I felt like Clint Eastwood at the beginning of For a Few Dollars More as I rolled into Frank's Place and up to the counter, where the tatooed girl with the nerd glasses fixed my drink. At least the piercing fairy had passed her by. I wondered what she was rebelling against as I studied the intricate design on her left arm. It wasn't tribal. If anything it reminded me of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Her scowl may have deepened at my neglect of her tip, but I wasn't sure. Stareing myself cross-eyed and bloodshot in front of a computer screen had taken its toll, and I felt out-of-synch with the world, as I hauled my disturbingly potent java concoction towards the corner by the window and Miss Ink 2006 began to mop up the rain I'd invited in.

The pink neon lights on the glass blinked Frank's, then Place, then Frank's Place. Fuck this, I muttered, and headed for the opposite side of the cafe. I'd told Frank blue would've been better, but he said it would remind him too much of a bug-zapper. I told him that effect would be lessened if the sign didn't flash on and off, but Francis Xavier Horan wouldn't hear of it. I guess he needed to keep up with the pawnshop next door and the tatoo/body-piercing emporium across the street. Progress.

Out-of-synch. I know that there is a more compact, more concise word for this feeling out there, but I also know that I lack the discipline to uncover it before it's usefullness is long past. My instinct that Heidegger had a far more awkward German compound word that expressed this idea gave me little comfort, but what the hell? Anyone looking for comfort in the words of Martin Heidegger deserves whatever they get, or worse. I stared into the murky brown of my beverage and waited for it to cool off, and considered that at this hour I ought to be sleeping off a hangover like an ordinary human-being. Did I seek stimulation? I didn't know. Is the purpose of stimulants always to stimulate? Perhaps I required some sort of ritalin overload, like an hyperactive nine-year-old. Perhaps if liquor stores were open at five in the morning I'd be carreening through the late April downpour with a fifth of Wild Turkey riding shotgun.
Perhaps--

The door to the kitchen swung open. "Hows the drink?"

It was Frank. Frank was keeping some odd hours, it seemed, but who am I to talk?

"Hot. The fuck do you care?" What are friends for if not the occasional verbal abuse, no strings attached?

"Of course I care. This joint is my only steady source of income. But watch your mouth. If I wanted verbal abuse I'd tend bar."

"You mean this would be a bar if you could get a liquor license."

Frank shrugged. "I'd at least need a frontman--"

"And in the end, you give two shits about the drink! Don't you always tell me you aren't selling coffee, you're selling atmosphere?"

"That's right." Frank looked around as fragments of the Pixies' Is She Wierd wafted down out of the ceiling fan and blended into the second hand smoke. What else was there to say?

"How's work?"

"Which?"

Frank's eyes narrowed. "The work you don't like to talk about in public."

The music had stopped. I waited a moment, until Here Comes your Man started in.

"It's been slow."

"Yeah? Then why do you look so burnt?"

"I guess you could say I've been doing some independant research since its been slow. I'm waiting for The DaVinci Code to come out, not to mention The DaVinci Load, which will be released the same day."

"There's a DaVinci Load?"

"Actually there's two of 'em. Hustler's doing one, and somebody else is doing a gay porn. The gay porn will open the same day as the DaVinci Code. It'll be the first time a porn parody of a movie opens the same day as the movie it's parodying."

"Sounds big. You gonna review the fag flick?"

"Nah, my readers won't go for that. Might start questioning their own proclivities. But I will mention it when I review the Hustler movie."

"I s'pose it's fitting. In the book they said Leonardo was queer himself. And those Opus Dei wierdos with their bondage toys? Who could resist?"

"Not me. Heck, I think I will review it. Wanna go?"

"Sure! I'll be in the parking lot with a tire iron."

"No! I need you to go in there, fend them off me."

"With a tire iron?"

"Nah. Just pretend you're my boyfriend!"

"You mean I'm not really your boyfriend?"

"Nah, I'm just using you."

"Oh, thats right--" Tatoos was mopping near us and was giving us a strange look. Strange, but not unexpected. We both laughed and she looked away.

"Hey, didn't the book also mention that albino getting raped in prison? They could mix in some good-old prison butt-sex into the plot!"

"Who could resist that?" I quipped.

"Not me. But between possibly getting molested in the theatre, and gay-bashed outside, I'm not sure how much fun we'd have."

"Don't worry about the bashing. Those guys prefer bars. Easier to isolate one or two of them at a time, hit and run."

"You saying they're cowards?"

"I was thinking strategically prudent."

"Mmmhmm. So we just need to worry about the molestation. Maybe your wife would act as better fag-repellant."

"Maybe, but I'd rather owe you." Frank might be a bit of a loan shark, but how do you charge juice on a favor? And last I checked, I reckoned he owed me. "Besides, getting her to go to something like this would be like pulling teeth, plus we'd need a sitter. And I'd still need to worry about them bi-swinger fuckers."

We both got quiet. There it was. Even worse than the straight man's fear of getting gang-raped by a pack of queers was the humilliating prospect of getting banged along side one's wife by a buncha bi-sex-u-alllllls. It was probably more likely that either Frank or I would lose our collective cool and piss a bunch of 'em off. More likely, but not as terrifying. Maybe we shouldn't drink beforehand. Or avoid the Wack-n-Pack altogether.

"So maybe I should bring a tire iron."

