The sky was cold and lumpy as a prison breakfast when I’d arrived late that afternoon, the Portland mist dampening my clothes and soaking my soul.

I’d gotten all the way to downtown before it started caving in on me. I wandered, shellshocked, a Little Bo Peep looking for her lost sheep, drifting to the sadsack section where the raggedy hang under the Burnside Bridge.

I’d been a 1-man monsoon as the Thunder rolled inside me. I tried to push it back but it kept coming and coming and coming, my chest heaving like a suspension bridge in an earthquake.

And then there they were.

The Lights. Lurking in the closets of the inside of my eyes, snarling, ready to bust my brain and sink me to my knees so I could worship at their temple.

As night wrapped its’ grisly digits around day as squeezed the life out of it, I met her.

Cherry Love was not her real name. Her real name was Shawanda Smith. She was painfully thin and very dark black. So black she was almost blue. She looked like a skeleton with a dark tarp stretched too tight over it. Her mouth smelled like an open manhole cover. The few teeth which remained were ragged crooked noirish nightmares. Her feet were puffy, flaky, red and raw, and smelled like spoiled Chilean sea bass. She wore a tattered baseball cap with silver lettering which read, "FOXY". Tiny white terry cloth shorts and a dirty t-shirt with silver lettering which read, "FOXY." Apparently Cherry, nee´ Shawanda, was Foxy, and wanted to make sure the world knew it.

She liked my scar. As calmly as I could in my hazy pre-Migraine hysteria, with the Lights popping all around my eyeballs, I asked Cherry if she had a room to which we could retire. She asked me if I wanted a date. I happily accepted.

I tried breathing easy, tried to control The Lights while we checked into the No-Tell Motel, where even the roaches know your name.

I signed the registration card, "Mr. and Mrs. Freud".

The stench smacked you right upside the head, a cheeky combination of moldy bologna and old Eau de Rancid Sex. The sheets looked as if they had been used as a tourniquet during the Spanish-American war. Splattered on 1 wall was a substance that resembled dried brain. Even the bed bugs had bed bugs.

Bad fuzzy Latin American porno was on the television. At least I think it was. There was much fuzzy Spanish Moaning, and lots of what looked like Spanish Penetration going on, but I was quite fuzzy myself, so it’s hard to really be sure.

Shawanda slash Cherry was fidgety as a jitter bug. Just watching her jimjam around the room was making my brain throb. She was bound and determined to get her 20 bucks up front. I tried pushing her around a little, but she was wiry. And when I did, The Lights bursting in my retinas shot through my cerebellum, and I crashlanded on my knees.

Smith slash Love swore on her dead Mama she’d be right back, so I coughed up the cash, and she dashed.

And as soon as she was gone, I knew I’d never see her again.

"O shit! O shit!!! O SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTT!!!

Looking at myself in the crusty mirror of my fetid No-Tell Motel room, The Lights drowning me in a shattering bright white, my tell-tale Heart pounding like a TNT metronome, I could barely see my own face.

When the pain put its giant thumb on the base of my skull, pushed the bottom of my brain in, I kicked the wall as hard as I could. My foot went right through the it, and you could see the river outside.

Then I punched my thigh over and over until I could feel a welt rise like a Pain Pancake.

Through the Migraine Light Show I grabbed a chard of jagged glass and slashed 3 gashes in my bicep. The red blood trickled down my white skin and when I could focus on that for a moment, the Pain abated. I was in control for just a second.

But the pain is clever and it will not be denied. It re-routed itself, attacking even harder at the flanks, and driving me down to the ground, making me beg for someone, anyone to stop it.

Shawanda Love slash Cherry Smith burst in like a skinny black cat that just caught a big fat mouse. "Hey, honey, Cherry Love is in the house. You know Cherry Love duz upon otherz like they would dooz upon her. You ax anybody. Cherry Love shoot straight."

The straight shooting Cherry Love laid out her equipment with the precision of an alchemist. Lit a candle. Dumped the white powder into the spoon. Laid the spike on the table. Wrapped a long thin brown strip of plastic stretch tubing tight around her arm. "Ah hope ta fuck ah kin fine’ ma a vein. Ah hat me a c’llapsedded vein."

She put the spoon over the flame and slowly the powder melted, boiled, bubbled, toiled, and troubled. "Mutherfucker usetta hit me wiff a coathangah. Whapwhapwhap." Shawanda paused to point out a hideous disfigurement on her inner thigh. "Ah coul’n't figgah out how he finded the same ‘xact spot ever damn tahm. Whapwhapwhap."

She drew the clear liquid meticulously through the filter of a cigarette and into the spike.

