luch from the soon to be pieced together book; American Dream Woman: Waxed Parts

In a penthouse suite in the Hilton in downtown Harrisburg, as the early evening gave way to the darkness called night or as the polish call it Wieczór późny, thirty people commixed for the reason of bidding a fair adieu to our friend Luch who was to set sail for distant lands, i.e. Iraq, in two weeks time. Yes, it would be memorable event but not for the reasons normally associated with such affairs. No, it would not be a night of cordial introductions and gently sipping Chablis, my friends would not and could not let a party of this nature proceed in a boring, civilized manor. It isn’t their nature or mine. There would have to be mayhem, intoxication, carousing and at least one fight to complete the evening. I’m just grateful no one fell off the balcony, although several came close and other than the broken furniture, salsa and popcorn ground into the carpet and the bathtub full of people that overflowed no real damage was done. It is all so vivid in my mind…well, the part before I started drinking but I think I can more or less recall what happened after that.

“We’re getting in the elevator now,” my friend the Weasel said, into his cell phone.

“I’ll see you in a minute,” I said, closing my cell phone. “Okay, everyone Luch is on his way up, go hide on the balcony.”

The thirty or so guests that had attended shuffled from the parlor out onto the balcony.

Amongst the guests were nine of Luch’s family members, including his grandmother who smoked a corncob pipe and swore like a coal miner and his uncle who flew in from California on a military transport. His uncle, Champ, was a former CIA operative and was decked out in full camouflage and combat boots. He didn’t follow the rest of the guests out onto the balcony but instead walked around the table of food poking at various appetizers with a large Rambo knife.

“Do you want to hide?” I asked.

“I don’t hide,” Champ said, running his hand through his salt and pepper flat top.

“Right,” I said. “Would you like a fork?”

“Never use them,” he said, stabbing a cheese ball with his Rambo knife and biting it like an apple.

“Right,” I said. “You don’t want crackers with that do you?”

“Do I look like a cracker eater to you boy?”

The way Champ stared at me with his cobalt blue eyes made me feel, exposed, vulnerable, and naked. No doubt this was taught to him for interrogation purposes while he was an undercover operative in the CIA. Luch had mentioned something about him having spent a lot of time in South America and torturing people with ABBA records.

“Okay, D.B, Wilson, assume slovenly positions on various pieces of furniture.

It had been my idea to keep only the scruffiest and oldest of Luch’s friends, who included me, visible for the grand entrance. He would be let down when he saw only us, the usual rowdy crowd, sitting there drinking beer and then when he was at his lowest we’d lead him out to the balcony where everyone else was hiding.

The door burst open and Luch and the Weasel stepped into the parlor of the suite.

“Surprise,” D.B. said, holding his beer up above his head.

The crooked smile that had been stretched across his face disappeared, replaced by a look of bewilderment. It was obvious he was under whelmed.

“To Luch,” I said, raising my beer.

“Surprise,” the Weasel said, twirling an American flag.

“Whatever,” Luch said and cracked open a Coors Light.

“Don’t get too excited it can cause heart palpitations,” I said.

“Everything’s a ha ha with you people,” he said taking a healthy slurp from the Coors Light that had magically appeared in his hand.

“Drop the military speak your starting to freak me out,” I said.

“What’s wrong with military speak,” Champ said, setting his cheese ball and knife down on the table.

“Champ what are you doing here?” Luch asked his uncle.

“I heard you were having a party. So I came,” Champ said. .

“From California? This is weird,” Luch said, “where are the chicks? The least you could’ve done is gotten some strippers.”

“Better yet how would you like to see your grandmother naked?” D.B said. “Because she’s out on the balcony.”

Before I knew what was happening Champ had leaped across the table of food and was strangling D.B.

The balcony doors flew open. “Surprise,” everyone yelled.

“Help,” D.B cried.

“That’s my mother you’re talking about,” Champ said as he tried to strangle D.B.

