I looked at all my father’s Henchmen at the Passover Seder in my tiny apartment on seventh street. Lord knows what that sweet old man eating gefilte fish has done for my father the last forty years, or that Russian kid who was drinking all the Vodka in one gulp could do to my family, if he ever got any ideas of becoming the Boss. Urgh!

I glanced around the room for more evidence about how strange my life was. I looked at my Cousin Hal. My mother was choking him as if they were in the ring of a  Wrestling match. He slipped out of her clutches and came over to me.

“Nice party,” he said.
“Nice party? Are you fucking kidding me?! My mother invited every woman I’ve ever dated here. I’m surrounded by my father’s henchmen, and you, you have been the biggest disappointment of all.”

“Me, what are you talking about?”

“Well, before you showed up, I thought I was getting away with murder. I was a big fish in a puddle called the East Village. I was making my music, my bad poetry, I had my stupid flea markets to make some money. I was just doing my thing. Then you come along with getting me involved with spy shit, and intrique… And Now for all intensive purposes, I am getting away with murder.”

“Gingy had to die.”

“No he didn’t.”

“He made a dangerous weapon.”

“He made a dangerous weapon that Israel didn’t think he should be playing around with. “

“You saw it, you saw what it could do. Do you think that he should have been playing around with the Gods.”

I don’t think you had the right to kill him and make me part of something I never asked to be a part of.”

Our grandmother came over to my Cousin and I and grabbed our cheeks,”Such cheeks on the both of you. Sweet cheeks. No talking about murder, o.k. ? I walk over to you father, he’s talking about death, I walk over to your Grandfather, he’s still schlepping around the Holocaust stories with him. Now, I come over to you two and you are talking about murder. We’re not that kind of people.”

I hunched over and got my grandmother to release her fingers from my cheeks. They were pinching a little too hard,” I”m sorry Baubie we were just talking about a James Bond movie.”

“I love my James Bond,” my Grandmother said.

“Me too,” my Cousin Hal said with a big smile. I thought he was going to tell her that he in fact was a Government Agent. He stopped himself.
Our Baubie (Yiddish for Grandma) moved across the room to where all my ex- girlfriends were sitting and talking. Every now and then, I’d see them look over at my direction and point.

Hal said,”I could probably get you a job at my Agency.”

“Why would I want to work for your Agency.”

“You get a gun, you get to use it.”

“I could just work for my Dad.”

“The Agency was thinking that you could do that too. Become an insider with your Dad. See what it’s like. You have always sat outside yourself. You could be an insider with your Dad, and then be an insider with The Agency.

“I think that would turn me inside out.”

“Aren’t you that already? Didn’t our family’s Holocaust background make sure that we were always going to be inside out of this world?”

Doesn’t mean that it’s right.”

“Think about it. Think about becoming an Agent. Good money, benefits. Plus, whatever money you make with your Dad, you can keep.”

“Dental?”

“As long as you are helping The Agency, you will be taken care of. Very few people in your position get this offered to them. “

“My mother walked over the five other women in my life over to me. The women surrounded me.”

My mother said,”We are going to get to the bottom of your problems with women.”

I said,”Help!”

My Cousin stood shaking his head,”Not your father’s Mob or The Agency could help you with this one.”

When something goes wrong, or seems to go wrong, I go down that dark, dark path. I’ll get a mistaken bill, and think that I owe the money and worry about how I am going to pay on something that I don’t owe, or if I hear a new sound in my Dodge Ram 1990, I’ll think that eventually, I will be careening off the highway, down into that dark hole, plunging and screaming as if the roller coaster when flying off the tracks on the Cyclone (anybody who has ever been on the Cyclone knows that possibility exists.

Damn, how is this notes to a novel? I guess I should bring in my anxieties into the book. I want everybody to bite their fingernails like I do. I don’ t even know when it happens. What if I were to wake up and all my anxieties were dealt with while I was asleep…

My fingernails were manicured. The van ran perfectly. All bills said paid in full when I opened them up with one eye (I open all bills with one eye, I guess just in case something squirts out from the envelope.

Shouldn’t it be called femalecured, instead of manicured? (I have no longer understood where I am going with this. Just proving to you that I have a peppery brain that veers out of control, not unlike the van whose brakes should be adjusted.

Anyway, I must bring in the element of my anxiety into the novel. When you finish reading a chapter of anything I write, you should want to go on a bender, or go for a run and never return. I want you to feel how I feel a dozen times a day

When people talk about the end of the world, I always look at it as such a calming quality in my life. I mean, if it were really the end of the world, I could let go of my own anxieties and really enjoy life. Boy, do I wish that it was the end of the world, so I could let go of things and open my mail with both eyes open, or just go for a drive in the van and head off that cliff and just enjoy the view, without worrying about the brakes.