"Den 1 day he shavedded me bald. Cherry Love had her some fine ass hair, you could ax ennybody, an’ he shavedded me bald. So I walk the fuck out. Leff my jams, my stereo, my mama’s dishes, jus’ walkedded the fuck out. An the mutherfucker come afta my ass. ‘You comin’ wit me. You my bitch,’ ‘I ain’t nobody’s bitch.’ An’ he grabs my ass, so I pulls out my piece an’ I pops a cap in dat mutherfucker’s ass. Kablam! Right in the ass. Kablam! Mutherfucker took all de way off… Tell you what though… I loved ‘at mutherfucker."

As The Lights scorched into my ache, Shawanda Love searched for a vein like a gold miner hunting for the Mother Lode with a pin prick pick in the Stinking Desert.

She thumped at her bicep with 2 bony fingers. She knocked on that arm until a vein finally dragged its raggedy ass out of bed and answered the door.

On her other arm where the bicep met the forearm, a festering septic tank of a sore squatted squalidly, and my stomach flipped like a sickfuck flapjack.

She placed the spike on the barely pulsing vein. Plunged it in. Slowly pumped the junk into her hungry arm. She untied, and suddenly the sweetness was sweeping through Shawanda Cherry Smith Love.

Her head lolligagged back like a bobbing head doll in the back of an old Chevy. Her eyes drfted into the sunset, and she strolled off down Easy Street.

Cherry Love was into her Nod.

I stripped her down, slapped on a cockhat, and praying to the pain god, poured raw molten sex into my bucket like there was no tomorrow.

And the more she screamed, the harder I hurt until her skinny little corpse body was wracked. She cried for her Daddy. She begged her Daddy not to stop. Begged her Daddy to do it harder. She wanted the pain. And I wanted to give it to her. It felt so good to make someone else suffer.

I am not proud of violating Shawanda Smith’s Cherry Love, but I could not stop myself.

I just wanted the pain to go away.

The Lights rockets red glared, and Ms. Love was screaming and I was screaming and the pain saturated the No-Tell Motel room, until I let myself go and come at the same time, and I shook like I was attached to an industrial strength paint mixer.

And then The Lights were gone.

And that sweet skinny little junky clutched herself next to me, shivering and sobbing, looking much more like Shawanda Smith then Cherry Love.

And as I stared at her, I saw myself lying there.

And then I c’llapsedded on the floor.

A 20 foot vagina appears in a field of Tupperware under a Marmalade Sky. I want to enter, and yet a sense of unspeakable foreboding overwhelms me. I finger my scar. I sidle up to it, then slide into the slippery vagina, with its folds and crevices, forcing my way into its massive musky muscular moistness.

It is scary in this fragrant dark continent, but as I move along I can feel a deep ease sweep into me. I slip along the slick walls of the uterus, shimmy up a Fallopian tube, and stand on top of the round mound of an ovary, which is purple, red, and orange, a wild tie-dyed Grateful Dead Easter Egg.

I wade into the lower intestines, and the tough undulations dragging me into the undertow of the brackish backwash. Acid oozes off the walls of the stomach, burning my skin and eyes.

Finally I pop my head into the lung cavity, where the big bassdrum heartpump thumps away CRASH! BOOM! BANG! I claw up the rungs of the cage of the ribs, bone after bone, my arms aching cables, my breath coming in spasmodic spurts. At last I crawl up the esophagus, and into the mouth, catching a breather in a molar/armchair.

Suddenly the mouth opens, and I am sucked up through the hairy desert of the nasal passage and into the brain, which pulsates like a big gooey fish.

I am expelled at 1,150 miles per hour through a gaping hole in the middle of the forehead, and when I whack into a wall, my head cracks open, and I am dead.

Then I wake up.

I shake and baked awake, flopsweating, screaming squeamishly. I looked around me. Man, it was stinky. Shawanda Smith and Cherry Love were both gone. I panicked. My money. O shit.

I felt frantically for the $86,714.28 in my jacket pocket. It was there. I was much calmed. It’s amazing how $86,714.28 in your jacket pocket will calm you.

A nightmare in khaki, I shot out of the No-Tell Motel like a snot rocket from a hockey player’s nostril.

It was still dark. No idea how I slept.

I wandered and quivered for quite some time, until I passed a plate glass window displaying the most gigantic cheese cake I had ever seen. It was over 7 feet tall and weighed 500 pounds if it weighed an ounce. I had to have a piece of that cheesecake, so I stumbled into Rose’s Deli.

Rose’s was a phantasmagorical wonder of Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum pastry. Sky high pies. Titanic tarts. Devil’s food cake reaching up to heaven.

The waitress, who I’m sure served strudel to Methuselah, brought me a piece of cheesecake that could choke a T-Rex. You could do hand-to-hand combat with this piece of cheesecake. It was bigger than my head.