It took several of us to pry Champ off D.B. I was just thankful that he hadn’t had his Rambo knife when he attacked. Wilson, a veritable pharmaceutical warehouse, slipped a tranquilizer in a beer and gave it to Champ who guzzled it without stopping for a breath. This seemed to calm him somewhat and he sank back into a plush chair and gnawed on his cheeseball.

The evening from that point on progressed without a hitch. There was much back slapping and pledges to write to Luch and he grinned his crooked grin and drained Coors Light after Coors Light. And then there was a loud knock on the door. Woops, did I say the evening progressed without a hitch?

D.B. did the Mic Jagger chicken dance all the way to the door and opened it.

“Hi there security we followed a trail of crushed peanuts back to your room,” a security guard in a captain’s suit said. “Evidently someone is hiding an elephant up here or being very goddamn sloppy. We also have noise complaints.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” D.B. said.

“That’s because you’re the ones making the noise,” the security guard said.

“Oh, right,” I said. I folded up a twenty dollar bill and slipped it into the security guard’s hand. .

“Thank-you sir,” he said, stuffing the bill into his blue polyester pants.

“Hey, what are you doing?” a guy standing along the wall said. “They’re being noisy and bothering us.”

The complainer was a rather husky individual, with three chins and coconut sized man boobs. I wasn’t scared but respected the immovable force that he might be if I tried one of my patented Karate styled kicks on him; I might lose one of my Burmese jungle boots between the rolls that hung from his sides. There was also the matter of his blubbery entourage which totaled two but on a Richter scale might have caused a 3.0 if deck they were standing on gave way.

“It’s under control,” the hotel security guard said.

“The fuck it is,” the guy said.

The Weasel, about five nine and one-hundred and thirty pounds lunged at the guy. Luckily I was close enough to grab hold of him before he flung himself in front of what was tantamount to a speeding eighteen wheeler.

“Ho there big guy,” I said.

The Weasel’s legs spun madly as I held him around the waist.

“Okay, let’s get back to our rooms,” the security guard said.

“This isn’t over,” the big burly guy said. “I will be back.”

“Oh, it’s over,” Champ said, pointing his Rambo knife with the cheeseball on the end at them.

“And who do you think you’re going to do scrub brush?” the big guy said, hitching up his khakis.

“I’ll carve that blubber off your sides with my knife, wring it out and use the oil to power my Skidoo when I trek across the Himalayas next winter,” Champ said.

“Come on lets get out of here. These guys are crazy,” the big guy said.

“That’s right, I’m crazy,” the Weasel said.

“Thanks again,” I said, to the security guard.

We went back inside and gathered everyone together. We had planned to take the party out on the town for a few hours and then end the party back at the room. Since I had the keys Luch, Champ, and I were the last ones to leave the room.

“Okay, let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Those cocksuckers can’t tell us to be quiet,” Champ uncle said. “Come on.”

Luch and I followed him out in the hallway to the elevators. He looked up to a service panel in the ceiling.

“Boost me up,” Champ said to Luch.

Luch obliged and boosted his uncle up to the ceiling panel in front of the elevators. Champ quickly removed the screws and climbed up inside.

“What are you doing?” Luch asked.

“Payback. Now hand me my bag,” Champ said.

I hoisted his bag up. He turned on a flashlight.

“We’ll be at the Hardware bar if you want to come down. His arm shot out of the hole poised in the thumbs up sign and then quickly disappeared and the panel slid back into place.

“Let’s get the Hell out of here,” Luch said. “We don’t want to be around when he has his revenge. It’s never pretty.”

We went down the elevator and burst out into the cold night air. Everyone else from the party had already headed out to the bars downtown. Thanks to his whacky uncle Luch was missing his own party.
* * *

At the Hardware bar Luch, D.B. the Weasel and I positioned ourselves on the second floor loft which overlooked the dance floor where most of the guests from Luch’s party were dancing. I like to be able to look out over the dance floor and observe people. This night’s scene was another spectacle of the mechanical dance of despair and envy that engulfs the sweating masses. I am not above it but simply outside it. I’ve never been one to dive into the crowd, to follow. And maybe I’m not a leader of many men, which in history makes you great but I am a leader unto myself and have taken myself into life’s battles without the comfort or need to be part of a group. If I fuck up I want all the responsibility if I don’t fuck up I want all the glory because in the end the people around you aren’t going to crawl into the cold dark box with you. Unless one of those closest to you is a necrophiliac and well, I don’t want to go into the details that might accompany such a thought..

