PUNKIN


                   the Fancy Bar

           The car squeezed out and turned into a street that was day with lights, not a star could be seen
           through the cocooning haze. It thrilled Womba being in front, because Hole was behind with Linda
           and she had a vivid imagination: he was staring at her neck, he was, she was sure, he was, lustfully            staring at the nape of her fleshy neck. It made her feel elegant to be desired.
            "I feel like coming," B.B. said, cupping his crotch.
            "Yuh do?" Womba turned.
           He nodded, grinning. So she reached over and squeezed it.
            He shouted.
            "Hey, not that hard! Fuck!"
           "Yuh don't know wat yuh want, du yuh, shit! Know ah good bar?"
           "Check out Thum Libya's," Hole answered.
           "Ain't it a fancy place?" B.B. asked.
            "So what. I like their drinks. C'mon on."
            "Lets goh toh dis Tum Fuckers, B.B. Goa un, ah wanna booze!" screeched Womba.
            She twisted the radio dial until something loud blared out, then threw her head back on
            the seat.
            And B.B. sang:
            ". . I'm gonna eat you out. I'm gonna eat you out tonight, baeBe, oh, baeBe. Your juice gonna
              be my meat sauce, oohh, weeeweee, baeBe . . ."
            Womba giggled, squeezing the chrome door handle. Behind her, Hole ran his fingers along
            the elastic of Linda's panties, while Linda looked out the window; she liked seeing the signal
            lights change, and the car sped, rattling on, and someone yelled at them.
            When they parked and got out, Hole's fingers smelled.
            B.B. was humming. Hole pushed through Thum Libya's swinging doors. The doors slapped
            back and they stood there. People along the bar or at tables, who had glanced around, now
            paused to stare at them. Those with their backs to the door were quickly informed by their
            companion's signals, meant to be discreet but which were not, were openly sly instead,
            to look around - some amusing things just blew in.
            Eyebrows arched meaningfully, eyes winked, lips pouted in pointing gestures, or whispered
            in a voice whose tone strutted between lazy mockery and careful fascination. A glass, tinted
            with liquor, then touched those mincing lips. But what they saw rapidly lost this element of
            aloof entertainment. The appearance of the newcomers made them feel uneasy: it was too
            obvious, too direct for most of them.
            Hole looked blood-spattered.
            Womba was fat and greasy, seeping out of her outrageous shorts.
            And Linda, with an arm around Hole's neck, was sluttish, starkly pale against her tattered black
            chemise.
            B.B. had a mouth like an octopus's; when excited or confused, his eyes fluttered and crossed.
            These were surly, dirty, defiantly ungroomed people, and they had come in, almost exploded
            in, like lost giant garapatas from the Yucatan.
            They stared back.
            To Linda the women seemed preciously, rigorously clean. She felt that they were clean inside
            as well - as if enemas were part of their beauty rituals. Their clothes seemed to be part of their
            bodies, so perfectly fitted, like elegant variations of skin, like soft and chic carapaces.
            Their men were always handsome, with glossy fingernails.
            There was an empty table that they did not sit at. They stood instead in the gap between the bar,
            with its knots of knees, and the jammed marble tables clicking with glasses and monogrammed
            cuff links. From the service area of the bar, a blond waitress saw them; she snapped on a grin,
            approaching them.
            "There's room there," she indicated the table.
            "Nwah, we'll stand," Hole said, rubbing his nose, "Our asses hurt with shittin' all day."
            She blanched, wondering if others heard. But her grin held steady.
            "Would you like to order, sir?"
            "A shot of your cheapest scotch on the rocks," Hole said.
            "Same," Linda said, noticing a man in his 60s, impatiently smiling at her from the bar.
            His brilliant eyes widened with a look of unexpected delight; with a pink middle finger
            he rubbed a rheumy corner from which waxy wrinkles radiated down his cheeks like eroded
            tracks of an ancient lunar meteorite. She wondered if he had fingerprints. Old people fascinated
            her; they seemed like dolls left in the rain, or under the sun too long. You were glad to get them
            back, but they were so different then. She shuddered at the thought of his little, fine, and wrinkled
            finger touching her.
            "Ah wanna ber," Womba said softly, trying to be demure; then she wanted to imitate the waitress'
            steady, professional smile, so she launched her face into it, applying what she imagined were
            corrections to her own features. But instead of producing a smile, she grinned fiendishly.
            The waitress backed away, startled.
            "You got tequila?" B.B. asked.
            "What label would you like, sir?" She tried not to look at him.
            "Label? Shit, just gimme tequila - just so's it ain't made in the back room there. Gimme Mexican!"
            She nodded anxiously, and wheeled for the bar.
            They had three rounds.
            While they drank, suspended in that space which suddenly was the most real, though sinister,
            decoration in Thum Libya's, they talked very little. They absorbed the looks that they drew.
            And they touched. Linda hooked a finger in the waist of Hole's slow slung pants, sometimes
            leaning her head on his shoulder. She was intensely curious of the people; her eyes
            were like optical sponges.
            B.B. rested his hand on Womba's turgid buttocks, his middle finger wedging between the
            languorously rolling cheeks. Womba drank her beers with relish.
            Hole paid and left a nickel on the waitress' tray.
            They shoved through the door, upsetting several people coming in.
            He laughed all the way to the car.


