Sketchy Bill 8: 28 Years Old, Never Kissed A Girl

The title is lifted from a Tragically Hip song--yes, I had kissed a girl or two by the time I rolled into SF. But I'd certainly never been kissed in a situation like this:

Patty was rambling on about someone named Neil that she was supposed to meet later that day, Razor was watching her with this bemused look on his face, and lovely Coco had a tractor beam coming out of those soft brown eyes. The LSD and (e) were in full effect for me now, and I made myself comfortable on the couch--content to see where the morning would end.

Bill and Sheryl were making the beast with two backs upstairs again, judging from the noise--and shortly after sitting back down on the couch, Coco was kissing me passionately.

Now, ladies and gents, I'm no prude. However, I'm also not one for group sex, and my definition of group sex is loose enough to include people watching me have sex. Smooching of the variety she wanted, in front of other people, made me a bit uncomfortable. However, this was California, and I was tryin' to go with the flow, and, hell, it felt really good. So I made out for a while with the girl who lived in a black leather couch, under the watchful (but benign) eyes of Razor and Patty.

It just occurred to me that if you need help visualizing Patty, imagine an old, wrinkly Janice, from the Muppet Show. Remember? She played guitar in "Dr Teeth and the Electric Mayhem?" "Fer shur?" That's Patty.

So after a bit of clinching and murmuring, we broke as again, we heard feet on the steps. This time it was just Sheryl, and she plopped right down next to Coco on the couch. Awkwardness, which I still couldn't pinpoint, seemed to permeate the room. She grabbed one of Coco's hands, and cooed:

"Oh, your hands! They look just like my grandmother's hands!"

Even I realized this was a horrible insult--but since I had hold of Coco's other hand, I immediately noticed that indeed, they were rough and chapped in a way that was completely out of character with the rest of her body.

I'd also like to point out that there's only one surer way of getting grossed out about your body on acid than examining your hands, and that's looking at your face in the mirror. I don't know if Sheryl knew that or not, but I started getting grossed out about Coco's hands. Coco, of course, was humiliated, stunned, and aghast at how awful her appendages had suddenly become. She'd gone from being cuddled and starry eyed to basically being called a hag, all in no more time than it takes for a complete bitch to sit down and grab her digits. I was aghast, but I was immediately rendered irrelevant because my mind got caught in an acid loop thinking about whether or not I should drop her hand or not. I mean, it wasn't disgusting, but she might think that I thought it was disgusting, so I should keep hold--however, there was a very good chance that this was going to come to cat scratchin' very, very soon, so I figured she might want her off hand free.

There was a stuttering excuse on the part of poor Coco, something along the lines of the sculpture work she'd been doing hadn't treated her hands kindly, which was a sort of lead in to Sheryl (who really was good at this sort of thing) reassurring her that no, no, honey, they're beautiful hands, they just remind me of my grandmother's hands....

I began to panic when I looked over and saw Razor's mouth hanging slightly agape, and his eyes firmly affixed on Sheryl's hate filled visage.

An incredibly painful silence, when I could feel Coco trembling slightly, and could see Sheryl spinning up for the kill. Bill was nowhere around, and Razor was just not helping. The words just hung there, like gunsmoke.

And then Patty knocked over the bong, onto the glass coffeetable. The spell of Sheryl was broken--and in the first instant after Patty looked up, she looked at me, and I saw that she had very much done it on purpose. Against all odds, the tables were turned on Sheryl. She was completely outflanked, and routed, I soon saw. If Coco was a rabbit, and Sheryl a wolf, the wolf had suddenly realized that she was in imminent danger of being hugged by the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Do you see the things your mind gets to thinking about on drugs? This all flashed through my head in about 5 seconds, before Coco even had a chance to relax. I saw Sheryl once more, when she and Patty came back in to ineffectually daub at the bongwater on the glass coffeetable, before she stomped off upstairs to yell at Bill.

A few minutes later, Bill was back downstairs, lounging around in some sort of silk pajama set, poking fun at Razor and laughing at Patty and rubbing Coco's feet and calling me "you fuckin' Okie," and he barely stopped when Sheryl screamed "THIS IS THE LAST TIME YOU EVER SEE ME, YOU ASSHOLE!" from the front door. I don't think he even responded, just waved with one hand and gestured to Razor for him to see the lady out. Or, probably more accurately, make sure she didn't slash any tires or bust any windows out in the driveway.

Ten minutes after Razor sat back down, Coco was a mass of gelatin, with her feet being kneaded by Bill and the nape of her neck massaged by me. She would occasionally put her arms around my neck, swing up like a cute little monkey, and kiss me, but invariably it was too much.

After a bit of that, Razor and Bill wandered out to parlay concerning the night's events. It had begun to rain, Patty noticed, which provoked another round of discussion about Neil, in conjunction with some tickets Patty had managed to procure. To my chagrin, Coco was to accompany Patty on whatever this was to be.