I hope to bring in these elements into the novel later today. Any comments would be appreciated

“Yeah, well that’s why I’m bringing you to my apartment to meet my Grandfather. You will find that he too has gotten lost in his Torah stories… Personally, I always hated going to Yeshiva as a kid. I didn’t belong in that group and they let me know it,” I stated as we walked up the five flights to my small apartment cramped in with a dozen Holocaust Survivors and another dozen unsuspecting innocent Gentiles.

We watched my  Grandfather come out of the apartment and say  to no one in particular,”There’s too much talk. Quiet! Shah! It took Moses forty years to get out of the desert. He swirled and swayed in circles exhausting the people till they had nothing left to say. He wanted them to be left with only sand in their mouth.”

I pointed at my Grandfather,”Hello, Zadie… How are you?”

“This Passover Holiday is stupid. We are here celebrating bad navigation. Forty years to get out of that desert. It should have taken a couple of days.”

Rabbi Schmuli chimed in,” Perhaps, Moses just wanted to wear out the Chosen People. Perhaps, he just wanted to bring these free people to their knees. I wonder how many Jews wanted to go back to Egypt and build some more Pyramids instead of roaming around aimlessly?”

“Fuck You!” my Grandfather said to Rabbi Schmuli.

I introduced my Grandfather to Rabbi Schmuli,”Zadie this is Rabbi Schmuli.”

I don’t give a fuck who he is,” my Grandfather said. I thought he might push the Rabbi down the stairs.

“Zadie, they making you crazy inside.”

“Yes, your Grandmother and her daughter are in that small cramped apartment of yours making Gefilte fish and arguing about the correct way of pronouncing Doctor Seuss.”

“Your mother the stickler is insisting that Seuss rhymes with Joyce. And your Grandmother is saying that it doesn’t matter. Everybody says Seuss which rhymes with Zeus, and it doesn’t matter the actual pronounciation, it is what the people say. They are making me wish I was working on The Pyramids.

Who is inside? I asked.
“Everybody is in that stinking small apartment of yours. Your father, your Cousin. Some cute girls all looking for you. One of the girls in there waiting for you has tits which are fighting each other. That’s why they are pointed in opposite directions.”

I explained to Rabbi Schmuli,”That’s how my Grandfather explains a woman who has fantastic tits.

“Well, lets go inside and see if we can’t help these tits settle their differences.”

“I like this Rabbi,” my Grandfather said as he held the door open to my apartment which smelled like  a combination of Matzoh balls and tons of people sweating in a small apartment.

(to be continued)

I needed the noise of Brooklyn to quiet my aching head. My life was becoming too much for me. I needed the insanity of Brooklyn to calm me down and ground me.

I took the train to a deep part of Brooklyn. Deep, think Joseph Conrad, Heart Of Darkness,” deep. I was going to a hole and falling in it. I would love to tell you where it is, but I do a lot of business there and I am not giving you any information that would take money out of my own pocket, besides, you probably wouldn’t be able to handle it, and like Kurtz, you would end up not being able to come out of the hole you would dig for yourself, (albeit others would help you dig it.)

Brooklyn is my father’s territory. He is known, and so I am known. I like being known, but I would never admit it. I like  the way I am known in The East Village; I am the Rock and Roll Junkman, who comes up with good shit. People think I go Upstate New York to get great stuff, but I just cross the murkiness of the East River and pick up all my good shit in Brooklyn.

I felt anxious. I want to say that this was a different kind of anxiety that I was feeling, but it probably was an old anxiety that I wasn’t aware of.

I mean what the fuck just happened to my simple life? Before Hal came from Israel, I was a musical dude who was partying, cracking jokes, and figuring out what that I didn’t want to be a part of the same world that everybody else was.

Good luck with that, right?

Manny came out of his hole in the wall store like the Mad Hatter and said,”Don’t you wish it were the time before the Bible?”

“Why is that Manny?”

Lenny, I thought you were smarter than that? What was there to do before the Bible? Everybody sat around and ate berries under the bush. There was nothing else to do.”

Manny, I know for a fact that you sit around and eat berries all day.”

“Dingle berries,”Cadillac Joe squawked in.

Lots of people started pouring out of Manny’s little box of a store. The party was on, it started early and lasted the whole night.

