Fear and Loathing in Los Santos
*tape recorder clicks on*
"It was never easy for me. I was born a poor black child..."
Laughter, cough, cough, spit. Cursing.
No, no, goddammit. That is the intro to Steve Martin's "The Jerk" you asshole, what the fuck are you doing man? Don't come at these people with this kind of weirdness right out of the gate, Jesus Christ. Fuck. Start over.
*tape recorder clicks off*
*tape recorder clicks on, high-pitch rewind squeal*
"Okay, okay, I've got it now, okay. Second take."
Deep breath.
"Tonight on assholes interviewing themselves in the mirror, some fat douchebag failed writer turned clichéd alcoholic talks about himself for hours."
Laughter.
"Fuck. Okay, okay, everything is fine. It's fine. Just get into it already."
So, hey, about me. Uh. I'm a Leo, an INTJ, a Fire Rooster, I've got an IQ that is just shy of about one-sixty depending on how fucked up I am when I take the test, and my favorite color is, believe it or not, Seafoam Green. Not that any of that matters, of course. Is it cool if I have another drink? Thanks. Yes, I realize that was a frightening amount of alcohol but you want to talk about my past, right? That's what it takes then, and here it is.
I was born to an unwed drug-addicted teenage mother in the bad part of the South in about 1980. Before she gave me up, though, she scribbled my name on the birth certificate.
"Memphis."
No idea what she meant by that. Was I conceived there, was she from there? Dunno, to this day the answer eludes me but whatever, the name stuck. I was put up for adoption immediately and really I can't blame her, shit, who could? Stuffed into the state orphanage system as an infant and shuffled around from place to place for a while. Never really stuck anywhere for long, as I was riddled with physical illness and undiagnosed mental problems and generally considered too difficult. One family, according to the records which I unearthed years later, reported me as "possibly demon-possessed" at the tender age of three. Life in the Southern Baptist South, right? Whatever. I bounced from foster home to foster home until I finally just ran from the whole system at about the age of fourteen. Spent some time on the streets and a lot of time on other people's couches. I was too smart for my own good by then, angry at everything, hated the world, and in the very beginnings of a life of mental and emotional issues.
That was when I met the Professor.
I'd made it to Memphis, Tennessee. City of my namesake. The home of Elvis, the Blues, the birthplace of Rock and Roll, and the final stop for Dr. Martin Luther King. A place almost as fucked up as I was at the time. I was broke and homeless when I stumbled into a coffee shop somewhere in the art district, hungry and hoping for a handout.
I saw him for the first time, sitting in the back at a table with a chess board full of pieces laid upon it, wisps of grey hair catching sunlight through the dirty windows, staring at me over thick-rimmed black glasses. He introduced himself, "My name's Robert, but everyone just calls me the Professor," he said. Bought me a sandwich and a cup of java. He had a kind voice and an easy demeanor, was keen to know where I was from and where I was going. I, of course, young and impressionable, consumed both the sandwich and the attention with equal gusto. We talked through the day and into the night, and when he found out I was homeless he offered me a place to crash for a while. We walked down the worn sidewalks of the Midtown neighborhood past homes gently lit from within, on a warm evening, and it felt like things were going to be okay.
When we got back to his house, I was introduced for the first time to methamphetamine and sodomy, both with a startling swiftness.
I stayed with him for three years.
I hated it but what else could I do? No hope, no friends, no prospects. The meth almost made it worth it, but not really. It's an old story but at least I had a place to sleep and regular food, and I think he did care about me in his own fucked up way. His house was full of books, floor to ceiling, and I devoured every word I could get my hands on. All the greats, man: Keats, Hemingway, Bukowski, Thoreau, Kerouac, and finally the king, Hunter S. Thompson. I even started writing a bit, here and there, which the Professor was super critical of, naturally. But I found an outlet in some of the anarchist 'zines from the coffee shop and for the first time I got to experience that totally orgasmic feel that a writer has when he sees his words in black and white print. Seemed some other folks liked those words too, so I struck up a friendship with the local punks and anarchs, which he did not approve of either. Yeah.
