blurring_the_edges_28_attrition birdmad By the time October rolls around, thngs have gotten strange and out of control in a number of ways. One of your "stable-mates" in Dana and Zoe's game turns up HIV positive and even though you have played it almost entirely safe, there has been some sharing of customers so you are caught up in the panic and rush off to get tested again even though you did just a couple of weeks before it happened. The same endearing recklessness that made him so attractive to some of these women had become his and potentially their death warrant. You tried to counsel him to be more responsible about his habits, but he threw your concern back in your face. When you see him after he's broken the news, he apologizes, and thanks you for not rubbing it in his face that you were right. "Jason, you know i wouldn't. I wasn't telling you what i told you just to be a dick ot bring you down. You've got enough to worry about without another junkie trying to get on his high-horse and kick you around over any of that shit, man?" You show him the faded evidence of tracks on the crook of your left arm. Though everyone involved comes out clean except for him, the effect it has on that bit of business proves entirely lethal. Eventually the only one left who still calls on your services besides Dana is Allison, who herself seems more and more reckless and uninhibited as time and her play with you have progressed. Elena has since moved back to San Jose, you stopped by a few days before she left to give her a little birthday gift and say good-bye. When she called one last time the day before leaving, you avoided everyone and everthing you could manage to afterward outside of showing up for work at the plant and doing your job. When that night fell, you listened to the same tape you were playing in your Walkman the first time you met her back at school 5 years ago. You knocked down a bottle of tequila and weren't the least bit fazed or buzzed by it nor aware of being at all hungover the next morning. Platte got disbarred for a couple of shady deals and a bad case of legal malpractice and MeeKrob Jones' operations in L.A. aren't holding up very well lately. You have only another four months remaining on the lease of the apartment you were holding with Mike from Chicago. It's a good thing you two paid that thing off split in advance because Mike bought himself a Porsche 944 that became his coffin when he drunkenly sailed himself of a section of road out by the Superstition Mountains. It wasn't so much that the car fell any great distance, but at the speed he was going and the horizontal distance he traveled when he left the pavement and aired off of the berm like a ramp, the moment he and the car re-established contact with the ground in a position other than wheels first couldn't help but be both messy and fatal. In the most disastrous reversal of fortune for anyone, Henry Ash and Billy apparently are coasting on good-will alone as they are now deep in debt to Tony and Greg on behalf of their own bad habits and the amount of money it takes to buy a little silence when Billy gets out of hand. You haven't been too involved or hung out with them but once or twice since you were busy playing with Zoe and Dana and trying to lead an otherwise "normal" life. For some reason, though you warned him in no uncertain terms that he would have to keep his shit in check, Billy is still at his little tricks. Jimmy K tells you that It took extra cash, a small quantity of dope and the medical assistance of Rich from Tucson to avoid one of Billy's victims from calling the cops and filing sexual assault charges. On Halloween 1992, your play with Allison comes to an end when she gets irrevocably angry with your first refusal to try something new. Under the ages-old pretext of "slipping into something a little more comfortable" Allison goes through the unusual step of going to another room to change, as if you hadn't already seen, touched and tasted every inch of her more than a few times already. When she comes back out, she is wearing what looks like a pair of panties but with a very large and formidable jet-black rubber appliance protruding from the front of them. "Umm, what's with the unit, Allie?" "I thought i'd drive tonight," she says. "Uhh, perhaps, but considering the case that i haven't gone with you where you would be going with that thing, namely in the ass, i would have thought maybe asking first would have been in order, besides, that thing is almost twice as big as my cock in every dimension, you might as well try to shoot an MX missile up the back of my pants with the kind of damage that unholy monster of a dildo will surely do." "I can't believe all of a sudden you are being such a fucking old lady about this, Alex." "Whoa, hold the phone, you. I haven't refused anything else you've wanted to experiment with, in fact, i've enjoyed the vast majority of it, and what i didn't enjoy, i still enjoyed. But this...this is something a guy needs a little time to prepare for, both mentally and physically, you know?" "No, i don't know." You spend another twenty minutes or so trying to reason it out with her, but instead of being her usually articulate self, she descends further and further into angry histrionics and you sense that there is more to this blow-up than just your refusal to be back-doored on short notice, but she won't tell you. That episode and the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffa become mysteries you will never solve. You go on leading more and more of your "normal" life, sometimes you even go out clubbing on your own when you aren't engaged in business with Tony and company, though in the places you go, a bit of your reputation from those nights spent as the on-duty boy-toy manages to precede you. At the new techno club, The_Works, you feel like a shark in a tank full of sardines, a couple of your previous "customers" pay you some attention and next thing you know there is a quiet buzz among a number of women and among at least a couple of guys as well. The initial attention makes you nervous, but apparently your incongrous shyness just serves to whet some appetites even more. On more than one occasion, you manage to have sex somewhere dark and out of the way on the premises, a couple of times you manage this more than once in the same night. You reach a point where you are more and more excited by the prospect of potentially getting caught and apparently your partners are of the same mind on the subject. On one hand, the sheer ease of finding partners to play with and the willingness of all of them to fuck in potentially dangerous and compromising places is thrilling, but in a small secret place in the back of your mind, you are bothered by the fact that in some cases, you never even knew their names, even if they knew yours, or one of the ones you used to do business. It dawns on you that sometimes, you even lose track of all the names you use in the execution of a good scam You go back to taking the occasional beat-em-up jobs for Tony to make enough money to keep you in weed, valium and condoms. The valium isn't as much of a problem as the heroin was, but you occasionally overdo it and when you do, though you still come across sharp enough mentally, people can tell that maybe you forgot where you parked your soul sometimes. It makes you happy one tuesday night in November to hear that your vote counted and that the easy-going, chunky redneck who played the saxophone on TV managed to beat the cranky old weasel who sold weapons to terrorists and helped the his senile old weasel of a predecessor lie to Congress about it for the office of President. Taking a brief break from the club scene, you spend a couple of weekends with Zoe and Tricia leading up to Thanksgiving. The Friday after Thanksgiving, you get a call from Dana who says that Claire, Henry and Billy are working on a score that could get them out of the hole with Tony and even back into making a profit again. The first part of it involves a one-day turn-around trip to L.A. to renegotiate with MeeKrob and work out a deal to help him move about a little easier than the way things are going now. The next part, she informs you might be a little tricky. Don't buy into it Alex, you've actually got something resembling a life to lose. Don't go and fuck it up now just because you're bored and jaded and looking for a new kick. "Whatever, I'm in." Damn you. 030427 what's it to you? who go blather from