Manny was an old man with a youthful cock. He liked the young women, he liked drink, he didn’t mind working hard and then he gambled. Life was a vice for Manny, and it fit him like a well tailored suit.

He was a natural hum dinger.

The street was littered with Hookers, Junkies, Petty Thieves, Perverts, and Fences: somewhere in the world there was a twelve step program for every single person I knew from Manny’s… but my money was on these people beating down those twelve steps and setting up a step stool.(Hey, I don’t know what that means either.) All I knew was that these people were fucked up but entertaining , and after dealing with the real world my Cousin introduced me to, I was just interested in getting out of my skull and these people in Redneck Deliverance Brooklyn was where I was going to get my spoonful before I returned to the Island of Manhattan.

One thing for sure, when I returned to Hal and bullshit political nonsense, and all the crap he introduced me to with Gingy and all that garbage, I was going to stick it to them…

Ha, five minutes of being with my freaks in Brooklyn and I was thinking about cutting off heads and shitting down people’s necks. I felt grounded.

(to be continued… good to be back writing this book.)

He was not the easiest guy to understand.

“You are letting me go?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you afraid that I will go to the Feds? They have been looking for you and your machine, and I guess your calculations.”

“I am not afraid of you bringing whoever wants to come down here, come down.”

“Why is that?”

“Have you wondered why there are so many tunnels and so many people living down here and no one really says a word about it?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Because they know about it and they want everybody to be down here,” Gingy picked up a stone and threw it into a dark tunnel.

“Hey, cut that out,” a voice echoed from the dark tunnel like Curly from The Three Stooges yelling at Moe

“Sorry, ” Gingy said.

“The voice of God,” I said pointing down the tunnel

Gingy laughed,” God is everywhere.”

“What if you are wrong. What if you can’t find the scientific formula that produces God?”

Gingy shrugged his shoulders,” I will fake it.”
“How do you fake finding God?”

“I’ll create a machine like The Sonic Reducer, that will make people think they are seeing God, but it will only be bells and whistles.”

“How do I know that you haven’t already created that machine, and in fact that is what you are doing.You are just a kind of Wizard Of Oz, “

“You won’t know. You will have to believe your eyes to have the faith that what you are seeing is the real thing.”

“All you Scientists have become so metaphysical, and you seem willing to be charlatans as well.”

“The Science demands it. Our mathematical equations are becoming metaphysical. If only we had enough time to make the equations make sense… but maybe it is like Psychology.”

“What do you mean?” The equations a scientist like Freud uses might be very different that Jung, but the patient may find that either one of them can help him. Perhaps there are different equations to solving the mysteries of the Universe.”

Gingy shook my hand goodbye. He turned around and I watched him walk into the darkness.

I picked up a rock and threw it at him.

“Hey, cut that out,” he said.

We heard each others echoing laugh as I headed up above ground, and Gingy headed back down to his Science and his beautiful women.

I climbed the ladder to the man hole street cover. It must be raining I thought, the rungs of the ladder were wet and there was mud on them.

I lifted the manhole slowly. I did not feel like having a crazy cab driver pop on my head as I got out of the hole. Wet ground, the streets glistened with the red and green trafficlights . I replaced the cover of the man hole and saluted the ground. I was right back at Union Square.

It was night, it was late. I needed to get home. I needed to make sure Tanya was alright. She was my girlfriend, wasn’t she. She bled on me. She meant that to mean something. Maybe she didn’t mean that to mean anything, but I connected with that girl. Maybe it was because we were both shot with the Sonic Reducer and that we both got zapped at the same time with the Sonic Enhancer.

You know, these people and their bullshit. My Cousin introduced me to a world of craziness. Yesterday, my world was simple. I played music, I sold stuff at a flea market, I wrote bad poetry. I was a small fish in a puddle. Today, I was a small fish going down a large drain. I was dealing with Crazy Scientists, Federal Agents, my deceptive Cousin, God, the end of the World, but all I kept thinking about was Tanya. She was cute, and I met her because of all the craziness. I knew that she would be in my apartment. I knew that my Cousin and my father went to the Market and that they would bring her home to my place after the market ended. She would be waiting for me with open arms. She would hand me money and say,”Andy Warhol bought another cookie jar from you today, and I sold it for you.”

I walked the streets tired. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be above ground. It was exciting to know that entire civilizations lived below the streets of New York. I mean I knew about the tunnels because I had been to parties down below before. I knew that people lived in the tunnels, I knew there was great grafitti down below. I guess I didn’t know that the Government was down there, and that the city was renting out the real estate below the city… Let’s not forget it was  the year 198345 for some people and anything was possible.