Eventually this led to me taking a bunch of his shit and moving out of his place in the middle of the night, into a communal house owned by a punk band who liked my writings. He showed up pounding on the door and demanding to see me, saying he'd ruin me, turn me in to the cops, out me as some kind of whore, the whole nine yards worth of emotional manipulation, sure. But I'd begun to emulate my heroes of the Word by then, so I opened the door and pressed both barrels of a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun to his head and told him that if he ever tried to talk to me again I would turn his skull into a fucking canoe.
When I clicked the hammer back, he got the point, and that was the end of that chapter, yes."
Shit. Okay. Need another drink after that. Yes. That's better, it burns going down, right? Where were we?
"So anyway, I started writing in earnest. Throwing words at paper as if my life depended on it, and maybe it did. I had a pretty serious meth problem by that time and the Words helped to keep the wolf from the door. Luckily the anarchists I'd fallen in with were all straight edge, which I have to admit was annoying as fuck but honestly had it not been for them I might not have made it. They were good kids, at the end of the day, and I am forever grateful for their support. This ragtag group of weirdoes with Mohawks and piercings was probably the best family I'd ever had. Good times in the commune, too, writing and reading, crazy concerts every weekend, just thrashing and bashing and letting the anger out. I even had a girlfriend, for a time, and she, being much better organized than myself, managed to get me to a GED and then enrolled at a local college in some writing courses, specifically Journalism. The girlfriend didn't last, of course, I was still pretty much a mess as a human, but the journalism thing stuck with me and I actually accidentally graduated with honors and a metric fuckton of student loan debt. I was writing more and better than ever before and it was glorious, but I needed credit within the industry, and this led to the next, unfortunately darker chapter.
Jesus Cinnamon-Titties Christ, I need another drink.
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*tape recorder clicks on*
"HEY THERE BOYS AND GIRLS IT'S TIME FOR WHIPPY THE SQUIRREL!"
Goddammit. I still hate that voice. It's sort of what you would get if you let the Chipmunks smoke crack and then stuffed them in a blender.
Sometimes we do things we regret when we are young, I guess. I was in my early twenties when I snagged my first legal job, a bullshit internship at a local TV Station. Jesus. I showed up all bright-eyed for my four in the AM shift and was handed a threadbare squirrel costume, complete with giant horrifying cartoon head. It reeked of booze and ass. "Morning kids show mascot," they said, "Whippy the Squirrel, beloved icon of local marketable children everywhere," they said, "Learn how to do the voice or you're fired." they said, and that last bit was the important bit. So I spent three hours in a cramped video closet watching reruns of the previous holder of the title, trying to get it right.
Twenty years that poor bastard was the furred whipping boy for this station, and over the time lapse of the video tapes you could see his spirit wither away, slowly crushed by the awful mundanity of his chosen occupation. I found out later he'd showed up to work one morning, taken a little break to go to the dressing room, put the barrel of a .357 revolver in his mouth, and fucking BLAMMO. Cut to "Technical Difficulties" slate, call the cleaning crew, so it goes.
But I really needed the job and the industry credit, so I lit a joint, got really fucking high, nailed the voice, and became the ultimate personification of local televised capitalism and commercial broadcasting. It wasn't really hard. Put on the giant stinking head, trot out in front of a bunch of bored children, try to get them excited about the next magician, clown, or Hannah-Barbara cartoon rerun. It didn't take long for me to fall into the bad habits again, smoking out and drinking heavily every shift just to get through it.
The morning anchor's name was Jane Childes. A forty-something former beauty queen she was, with an older doctor husband, a very expensive set of fake breasts, and a predilection for cocaine. Before the news she would spend thirty minutes on her hair alone and then spend commercials doing bumps off the news desk. During the break between Sunrise News and Morning News, she'd do, well...