I waded through it, shoving down huge forkfulls of the milky sugary food comforter into my bucket. As I washed it down with hot chocolate, a warm dazed fuzzy buzz hung over me.

I overtipped. I left.

I walked.

Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked. Walked.

A large powerful looking woman with Tina Turner hair and Beelzebub eyes approached me, sporting a small powerful sparkley shimmering blue mini-dress. She had Gigantor feet, Godzilla hands, and a Adam’s apple the size of a bowling ball.

Angel.

I’m almost sure that was not her real name.

Angel asked me if I wanted a date. A date. Yeah, a date. That would be nice. Dinner and a movie. Sure. A date seemed like just the thing to keep my hounds of hell from ripping my lungs out.

Angel led me down an alley, up a flight of stairs, and into a very very very dark room.

I was so sugar drunk and date happy I didn’t even think about where I was going until I was already there.

And then there I was.

It’s amazing where a man will go and who a man will do when he feels he must.

In that very black room, when I heard the lock on the door click shut like a handgun cocking, I knew that this dark Angel had brought me to Hell.

When the light flickered on, I knew I was fucked. 13 angry black faces scowled at me. I thought for a second that everyone was going to yell, "Surprise!" and give me presents and feed me Ralph’s day old birthday cake and milk and ice cream.

But alas it was not to be.

As all that post slave-fury stared me down like 13 barrels of a 12-gauge shotgun, I fingered my scar. I was a dead man.

In a way it was a relief.

I have never felt so white in my entire life.

Angel commanded me to empty my pockets. I confessed I would rather not.

Angel flicked a switchblade from her butch angelic handbag, and swiped it at my eyes. I jumped back as the blade slashed my cheek below my right eye. The good cheek. The cheek without the scar screaming across it.

If I had been a little slower, or Angel a little quicker, my ocular cavity would have become an eyeball shish kebob.

A red geyser gushed from my face, and that warm, thick earth taste flooded into my mouth like an old college roommate coming to visit.

Angel swung with the blade again. Lopped off the tip of my left ear.

I had a very van Gogh-ish feeling seeing the lobe of my left ear laying there on the floor.

"Gimme de money!" Angel commanded, as she stomped on my left big toe with her stiletto heel and stuck the switchblade hard into the table. I told my Angel I had no money, that I was a poor, simple traveler, a victim of the disintegration of the family unit, much like him-herself.

BAM!BAM!BAM!

Angel punched me 3 times, right in the face. I spat out a tooth. Everyone in Angel’s little play group laughed and cheered and joined in all the reindeer games. "Punk! Bitch! Motherfucker!"

I suggested a group hug, but no one seemed interested.

Angel responded by grabbing a handful of hair in the back of my head and smashing my face down onto a table, breaking my nose quite easily.

With all the calm I could muster, I reached into my pants and extracted my 86 grand. It was the only ace I had in my hole, and it sure as hell wasn’t doing any good there.

Never die with an ace in your hole.

Waving my 86 grand around, with my broken nose, slitted cheek, busted out tooth, traumatized toe, and slightly sliced ear making deposits into some imaginary bloodbank, I screamed-

"If you let me go, you can have it."

Nothing stops people dead in their tracks like 86 grand in cash. "And I should inform you that I come from a very prestigious family, who will track me down and inflict furious vengeance on you unless I am released."

"Say what, punkbitch?" asked Angel.

"You don’t let my ass outta here, my people’s gonna fuck you up like a motherfucker." When in Rome. "Gimme de cash, punkbitch," growled Angel. "Open the door," said I.

Someone opened the door.

I threw the 86 grand into the air, and while they lunged for it like piranhas after a stray missionary, I grabbed the switchblade, busted hard for the door and slammed through it.

Part of having a long successful career as a superfreak is knowing when to take a hike.

A metal pipe held by a shadow cracked into my skull, spliting it open on the landing of the stairs outside Angel’s door.

I knew if I passed out, I would die.

So I did not pass out.

The pipe was about to crack me open again, so I ducked and shoved the shadow. It plummeted off the landing, falling and flailing like an epileptic skydiver having an episode.

When the shadow landed, the lead pipe pierced its wind pipe.

And then the shadow was dead.

A truly gruesome youth stared at me from the plate glass window. A lump of nose pate´ was spread out on the middle of his face. His lips were split in 2, like he had 4 half lips. His eyes were slabs of drippy liver. His 1 unscarred cheek had been slit wide open, and looked like a tiny hairless menstruating vagina. His right ear was lobeless, as if all the carnage had simply been too much, and it had run away.

"If he was a horse I’d shoot him right between the eyes and put him out of his misery," I thought to myself.

Then, of course, I realized the miserable son of a bastard was me.

I only wish it had been Halloween. I could have gone out as a punkbitch motherfucker, and I’m sure I would have won the best costume contest.

I was an eyesore was I.