                   the Beer

            Hole directed B.B. 's driving.
            "Hey, I forgot - there's beer back there," B.B. said, "Hep yuself. Give us a couple here."
            Linda rolled them over the front seat. Womba stuck her foot out the window and poured the beer
            on her toes.
            "Oooooohh, dat fils good," she swooned, " . . .warm, like sumone pissin' on ma Twinkies!"
            "Damn, Womba," Linda shouted, "it's spraying back here."
            Hole opened his mouth.
            "It tastes," he laughed, "like your toenails!"
            Womba looked at him.
            "How's yur hed? Yuh ain't lossst lotsa blod, hav yuh?"
            In response, he bit his lip, sucked on it, and spit into his hand, leaning toward her.
            "Here - you want some of my blood?" he rubbed his palm on her face.
            She shouted, and B.B. almost jammed into the bus ahead. Then, suddenly, he grabbed
            Linda, kissing her hard, so she gasped for air. Squeezing her tighter and tighter, and grunting,
            he dragged his bleeding lip over her face; he bit her throat.
            She screamed, and he pushed her away, reclining back, arms slowly crossing, staring at her,
            and laughing.
            She smiled at him.
            Her face began to stink as the blood and saliva dried.


                   the WhoreHouse

           They stopped on a street as forlorn as an oil-stained, frayed Christmas ribbon dragged through
            ashes. The sidewalks were littered with garbage cans and splintered crates whose colored
            paper stuffings spilling out on the grimy pavement trembled with the spasmodic wind that blew
            between the buildings.
            A damn chill was in the air.
            Hole, without a word, leapt from the car and walked off, followed by the others.
            "My fader's probabli sumwhar arund here . . .," Womba mused.
            "Yeah, why?" Linda asked.
            "Jus looks lik et."
            "Like what?"
            "Et. Et, man."
            "Mine would like to be around here. I think he really wants to be a bum, but he never has the guts."
            "My fader aint no bum."
           "I know, I mean . . ."
            B.B. hollered to listen for the echo between the buildings: it came, punctured by Hole's sharp,
            quick steps. They walked past rancid smelling bars, engulfed in the sickly glow of their greasy
            neon signs. Inside, on stools reeking of excrement and vomit, were old women whose faces
            were ripe as moldy cakes; and old man, who looked at them with a stealthy sort of abstracted
            awkwardness.
            Hole walked into a bar.
            The bartender, who seemed to recognize him, was watching the television set at the far end up
            on the wall. A woman, in a satiny blouse and black skirt, looked around. Hole, followed by the
            others, proceeded through a door under the television set, which B.B. closed behind him.
            An old pin-up calendar was tacked to it with the girl's crotch scratched out, showing the wood
            beneath.
            They went up a flight of stairs, through another room into a room with a black and white tile floor.


                   the Madam's Red Plastic Hearts

            A mountainous black woman sat at a small, curved desk that was of a grayish, stone-like
            substance streaked with yellow. Behind her there was a checkerboard with keys dangling from
            nails.
            She wore a blue dress, printed with pale orchids.
            Her shoulders were enormous and when she looked up, a wide brassy choker gleamed
            around her neck; red plastic hearts quivered from the tips of the golden hooks which where
            her hearings, showing against the lustrous waves of her jet hair.
            Her cheeks, full like buttocks, tightened above a pearly gin when she saw Hole; her eyes
            squinted. She seemed to be savoring it, in silence, watching him come toward her.
            When he was close, when he stopped in front of her, she whizzed in delight.
            But still she said nothing.
            B.B. pushed through the girls.
            "Where are we?" he asked, "What's this place?"
            "This is Midge," Hole said, keeping his eye on the bubbling black mountain, " . . but I call her
              Mama. Mama, these are some people I just met ."
            "Honey, c'mon over here!" she said, an abrupt command.
            And, obediently, Hole walked into the massive, outstretched columns that were her arms.
            They closed around him, mashing him against the orchid-printed, blue landscape of her
            panoramic chest; he virtually sank from sight, and a grin, frighteningly uncontrolled, shook
            on her ecstatic face.
            She licked his forehead.
            She might have devoured him, tasting him as if he were a rare, desired delicacy.
            A wild, abnormal concentration gleamed from her fluttering eyes.
            She made fierce sounds, like an insatiable purring.
            Hole sighed from within the obliterating embrace.
            Mama heaved like a mountain of loving jelly; the red plastic hearts danced wildly at her ear lobes.
            "Holy Mother!" B.B. whispered.
            Linda closed her coat, feeling shy.
            And Womba wondered if she would get as big as Mama.
            Finally, Hole seeped out of her embrace. Slinging an arm around Mama's brassy neck,
            he smiled at them.
            "This is a whorehouse," he said.
            "Wat??" Womba grimaced.
            B.B. nodded, as though agreeing.
            "You brought us to a whorehouse . .?" Linda was incredulous and fascinated, looking
            around her.
            It was a small room.
            Along one wall there was a sofa behind a long coffee table with a few magazines and
            a squat frosted vase filled with poinsettias. Above, a small chandelier, its hanging lusters
            dull with dust, provided the light from three bare electric bulbs improvised on it.
            The ceiling was dirty, scumbled with soot and grease.
            "But . . . there's nobody here," she said.
            Hooking his thumb, Hole indicated the corridor and several doors opening into it; a couple
            had plastic curtains drawn across them.





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