Me.
You ever hoover coke off a magnificent pair of middle-aged titties and have hot, sweaty, furry, squirrel sex in a video closet? And then have to go in front of thirty children and their parents and introduce a bunch of goddamned bullshit while reeking of pussy and weed? Of course not, and it went downhill really quickly.
This whole horrible debacle led to a breakdown on television and a general brawl that got me fired. You wouldn't think eight-year-olds could throw down like that, but those little bastards will swarm you. They will climb right up your furry legs and punch you in the balls with all the skill and anger a disgruntled Taekwondo yellow-belt can muster.
I was, of course, quickly and obviously fired. Barely avoided charges on that one, but luckily Mr. and Mrs. Childes were eager to stay away from any sort of public scandal and paid to have the whole thing hushed up. I suppose you could say that was my first introduction to real Old Southern Politics, where everything was about who you knew and how many people were related to you and little else in the way of reason. So it went.
I got a letter in the mail from the Liberty City Courier the very next day, the third most popular newspaper in a crime-ridden city the majority of people hadn't heard of outside of the late night news. Seems they loved my work and wanted to make me an offer. So I sold all of my shit and bought a bus ticket.
"Time for the big time," I thought.
Goddamn, I was naive.
Let's have another drink, shall we? I'm not drunk, you're drunk, shut up. I'm telling this story, you goddamned reflection. Why don't you lose some weight, too? Fat bitch, I hate you. No, no, I didn't mean that. Finish the story and we can both go to bed.
Okay, bottoms up and here we go.
Oh fuck, oh fuck I have the hiccups, shit. OMG I HATE FUCKING HICCUPS. Okay, okay, wait... I'm good. Whew.
Liberty City in the early 'ought's, right?
Fuck.
I would call it a den of sin and iniquity but that wouldn't do it justice. I rolled into the Greyhound station ragged and jittery, too many days off the drugs and hard up for the next thing to prove myself. I grabbed my bag, walked outside, and saw a car fly through the air. It flipped upside down, murdered two pedestrians, hit a traffic light, righted itself, and sailed off into the night with about a hundred cop cars, lights a-flashing, trailing behind. Nobody called an ambulance for the poor smashed unfortunates, either, they just laid there as my taxi pulled up to take me to the low-rent apartments that the paper was paying for.
I was, at the time, unprepared for that kind of mental clusterfuck and had a bit of a breakdown in the car. My cabbie, who I think was some kind of Russian from his accent, laughed.
"Welcome to Liberty City, my friend," he said, as he wove in and out of traffic at a terrifying pace. I got to the apartment, locked the locks with a trembling hand, and called in to the paper. They wanted me to report at six in the AM. Fortunately I'd had my new cabbie friend stop off at a local liquor store and the fifth of Jack Daniels I'd procured got me through that night.
It wasn't easy, but nothing was easy.
Except maybe dying, in Liberty City.
I started at the Courier the next day. Covering the crime beat and believe me I made waves right out the door, just by having the audacity to actually talk to the criminals and ask them for their viewpoint. Up until me, I guess the Liberty City Courier was most pro-police-law-and-order and then here I come with my anarchist bullshit, the fucking audacious idea that we examine the society that had led to criminals, consider them as people instead of the usual big bad villains. Having the sheer gall to suggest that the cops might be the bad guys too. The old dogs in the bullpen hated me and I don't blame them. Some dumbass kid from the South with a weird haircut and the wrong clothes rolling up in their turf questioning the very fabric of the very normal kind of journalism they practiced? Very much an asshole, no doubt.
But when I broke that story about corruption in the LCPD, and it went national, no one could deny me.