I opened the door to my apartment. Tanya greeted me, Andy Warhol bought another cookie jar from you today, and I sold it for you.”

She gave me a great big kiss,”He’s a nice guy. Funny like you. I want to be your apprentice. I like your garbage business.”

I took a bath in the kitchen. That’s where the bath is in a lot of apartments in the city.  Tanya scrubbed my back. I knew she liked me then, and I knew I would do anything for her. I will do anything for a woman who scrubs my back .

That’s how I felt listening to Gingy and then when  he turned his Russian Women on me, well I was lost.

Five women were assigned to me;Katya, Elana, Tatiana, Kristina and my” “girlfriend” Tanya’s sister Sonya. We were supposed to fuck, but it was too weird to start fucking these five women. I was in a tunnel of some weird Cult stuff, with a kind of “End Of The World” Mad Scientist’s lair. I mean it was everything I ever wanted from a James Bond movie, but it was weird to be in the middle of it.

The women surrounded me like in that Nypho Ward in Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor. Five beautiful women pulling on my clothes and trying to get at me, and I was resisting.

Finally, I blurted,”I can’t be with you women. Tanya will kill us all… Tanya is my girlfriend,” I yelled as they knocked me down to the ground.

They started talking amongst themselves. They clearly were more concerned about Tanya kicking their asses more than anything that their Sex Cult leader Gingy would do to them.

I got up, “Why?”

Sonya spoke,”The world is exploding like a Jackson Pollock painting. Gingy is really trying to unite the world.”

“One big orgy, huh?”

“Gingy is the Donmeh.”

“Donmeh?”

“He is a Crypto-Jew from Turkey.”

The girls led me to their kitchen and prepared me some tea. They told me a strange story. I listened. Here it is:

Gingy is a religiously freaked out Scientist. It was bound to happen, when you hear his story. The Russian girls enthusiastically pieced together one of the craziest stories I ever heard in my life. Gingy was a direct descendant of Sabbatai Zevi; a Jewish religious leader who in 1666 was arrested in Turkey and was demanded to become a Moslem. He publicly became a Moslem but still was considered to be the Messiah. Other Jews followed his path. They became known as the Donmeh or Converts.

But the truth was that they remained Crypto Jews or secret Jews. Till today there are thousands of families in Turkey who are secret Jews. They don’t tell their children that they are Jewish till they turn 18. Gingy was one of them.

Can you imagine?! You are a practicing Moslem and on your 18th birthday, you are told you are Jewish.

So, Gingy who always knew he was different, just by having red hair in Turkey, had to digest this all. There is also a sexual ritual performed by the Donmeh. It involved an orgy of the men fucking the women. The idea was to create a situation where you did not know who the  father of the children was. Who knows what they were thinking

Anyway, Gingy took part of this orgy and then fled to Israel. Israel was only too happy to take him in as a New Immigrant. He had promise as a Scientist.

Gingy wanted to do his part as a soldier, he did not want to just be a Scientist. He wanted to learn how the world worked and it messed with him. He became a Medic with my Cousin Hal… Together they took charred babies out of burning buidlings in Beirut. He lost his shit. He ended up going crazy. He ran away from the Army and his family. He came here to the East Village, and set up shop below ground.

The girls told me, that he wanted to solve the world’s problems and he thought the device he made might be able to change the stupidity of man.

(tired, i’ll continue tomorrow if you don’t mind

While people have always looked to the stars for answers, when they get scared, they crawl under rocks. They go deep down, as far down as they can go, under the cities. If there was a Hell, they would crawl to Hell to survive. Both sides of the family.

Going underground is how my family survived the Holocaust during World War 2. Oh, I don’t mean that they got phony identification cards and lived with Polish families. NO… I mean my Grandfather dug a hole in a barn… He dug a stupid four foot hole in the barn, that was connected to a Polish families root cellar. There, in that hell,which they called a Groob, or a grave, my Grandfather, Grandmother, my mother, my Aunt, and my Uncle ate shit and lived for twenty months. Twenty fucking months!

I call it a stupid four foot hole, because if he knew he was going to spend twenty months in there cramped, unable to stand up straight, he might have made it bigger and deeper. Maybe he didn’t have the time, maybe he was too scared to dig anymore. Nazi’s were all over the place rooting out Jews. In the end, my Grandfather is a hero, his family came from a small town outside of Vilnius and they were the only family who survived with kids.  The only ones. The only ones

Lost a ton of relatives in that war. I’m not sure I understand what my Holiday shopping would have looked like had there been no war. My Grandfather came from a Hillbilly family in the woods of Lithuania; 11 kids with shotguns and moonshiners, my Gradmother came from a smaller artier family of just 7 kids. So, If all those people had lived, there kids would have had kids, and they would all be Cousins. Of course, who knows how many kids my Grandparents would have had, had they not have to bed down in a grave every night for twenty months, with three kids crying and living in mud.