"Nah, you just need to learn a couple of key phrases, like 'Thith ith a private party thailor!' or
'Thorry, thithter!"

Frank cracked up at this. "Or we could just tell 'em we're straight."

"Nah. They're like dogs. They can smell weakness. It's like dumping blood in the piranha tank."

"And being straight is weakness?"

"To them it is."

"Really?"

"It indicates that you may be confused, or wavering. Like you could be turned; otherwise why are you there? And straight-hetero-virgin-male-ass is like the Holy-fucking-Grail to these cocksuckers. Fresh meat!"

I still don't know if I had gone to Frank's Place for stimulants that morning, but I was about halfway through my drink, and I was jabbering like a lunatic. I had it on good authority that gay-bashers prefer empty parking lots, but every assertion since then had been based on guesswork. I was way out of my depth, but Frank was an easier sell if he thought I knew what I was talking about, even if I was making the gay subculture sound like something out of an Anne Rice novel--
"Frank, we're outta Ameretto Torani's!"

"Hold on." Frank stood up and headed over to the bar, to handle this flavored syrup crisis. There were about two other customers in the place, which made me wonder how they had suddenly run out of anything. Frank should let her know there was no booze in that stuff, in case she was doing shooters in the back, and chasing them with whipped cream. Kids these days. I sucked down some of my quadruple-espresso thrill-ride, which had begun to cool off, and rubbed by bloodshot eyes. Here comes your Man tailed off and made way for Down to the Well.

Frank was back. "So you wiped yourself out like that trying to research the Da Vinci Loads?"

"Not exactly. While waiting for them to come out, I've been expanding my research into other areas."

"Such as?"

"Jewish porn."

"Really?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"Why?"

"Jewish chicks are hot."

"They are?"

"Fuck-n-a right they are. Sarah Michelle Gellar? Jennifer Love Hewitt?"

"They're Jewish?"

"I heard Jennifer Love was--Sarah Michelle for sure."

"They are hot. But I don't see anything particularly Jewish about their hotness."

"You have a point."

"So who else? And don't say Barbara Streissand."

"Hey, if I found a Barbara Streissand sex tape you'd watch it. You know you would."

Frank shrugged. "For the novelty of it all. Who else?"

"Meadow Soprano. But she's only like a quarter or so. She's like Cuban and Lebonese or something."

"She's hot. But she will inevitably be called upon to fulfil the Mafia Princess fetish. You can't fuck with that."

"What about that Heidi Fleiss flick she did?"

"What about it?

"Fleiss? Pretty sure that's Jewish," I argued.

"Yeah? What if she was Heidi Fleischmann?"

"More sure. Isn't Fleischmann's a yeast brand?"

"You bet. I think the Jews invented yeast. And bagels. And lox."

"Maybe her real name was Heidi Fleischmann. She changed it to Fleiss because the yeast connotation would hurt business."

"Man, she invented yeast."

"She discovered it--she's the Lewis and Clark of yeast."

"Yeah. She discovered it in her Northwest Passage," Frank laughed.

"Along with 3 new species of crabs. And salmon."

"So Heidi Fleiss discovered lox. I wonder if she discovered cream cheese."

"I'd like ta help her discover it. She'd find it spread all over her bagel when I got through with her."

"Nice. Watch out for the seafood."

"Yeah. If it isn't fresh..."

"...it isn't legal." We both knew the Legal Seafood slogan. Love the chow-dah!

"So enlighten me about Jewish Porn. What have I been missing?"

"Not much, apparently. I searched for Jewish Porn, Hassidic Porn, Jewish MILFS, Kike Sluts, Jewish American Princesses..."

"And?"

"A fuckin' doughnut. Nuthin.' Unbelieveable."

"Maybe nobody else shares your fetish."

"What are you, my shrink? And who says it's a fetish?"

"If nobody else has any interest, you must be a deviant."

"Oh, there's interest. There's definitely interest."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. When I lived in New York two friends of mine were going on about fucking Jewish chicks. One of them said they always knew what they wanted."

"Which was--"

"Goyim cock!"

"Goyim?"

"Means the same thing as gentiles, only it's Yiddish, I think."

"They all want Goyim cock?"

"No. Some don't discriminate."

"They just want cock."

"It's not that they want cock, it's that they don't care if it's circumsized. You might not even know she's Jewish, because it's not a big deal to her."

"Okay..."

"Then there's the ones who are saving themselves for a nice Jewish boy."

"Off the market."

"Completely. Or, completely enough that they're not worth the effort. At best you get hitched after you're converted."

"Fuck that."

"Anyway, the sweet spot is that in between group, that wants to marry a nice Jewish boy, but isn't waiting around."

"Ahhhhhhhhh!"

"Ahhhhh indeed! If they even give you a second glance they're thinking about uncut, Goy cock."

"But I'm not uncut."

"Neither am I. They might not even think we are, but they're gonna find out and move on before their parents figure out what's going on."

"Niiiiice...."

"Yeah, and if you're not that into them, you don't even have to dump them, because they'll dump you!"

"Better and better." Frank had put alot of energy into finding creative, surgical, ninja-like ways to break up with women in the past. Except when he was married. Then he found surgical, ninja-like ways too sneak around on his wife. Speaking of surgery--

"So it's like triage."

"It's exactly like triage, except the patients select themselves."