The public, oh the ignorant and so easily distracted public, they ate it up. Bear in mind this was the late nineties, right? Anti-heroes were in full effect and my kind of crude yet poetic narrative was having its day. Sure. I got invited to the best parties by criminals and celebrities, vast displays of decadence on yachts and in underground clubs everywhere. I was a hot ticket, for a minute. I even managed to get a new girlfriend, yeah, a lovely, uh, a perfect, a...
A goddamned angel, and no mistake.
Shut up, shut up. It's okay. Moving on.
Anyhow. I got in pretty good with some local heavies. Not as difficult as you would think, nobody loves to talk about themselves more than criminals. What's the point of being smarter and harder than anyone if you can't somehow tell everyone that you are? All I had to do was listen and write the words I heard, at the end of the day. Sure, a little embellishment, maybe a punch-up here and there. Change the names to protect the innocent (not that anyone was, of course), and then BLAM you have a newspaper article, then a column, and then a book, and then it all kind of went wrong in the worst way.
Shit. Okay, wait. I just need another drink. It's okay, just, ahem, it's okay.
*tape recorder clicks off*
*tape recorder clicks on*
Heavy sigh.
Okay, let's get into it.
I published my collected articles with a major publishing house and we titled it, "Fear and Loathing in Liberty City."
It went to the top three on the NYT Top Ten Publishing list immediately and stood there proudly for two weeks.
Nobody remembers that now, of course, and there is no reason they should. I wish it hadn't gone as far as it had.
See, it seems that some crime lords, arrogant and narcissistic fucks that they are, don't appreciate it when you publish a book in which they feature heavily (even if names are changed), and they are described in a less than favorable light and maybe with words like: "weak-ass Nancy-boys", "useless mentally-challenged fucknuts", or "punk-ass exploitative shit pimp beta fucks".
Well, sure, they get a bit pissed-off at you. Some of them. Well, okay, one in particular.
Sergio Antoine.
Eh.
So there was this mostly-unheard of gang of criminals on the Southside, right? Second-hand punks, mostly, pseudo-bikers. Garbage white-trash meth-heads, low-level drug dealers, pimps, and so forth. Called themselves the "Southside Desperadoes" and owned a three-story warehouse they'd converted into a sketchy strip club named "The Platinum Pony", which was basically a front for their meth and prostitution rackets. Their leader was an ugly bastard that fancied himself as some kind of made man with the local Mafia (none of which, mind you, knew who the fuck he was). Sergio Antoine. He wore expensive clothes and watches, drove Italian sports cars, and wore ridiculous hair pieces.
I swear to God, every time I saw him he had a new look. Short hair, long hair, dreadlocks, shaggy bush, high and tight, loosey-goosey, everything. Couldn't really make up his mind and he ran his gang about the same way. They were drug-lords one week, pimps the next, an MC biker club the week after. Pure chaos. But I managed to ingratiate myself just enough to get access to the inner circle and after that it was a real awakening as to the ways and means of the Liberty City underground crime scene. That formed the basis of "Fear and Loathing" and most of my articles thereafter. I told the club what I was doing, of course, transparency in journalism and all that, but when the book hit, well, they took exception.
Especially Sergio.
Look, I will acknowledge that I didn't exactly describe him in flattering terms, okay, but everything I said was a hundred percent accurate. That probably made it worse. Don't poke the ego-driven narcissistic bear, right? But look here; these people were not good people, they were psychopaths almost to a man, exploiters of everything around them, murderers when they found it convenient and just overall terrible, terrible shitlord human beings. Bad as it was, every single word I wrote about them was true. I just wish it hadn't...
Well, I mean I should have known it would...
I...
Fuck.
I need another drink. Standby.
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Her name was Sarah.
Yeah. Before all this really hit its stride, I'd gotten just well enough known at the Courier that I'd been assigned an assistant. Some young, plucky, college intern, much like I'd been once upon a time. We hit it off, she was amazingly competent at all the things I was not and for my part I was a hopeless wreck of a human being. We bonded over drinks and a predilection for old punk bands and one thing led to another and then my book hit (which never would have happened without her help) and we got engaged and the local press made a big deal of it and we were in love and that should have been the part of the story where the fucking narrator says, "they lived happily ever after" and the end of it.