I am the product of  this woman, who crawled out of that hole and was not able to walk until she got six months of therapy and a father who came out of a Jewish Mob background…

Covered in a bloodly apron, the Butcher in Monticello, in the heart of the Borscht Belt, was the Matchmaker who I guess said, “You two fucked up people should get together and have children. It is a perfect match. In one corner, we have a person who should have been under a Psychiatrist’s care everyday since she got out of that hole, she is someone who saw her sister try to commit suicide by eating everyone’s buttons and then having to go through her shit to make sure that it all passed through her system, and a man who I witnessed come home covered in blood, whose Mom was yelling at him,”I just bought you that shirt!” And him declaring to her,”But Ma, it’s not my blood.” And after she heard that it wasn’t his blood, she calmed down and she was alright with all of it.

That’s the rock I crawled out from underneath. So, it is pretty hard to shock me. People in the East Village, who moved to New York and try to be cool, think they can fool me. They cannot fool me. They sure can fool themselves with drugs and alcohol, but they cannot fool me.  Hey, I’m not saying that I’m better than the kid who comes to New York and calls himself a Punk, and knows how to play guitar, and knows some cool stuff. Oh no. I’m just saying… I’m just saying that I know the real deal of someone who really wants to say something and do something and is struggling.

And I looked at this red headed Israeli dude Gingy and I said to myself,”This motherfucker might really be able to do some shit on this planet. I know when I’m dealing with the real deal. I might not be able to tell if this guys real deal is good or bad, but that is because when you are dealing with the real deal, it gets harder to tell what is the difference between right or wrong. Half the planet is always saying that the other half is wrong. The stronger one wins the battle, does that mean that just because the stronger one, won the battle, that he is actually right? Fuck no… Some of the greatest smartest most right people on this planet have been eliminated.

I was still deep down below the surface of New York. I did not feel uncomfortable down here. There are hundreds of miles of secret tunnels down below the City. I only knew that partially because of my father’s connection to Mobsters. There are intricate networks below the surface that is not just old Subway stations like the one I was in right now with Gingy and his Russian women.There are tunnels in all five bouroughs where Speakeasy’s used to be, and where Moonshiners had stills. I always knew that I was fooling myself in the East Village whenever I told myself I was part of the Underground. I always knew that there was a real secret Underground, in which people were murdered and shenanigans were being carried out.

So, now these Russian Women were escorting me back to “The Rooms.” I never thought I’d be so happy to be hanging out with women whose job it was to have sex with them and my only concern was to find out some information about the nutjob who was in charge.

I walked over to Tanya’s sister. It was obvious she was Tanya’s sister. They looked alike in both their faces and their bodies. Knock outs. I did have an erection, even though I knew that I just wanted information about Gingy and his machine. I really wanted some background information about him, since I was trying to figure out what he was going to do with me if I didn’t  turn out to be quite the recruit he was hoping I would become. Which who knew what exactly he was doing. Do these madmen really know what they are doing, or are they winging it, like the rest of us chumps?

I believe that every man has a point in his life where he looks insanity square in the face and either decides to heal himself of the insanity, or dives right into it. Gingy has bellyflopped his way into insanity, and that is not to say that I thought he was one hundred percent crazy either. He was a Scientist, who made an instrument, and it turned out to be some time traveling device, and he wanted to use it to benefit mankind, or so he says, and the people who hired him, wanted to turn it into a Sonic weapon…

So, what do you do when you are on the Hypnotic Edge of a lunatic fringe? Well, he started a sex cult. Good for Gingy! At least that was my interpretation of the events of a Mad Scientist, not unlike the Doctor in Doctor Strangelove.

I walked over to Tanya’s sister and said,”I know your sister Tanya. What is your name?

“Sasha.”

(tired, I’ll get back to this tomorrow)

“Maybe it is the time before the bible.”

That surprised him. I thought he was going to say,”How did you know?”

“Adam and Eve were  not Jewish, Christian or Moslem. They were just doing their thing. So, if we came from Adam and Eve, maybe we should be doing our thing. Maybe we should be living under bushes and eating berries.

A bunch of the girls wearing flowing revealing sheer robes surrounded Gingy.