“Man I have bad gas,” D.B, said, letting loose a fart that rattled the fixtures on the walls.

“I know I heard you that sounded like a honking goose with its head stuffed in an empty mayonnaise jar. You need to get some Beano or something. That flatulence is starting to wreak havoc on your personal life.”

“My personal life is fine but she will make it better,” D.B. said.

Coming at us was one of the women from our party. She was a slender brunette fitness fanatic with enough energy per square inch in her supple body to pry the lug nuts off a rusty eighteen wheeler with her armpits. She appeared to be crying.

“What’s up you guys,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

“Angela, what’s wrong?” D.B. asked.

“I don’t know. What’s wrong with me? No one likes me. I can’t get a boyfriend,” she said.

“Gee, I wonder why,” D.B. said.

The Weasel stepped between them before Angela bitch slapped him.

“I like you,” the Weasel said.

“I’m the prettiest girl in three counties and look at my abs,” she said pulling up her shirt.

The Weasel ran his fingers across her abs. “Nice,” he said, smiling out of the corner of his mouth.

“Do you want to see this dancing queen shake her abdominals?” she said.

“Yes, yes, I do,” the Weasel said.

They headed down the stairs to the dance floor but I didn’t follow. I was having too good a time watching people and besides if I’d step on someone with my Burmese jungle boots I’d probably crush their toes.

“I should go dance on the bar,” Luch said, slurring his words.

“Guys aren’t allowed to dance on the bar,” D.B. said.

“How much do you want to bet?”

“Fifty bucks.”

“You’re on,” Luch said, downing the rest of his Coors Light.

They took off for the bar and there was but one. Yeah, that’s right, me. I was the one, who as usual was sequestered to the outside of all activities, just where I like it but soon enough I grew tired of watching people twisting like reanimated corpses with some strange outer space bacteria attacking their central nervous systems.

I drained my Guinness and made my way down to the dance floor. D.B. was doing the Mic Jagger chicken dance across the top of it. I’d have to have a talk with D.B. He’d been doing the chicken dance much too much lately and it was beginning to worry me. I swiftly traversed the dance floor careful not to appear as if I was dancing and made my way out the front door.

Immediately upon exiting the Hardware bar I noticed a young lady from the gym where I workout. I remembered from her nametag that her name was Erica. She was crossing the street. I followed and as I crossed to the other side I brushed up against a BMW.

“Watch the car,” the owner of the BMW said.

I smiled and gave him the finger.

Erica entered the Brick House, a German establishment that specializes in waitresses clad in lederhosen and tall frothing glasses of Franzinkaner. I followed.

Once inside I found the place to be packed so I positioned myself at the top of the stairs. I looked far and near and didn’t see her. I began observing the hula-hoop hip gyrations of a twenty-something female dressed tightly in a swatch of wool sateen when the crowd of people on the dance floor parted as if split in half by an invisible snow plow. I wondered what all the ruckus was about until I saw who it was. It was Erica.

Her hips swayed hypnotically like two cantaloupes wrapped in a hammock that was blowing gently in a breeze on some tropical island. I would need all my mental faculties popping in a synchronized fashion if I was going to make this happen. I went deep into a trance and collected myself, picturing a goat on a far away mountain top smoking a hookah. “Ah, ha,” I said, coming out of the trance. The people next to me moved.

“Hey, there,” I called.

She looked up.

“What are you doing here,” she said. “I’ve only ever seen you in the gym.”

“Yes, well, I like the smell of moldy gym socks in the morning, athletes foot, and stair step aerobics.”

“You’ve never done stair step aerobics.”

“I didn’t say I did. I merely said I liked them and that would be in an observational capacity.”