In the hospital they rolled me down the hall on a gurney, away from the reception area, so no one would have to look at me.

They gave me a shot of so-oh-oh-odium penathol, and slowly the red waves of pain were replaced by a blue sea of tranquility.

My face was stitched, my ear cauterized, my skull hot-glued together, and my nose re-constructed. Humpty Dumpty was put back together again. My lovely scar would no lonely no longer. It suddenly had so many cousins to play with.

As the drugs wore off, my heart felt like it was pounding in my big purple pulsating toe, which had grown 3 sizes too large, like the Grinch, only in reverse.

I had no 86 grand, no home, and no clue. Only a busted toe bursting with ache, and a closet full of hungry skulking monsters just waiting to feed.

"OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!" I screamed like a castrated cat.

A nurse rumbled down the hall, a white mini-van on a search and destroy mission. "Please keep your voice down, you are disturbing the other patients!"

"I’m awfully, frightfully, dreadfully sorry, but I am in excruciating pain, and I believe there is a dangerous amount of pressure building up in the dam of my damned toe. Perhaps you’d like to PUT A LEACH ON IT to suck out the evil spirits."

"That little attitude will get you nowhere, young man," she hissed through her steaming grill. I could see she wanted to run me over, to leave skid marks across my chest.

"I have been ripped off, ripped open, and ripped into, so if I’m a little testy, I really am awfully, frightfully, dreadfully sorry."

"That was the worst apology I have ever heard. Why don’t you just sit here and think about what it means to be a good citizen," she screeched away, leaving the smell of burning rubber behind her.

I hated her. I wanted her.

Dr. Pimpleboy had a plump red zit right in the middle of his forehead, like the little girl with the curl.

"Hey, dude," his voice cracked like the Liberty Bell, "How’s it hangin’?" "Well, I have 37 stitches in my face, my skull is cracked, my nose broken, a tooth has been vanquished without my consent, and nothing left to live for. How’s it hanging with you?"

"Excellent, dude," he said in several octaves. "Let’s have a look at that foot."

"It’s not that foot, it’s my foot. In truth, I am in intense pain, and I believe the pressure in my big left toe should be relieved by some kind of lancing procedure." "You gotta lotta pressure here, dude," Dr. Pimpleboy’s voice squeaked like a sax played by an atonal manic depressive. "Maybe I should give it, like, a lance or some shit."

"Excellent suggestion," I said, dripping sarcasm like a leaky faucet.

He picked something out of his ear and ate it.

Yes, I was really looking forward to having my toe opened up by this yahoo yoyo Bozo, let me tell you.

But I was, as always, determined to take it like a man.

"They’ll stone you when you’re driving in your car. They’ll stone when you’re playing your guitar. But I would not feel so all alone. Everybody must get stoned…" Dr. Pimpleboy sang like an out of tune saw as he plugged in a small metal gizmo.

I watched as the thin tip got very red, very hot, very angry. Like the Devil’s nipple.

He pushed the seething tip of the metal gizmo into my big thick toenail. Smoke signals plumed up-

"SEND HELP QUICK!"

Dr. Pimpleboy, using my ankle for leverage, pushed harder and harder into that big bad mamajamma toenail with that redhot metal tit, but the brick thick nail would brook no penetration.

The pain centers howled like cranky baby banshees with the screaming mimis. Dr. Pimpleboy seemed completely oblivious, "Wow, you gotta a monster truck toenail, dude."

"Thank you," squirted politely out of my clenched teeth.

He straddled my cast covered leg, and shoved the snarling angry metal into my toenail again, trying to relieve the relentless pressure, the smell of my burning flesh pungent, as if God was smoking a toenail cigar.

When the searing metal tip busted through my nail and sizzled into my tender toe flesh, embedding into the end zone of the toe bone, the pain ripped through me like a 747 crashing into a glass mansion.

My left leg shot up with superhuman ubermensch strength, sending Dr. Pimpleboy bucking off like an Eastern dandy being bucked off a badass Brahma bull.

As my busted blue toe spewed a stream of angry rancid red blood, a young nurse with chestnut brown hair walked by in her starched whites, carrying a green tray full of vials containing yellow specimens.

The blood spewed down the hall in slow motion, red flying in front of the white walls. It kersplatted across her pink face and her white nursey blouse like a Jackson Pollock painting. She howled a 9.9 on the Richter scale, and the tray flew up into the air.

Slowly, slowly, yellow specimen and red blood flew through the air, spraying over the white uniform, the chestnut brown hair, and the pink of her rosy screaming cheeks in a kaleidoscopic panoply of primary colors.

Dr. Pimpleboy and Junior Nurse ended up in a bloody, pissy heap on the floor, as I thankfully passed out.

6 months later they were married.

So you see, my story does have a happy ending.