He picked up an apple from the fruit bowl and shined it on his chest, “The books are essentially all the same. If there were lawyers back then, they would have probably had copywrite  laws. The fight over God has been more about possession,then about religious differences.” He took a bite from the apple.

“How quickly fruit decays.” He took out the black box, and pointed it at the apple that was already turning brown. He turned on the machine for 10 seconds and tossed me the fruit.

“I got rid of the decay. That fruit will never decay again.

“You zapped me with that machine. Will I never decay?”‘

“I think you misunderstand what the Sonic Reducer is. It is not a weapon… It can be used as a weapon, people want to use it as a weapon, but that is not why I created this machine.”

“What do you want the machine to be.”

“This is a Time Machine. That apple you ate is vintage. It is the apple that Eve bit. I went back and got it. I am a Mad Scientist. Everybody is right about me. I’m not just Mad, I’m pissed. I am trying to reverse the world from the state of  De-evolution that it is in. I want to correct us onto our path of actually becoming a civilized world.”

“Good luck with that. I gotta be going now.” I was just trying to see if I in fact was a captive or I could get out of this situation.

Just then Sudzie came in from the shadows , hopping up and down excited to see me. She had a young girl with her who had a rainbow icy mohawk, Lenny, this is Twist. I think she would be a good girlfriend for you. I mean I still want you to come to the store and fuck me, but I think she would make a good girlfriend for you.”

“I have a girlfriend,” I said.

“Who,” Sudzie asked kind of dejected.

“Her name is Tanya.”

The Russian girls spoke excitedly about what I just said.

Gingy got red in  the face.

(to be continued)

I stopped hitting him. Watching blood trickle out of the corner of his mouth and smile, made me nauseous. I certainly did see a lot of blood in the last couple of hours.

We were surrounded in the Flea Market by lots of  people. Vendors and customers helped us up.

Tasha came running over and kicked Gingy in the leg,” You have my sister you monster.”

“Your sister does not want to leave, Tasha. Just like you didn’t want to leave. You only left me because you were jealous of me.”

Tasha kicked Gingy in the other leg.

She said in a very anxious thick Russian  accent, “Why would I enter  nightmare of your life. You who  surround yourself with pity women. Some people should die alone. You are one of them. When you die, you not  even be buried. I hope they  drag you into  streets and let lots of cars roll over you till you look like pizza. They should flatten your blood and guts across America and let your skin dry out in the sun. The stench of your carcass should rot in hell.”

I interrupted Tasha to point at Andy Warhol who was easedropping, “Tasha, go show  Andy  the Jesus Christ On The Cross Cookie Jar. I’m gonna go for a walk with your boyfriend.”

“Don’t call him my boyfriend. You are my boyfriend. I bleed for you, now we are together.”

Andy pointed to me and said, “She’s a keeper. I hope you boys have a nice conversation. I am looking forward to having a cup of tea with Tasha and catching up on the drama.”

“End of World bullshit,”Tasha said to Andy walking back to my booth.  She flipped Gingy the finger, even as she put her arm around Andy and walked him back to my booth

Gingy rubbed his knees, “Come I must take you down the hole and off the streets. We quickly got to fourteenth street and first avenue and went down into the subway. Instead of waiting for a train, we hopped down into the subway and then took a staircase down a whole train station down further. Water dripped, a train waited for us. A bunch of tall Russian women were in the train.

“What the fuck? ” I said.

Gingy said, “The Lost subway, or as I like to call it The Hellway. It actually goes all the way to Grand Central and even too the The Waldorf Hotel/ Roosevelt would travel in this train with his vehicle. I am surprised that people don’t know about it. The truth is that I am pleasantly surprised that nobody knows what went on in this country a mere fifty years ago. The abandoned inner loop of train track that goes from New York to California is another shocker that nobody knows about.”

“You mean to say, that there is a way to cross this country underground without anyone knowing about these tracks?”

Certainly, there had to be thousands of men who knew about these tracks, but they also knew what would happen to them if they spoke… Do you enjoy finding out about the secrets of this world?”

“I was aware of unused underground rail stations…”

“They no longer are unused. I use them and I use them all.  I live in Alfred Beach’s  Pneumatic station. ”

We got out of the train and I entered a crystal palace, with a girl playing a grand piano, and a huge aquarium filled with goldfish.

“Holy shit.”

“Do you like finding out about the secrets of the world?”

“I have a feeling that is a trick question?” I said picking up a red banana from a fruit bowl, and looking at it.

“That is what bananas used to look like.”

I peeled it and tasted it,”Oh my God, this is delicious.”