“In fact I’ve never seen you work out,” Erica said, seductively running her index finger along her bottom lip.

“I don’t workout in the strict sense of the word. I like to watch people workout. It keeps the muscle between the ears lubricated.”

You’re going to say something and screw this up aren’t you?” she asked.

“I see my reputation precedes me. I’ll also have to let you know I’m not a dancer. That can sometimes end a relationship before it gets started.”

“I don’t care about dancing.”

She looked down at my Burmese jungle boots and then at the five days of scruff on my face.

“What do you do?”

“I do as little as possible. It’s the American way.”

“I’m tired of liars and cheats.”

“I am neither a liar nor a cheat. In all the infinite ways I can fuck things up I am merely me. I’m not sadistic and I don’t have the energy to be vindictive.”

“It takes up so much energy,” she said.

“It really does. Excuse me,” I said, and turned to pick up my beer on the bar.

In the time that I’d turned to retrieve my beer the guy whose BMW I’d brushed up against outside had moved in on Erica. He looked like he might have been a mannequin in the showroom window at Macy’s, with high angular cheekbones and hair that flowed off his head like flames off a burning ball of gasoline soaked newspaper. I don’t have cheekbones and what little hair I have can hardly be said to flow and therefore I already had two strikes against me.

I watched as this guy gradually backed Erica into a corner. She looked over his shoulder; her eyes wide, as if to say help me. I started to walk away. I knew I wasn’t flashy enough to outdo this guy. I don’t care to be. If there’s one thing I can’t stand its guys that overdo flashy; the cocksuckers that relentlessly hound and badger until women break down to their phony charms. These are the same women that find themselves thirty years later sitting in their local Moose club drinking shitty liquor and wondering what happened to their lives. I’d tell them they ended the minute Mr. Charming opened his mouth and the glint from faux gold teeth blinded them but no one wants to hear that.

“Where the Hell are you going?” D.B. asked.

“D.B., what are you doing here?” I asked. “You were well into the chicken dance when I left the Hardware Bar.”

“We can talk about that later,” D.B. said. “I saw you with Ms. Hotty pants and you let Mr. BMW take her away. What is wrong with you lately?”

“I’ve given up.”

D.B. smacked me hard across the face. Instantly my inner Curly came out and my feet churned as I repeatedly and involuntarily smacked my nearly bald forehead.

“Hey you, BMW cocksucker,” I cried.

“What did you just say?” he asked.

“I said, hey you BMW cocksucker.”

Sweat was poring from ever inch of my body, my Burmese jungle boots were quickly filling up. I hitched up my pants and fondled my brass knuckles belt buckle.

“Fuck you,” he said, taking a step towards me.

“Kick his ass,” D.B, said.

“Is that your BMW being towed over their?” Erica said.

“Oh, my God, my BMW,” he said and rushed down the stairs and out the door.

“Come on let’s get out of here,” Erica said and we fled out the back door and hightailed in back to the Hilton.

* * *

As we waited for the elevator to come down in the lobby the fatty patrol that had bitched about our noise level was getting on the elevator beside us. They were carrying buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and gripping them like they were the last jumbo Dixie cups of fountain of youth water. I growled like a mad dog and they ignored me.

“Come on,” D.B. said let’s get on this one.

D.B. and Erica pushed into an already full elevator and I tried but wouldn’t fit.

“I’ll catch the next one,” I said.

I got in a separate elevator and went up. When I reached our floor my elevator lurched to a stop. The doors didn’t open.

“I’ve got you you fucking punks.”

I knew that voice. It was Champ. It sounded like he was in the elevator shaft somewhere.

“No, it’s me Luch’s friend,” I yelled. I’m one of the people that helped set up the party for him. I’m going back up to rejoin the party now.”

“Shut up you goddamn punk or I’ll cut the cable on this elevator and send you straight to hell,” Champ screamed.

“Was this all because I asked you to hide?” I yelled.

He cackled like a mad man.

“I never hide. I’m always there in plane sight. You just don’t know where to look,” Champ yelled.