*extended silence*
Goddammit.
*cough*
Sorry, sorry. We were walking out of a trendy downtown restaurant when a car rolled up on us and gunfire erupted from the windows. I found out later that Sergio had ordered the hit because he felt I'd made him look weak in the book. I took one bullet in the shoulder and one in the knee. Sarah took three in the chest.
I held her, um, hmm. Sorry.
I held her while she died.
Um. I need a minute, okay?
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...
*tape recorder clicks on*
So, yeah. Okay.
When I got out of the hospital I went on a bit of a bender.
I mean, like, some epic Greek-hero level shit. Total blackout. I dropped a ton of money on coke, meth, booze, pills, everything. Whatever I could shove into my stupid brain to make it forget the pain, right? Still don't remember anything, and that's probably for the best because I woke up in a cornfield in Iowa three weeks later, wearing a powder-blue dress and one sock. Drug my hungover ass out of the field and down the road until I could hitch-hike into the nearest town, get some breakfast and check the feeds. Iowa locals don't even blink about this shit, too many years in the middle of America and everybody's cousin has a meth problem. Your weirdness doesn't even make a dent.
But it seemed the Platinum Pony had mysteriously burned to the ground in the time I'd been out. Multiple dead, all members of the gang. Sergio himself had been found in the back, in a safe room, almost untouched except for a hole in his head the size of a train tunnel. What survivors there were reported an attack by a demon, a figure dressed in a squirrel costume with a high-pitched voice that terrified them as it hunted them one by one, relentlessly murdering everything it encountered with a sawn-off shotgun.
I've no memory of any of that time, of course.
But I did wonder.
So I got my shit together, such as it was, and sold it off to pay for my ticket home. Went back to the Tennessee hills and got me a little cabin up on the top of an Appalachian mountain. Spent my time collecting royalty checks from book sales, drinking moonshine, smoking meth, and hitting on local moonshiner's nubile daughters who might have read one of my books on the down low. I had my reasons, of course, I'd promised my publisher two more books and they'd already tried lawyers to no avail. I feared they would try hitmen next, ditto for the gang scene in Liberty City, who have large egos and long memories.
So I went to ground, grubbing it out on the top of a mountain. No contact with the outside world, just me and the booze and the meth and the occasional young lady with a passion for literature.
It was not the best life, but it was good enough for me at the time, yes.
Fast forward to now, though.
Two things happened, really, that got me off that mountain. Firstly, I couldn't write. It's fucked up, but too much clean air, too much sunshine, trees, grass, squirrels and whatever the fuck, it broke me. It was too easy goddammit. My brain could not deal, and thus no words. I was hamstrung by bliss, I think. Secondly, the money ran out. Surprisingly enough, moonshiners and meth heads don't give credit. So I drug my dumb blissful ass off the mountain and down to the city, made some phone calls to some contacts in the newspaper world, checked the feeds, and found out that Los Santos was the newest hottest criminal hotspot in the world. I felt it too, that vibe, when I stepped off the bus. That feeling that you could die at any time, strike sparks anywhere, and hammer the fiery words of the gods onto paper.
Los Santos smells like gunpowder, diesel fumes, and blood.
And somewhere in my soul, the old Muse stirs.
I'm here to write words. I'm older now, the reflexes aren't what they used to be, but I think I still have some stories left in me. This is the last ride for this old dog journalist, and I aim to make it count, to leave a legacy, whatever it may be, written in the stars of the universe and hopefully at least two books worth of shit because the publishing house is still after my ass for that contract. It's okay though, I know this music and I remember the steps to the dance. The next chapter of chapters starts here, and words are coming easy in Los Santos.
But if I've learned anything, it's that nothing is ever easy.
*tape recorder clicks off*