“Many of the world’s secrets are delicious, some are very painful. Are you interested in finding out about the secrets of the world.”

“Have I just eaten of the forbidden fruit?”

“Something like that?”

Tasha’s sister approached me. She looked just like Tasha, “You know my sister,” she said looking at my bloody clothes. She bent over and kissed me on the lips.

“Woah, things are going awfully fast,  down here in the pneumatic tubes.”

“Way faster than you realize,” Gingy said, and he laughed like one of those madmen in a horror film or in a James Bond film.

Rastaroni came out of the shadows.

End Chapter 18

It wasn’t even 24 hours since I met my Cousin for a been at Downtown Beirut. Since then, I became part of  international intrigue and end of the world bullshit. I wanted my simple life back; being a writer, slash musician who liked to go out every night and talk to other writer, slash musicians… I realized that that part of my life was taken away from me.

I knew that I would never be able to return to being a big fish in  a small muck. I knew that I was a small muck in a much bigger muck.

This was all my Cousin’s fault and I was pissed. He got me shot by that fucking Israeli and his  Sonic Reducer weapon. How did I really know that I was cured, just cause those Government Agents said that I was.  Now, I really had to find that Israeli and ask him a bunch of questions. I felt like pounding the shit out of him too, when I met him.

The Government Agents were letting everyone go. They asked us to keep them posted about how our investigation was going into finding Gingy and his weapon.

“Can’t you find him?” I asked pissed.

Your Cousin Hal came to you because he knew you knew the East Village.  We are considering you to become an Agent.

“I don’t want to become an Agent… I need to find this guy and talk to him about what he zapped me with, but I am working on this alone.”

The Russian girl who was also zapped with the Sonic Reducer said, ” I too would like to find Gingy and ask questions.”

“Oh yeah, what do you want to ask him.”

“He has my sister in his Cult. I want to get her out. She is young.”

I turned to my Dad,”You think you could help finding this guy too. Look, what you did. You brought these Russian girls over to this country and now they are part of some Cult. Should I tell Mom what you are doing…”

“Your Mom knows nothing of my business and that is how it is going to remain.”

I just pushed my Dad’s button. It was the same button for all  Jewish Mobsters ; his life of crime was private. He never discussed business around my Mom.  The Momb Bomb.

The Momb Bomb… The womb tomb. The Cox comb… the holy roam…

I was tired and they told me that I would have strange thoughts because of being  zapped by both the Sonic Reducer and then the Sonic Enhancer…

Tasha said,” I have no where to go and nothing to do.”

I said,” I can use a driver.”

Tasha, I think either misunderstanding me, or again it could be that she also went through the same Sonic Reduction and then Sonic Enhancer said, ” I can use a shot put.”

“You mean a round metal ball that you can throw?”

“I mean Vodka.”

It was 7 o’clock  in the morning. I knew where to find the best Vodka.

“I know where to find the best Vodka…”

Tasha squinted her eyes, ” And you can get your screw driver.”

“No, I meant, do you drive, do you have a license. I need a driver for my business.”

“What business?”

“I sell at the Flea Market? I have a van.”

“I drive, I need a job. I am no longer a Wife for sale, I was part of Gingy’s Sex Cult.”

It was seven O’clock in the morning, and I knew exactly where to bring Tasha. Neither of us had any sleep but I knew where to bring Tasha to have the best Vodka in the world and to get ready for the Flea Market.

I looked at my Dad and my Cousin,”You guys coming with me to the Flea Market?”

“Lenny, are you fucking out of your mind. It’s seven O’Clock in the morning, you were shot with a weapon from another dimension. You can skip a week,” Hal said.

“Hey, I sold Warhol a Cookie Jar last week. I want to see what I can sell him this week. I have momentum.”

I gave my Cousin the keys to my apartment. My Dad said he was sleeping over as well. That was shocking. I can’t remember my Dad spending a night in Manhattan. He was usually somewhere deep in Brooklyn by the time it was bedtime. With him not sleeping in the Borough, I wondered if mobsters would think he was murdered and try to take over some of his territory. Oh those Brooklyn mobsters were very competitive.

“What happened to Mom, anyway?” I asked my Dad as he and my Cousin headed up seventh street to my apartment.

“She took off in my ambulance to her place. She thought you were too busy with your new friend to pay any attention to her,” my father said laughing with my Cousin.

“Oh mom,” I said shaking my head at her behavior.

My father and Cousin went off laughing at my mother’s ability to make everything about her, even after her son was shot by a secret weapon.