“This will teach you to complain to hotel security,” he said.

“I’m not those guys. They went up in another elevator,” I screamed.

The lights went out. I heard Luch’s uncle moving around above me and then it was silent. I opened up my cell phone so I could see and noticed Erica’s cell phone number there which I’d programmed in on the way back from the Brick House.

I pressed send and after about for or five rings she answered.

“Who is this?” she said.

I could hear heavy breathing in the background.

“It’s me.”

“You’ll have to do better than me,” she said.

“I was just with you at the Brick House. I saved you from the guy with the BMW.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. There was silence and I heard the smacking of lips and then a surprisingly loud fart that sound like a honking goose with its head inside an empty mayonnaise jar.

“I’d recognize that fart anywhere,” I said. “D.B. is that you?”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“D.B, I know that goose honking fart sound of yours anywhere,” I said.

“That stinks get out of bed,” Erica said.

“It’s only a fart,” D.B said.

“D.B., it is you,” I said.

The phone went dead and I slumped against the back wall of the elevator. I thought how life is a ultimately a strange tangle of events, like the vines twisting through the tree tops of a jungle canopy, with each bend and break representing choices and opportunities and their consequences. I felt like burning down the jungle.

I noticed a lot of peanuts on the ground and started eating those when my cell phone rang again.
“Hello?” I said.

“It’s me,” Erica said.

“I’m sorry about that. I’ve been drinking a lot. Your friend D.B. was doing that Mic Jagger chicken dance on the end of the bed and I thought it was cute. The next thing I knew we were making out.”

“Damn him and that chicken dance,” I said.

“I want you to come up here,” she said.

“I would but I can’t I’m trapped in an elevator.”

“If you don’t want to come up just say so. You don’t need to make up excuses.”

“No, I’m not really. I’m really trapped in an elevator.”

“You know I really tried to get past what people say about you but you won’t let me. You just can’t be straight with anyone can you?”

“No, I am I’m being straight. Luch’s uncle did something to the elevator and trapped me in here.”

“Don’t call me again,” she said.

“Wait,” I said but it was too late the battery on my phone died. I hadn’t even called anyone to get me out of the elevator.

I jumped to my feet and started pounding on the elevator doors. “Let me out of here,” I cried. I pounded on the doors for a minute or two and then exhausted I fell to the ground, curled up and fell asleep.

* * *

The next morning I awoke on the floor of the elevator as the door opened. A group of Boy Scouts stood outside staring at me. They were there for some sort of fire starting competition.

“I have a bad case of vertigo,” I said jumping to my feet.

“He’s drunk,” I heard one of the boys say.

“Yeah, and you little cocksuckers discriminate against gays. You sold cookies outside the ACLU because they called you on your homophobic views. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Why won’t you let a gay kid build a popsicle log cabin and make pinecone Christmas ornaments with you? Are you afraid they might be better than yours?”

Some of the kids started to cry and I ran out of the hotel and onto the street and the new day’s sun warmed my face. I looked up at the hotel and new that another chapter of my life had ended. Luch was going to Iraq, Wilson was headed to Florida, D.B. had already moved down around Philly and the Weasel was busy teaching senior citizens badminton six nights a week at the YMCA as a condition of his probation.

Me, I am off to D.C. on Wednesday to meet up with my brother. He told me he’s gotten in with a group of friends that will keep me on my toes and that he knows a certain blond secretary that seems just crazy enough to tame me. I’ll believe it when I see it.

So goodbye to the old group, you’ll all still be in my dreams and D.B. I think Philadelphia might be a good place to get in trouble, so pencil me in for an upcoming spree of debauchery. Like I’ve said all along I need to keep moving. In fact I want to build up so much momentum that I kick through this earthly canvas and into dimensions unknown. Maybe then I can slow and will know peace. Until then remember that you’ll never know me as well as you think you do. I won’t allow for it. I like being on the outside looking in. The joke is that I am the joke.

P.S. Erica you left your spandex halter top in my Jeep. I’m outta here.