I brought Tasha to Rastaroni’s apartment. Rastaroni had an apartment filled with illegal and quality items. He did give me the keys to his apartment and told me that I could have whatever I wanted.

We drank some homemade Vodka that made Tasha very happy and weepy for home. It is oily and a little lemony, just like my Poppa’s Vodka. This is life.” She raised her glass.

The girl was an absolute knockout. and even though I was blasted with a couple of different weapons, within a couple of hours, Tasha’s enthusiasm for life, inspired my cock to be aroused.

Still, work had to be done. I pulled down boxes and examined  items I could sell at the flea market. Rastaroni’s apartment was filled with weapons, cocaine, vintage toys, tube socks, and switchblade knives made by Russian criminals back home.

Tasha picked up one of the switchblades, opened it and pressed the point against her skin. She started bleeding. She had a smile on her face.

“Holy shit! Don’t kill yourself. We gotta get to the flea market and sell some crap.”

She walked over to me wiped blood on my face and kissed me.

The hottest dame in the world is bleeding all over me and making out with me at the same time. My cock did not seem to mind.

I’ve eaten pussy of women who were on their menstrul cycle. Saltier than usual, with bits of hard little  pebbles mixed in, but full on making out while blood is pouring out of a person, was new to me… Wait, one time I was bleeding and making out with a girl after I was sliced with a razor. So, though it frightened me a bit, I wasn’t about to stop.

Tasha looked at the blood dripping on the floor and said, “We better clean that up.”

She pushed me down into her blood and we continued to make out. She said,”You are making my glasses steam up.”

“That’s O.K. My clothes are covered in your blood.”

“So, if I die, you will be a suspect.”

“Right.”

“So, you can’t let me die.”

“I would not think of letting you die at the moment.”

“Good,” she pushed me away. We should get ready for the Flea Market.”

Tasha went to the bathroom and stopped the bleeding on her arm,”I like your junk.”

I wanted to say,”I like your junk too,” but said nothing .

Tasha’s blood was sticky on my body and I washed it off.  I felt different about Tasha then the many women who were in my life at the moment. I mean I wasn’t sleeping with any of the other women except for Sudzie, and that was just on occassion in her shop when business was slow and she was bored.

I put together ten boxes of books, records, bric a brac, that I thought was legal but interesting and Tasha and I headed down the four floors of Rastaroni’s apartment and headed to the Flea Market with a Hand truck.

I looked at Tasha and wondered if she always had to bleed in order to make out. Sex might really be a near death experience. Somehow, the  blood  in my body still throbbed continued to work it’s way to my cock. This was wrong, but it was, what it was. No denying that if your cock is erect, it is hard to argue with a situation. I mean you can, and maybe you should, but there was no denying the stick was lit.

I looked over at Tasha. She was about a head taller than me. I have always liked taller women. That old joke always ran through my head whenever I hit on a taller woman. I would say, “I like tall women because I enjoy the climb up and then when I get on top my ears would pop.”

I decided to take a chance and say this to Tasha, ” I like tall women because I enjoy the climb up and then when I get on top my ears pop.” I gulped and waited for a slap across the face.

She bent down and kissed me. She said, “When you climb me, your ears will bleed.”

I almost fainted with excitement. I wasn’t sure if I was in love, sleep deprivation, or feeling the effects of  having my body ripped into a different dimension by a weapon named after a Dead Boys song.

Whichever way it was, I was excited to be setting up at the Flea Market with Tasha. I thought this woman might be someone I could really fall in love with. Sure, there was the blood issue, but I was turned on by her size. I liked the idea that there was a woman in my life who could toss me over her shoulder and be able to carry me to safety. I felt like before this case with this Gingy and this weapon and my Cousin and of course anytime I am dealing with my father and the Russian Mobsters he deals with, there really is a good chance that I was going to be shot and would need someone to carry me somewhere..

Tasha was a natural at setting up the tables at the Flea Market. I went to the deli and  I got her a bagel and cream cheese and was about to hand it to her when I saw Andy. I picked up a Cookie Jar of Jesus on the Cross, which I was pretty sure he would want and started running after him to show it to him.

Then I saw Gingy.

There weren’t many people I wanted to talk to more than Andy Warhol, but since Gingy had almost killed me with an experimental weapon, I thought I needed to beat his ass.

Still,  I saw Andy and yelled,”Go to my table, I have a Cookie Jar of Jesus Christ on the cross. It has got to be a one of a kind.

Andy said, “I must have that.” And then when he saw me tackle Gingy and hit him in the head, I heard Andy say,”Oh my!”