She said "I saw you driving your car when I was on the bus last week. I wasn't sure it was you but then I recognized the pig thing in the back window. You looked really nervous, like you were concentrating or something."

Eddie was on his way to get a blood test. The guy who draws blood hadn't shown up to the Free Clinic the day before, so he did the HIV swab and pissed in a cup for clap and chlamydia, but according to his friend Joey, it sounded more like syphilis. The doctor at the Free Clinic agreed, except for the fact he'd had it for six months.

"You've been going around with that for six months?!"
"Well, yeah. I kinda hoped it would go away. I thought maybe I injured it having too much sex with my girlfriend or something."
"You hoped that for six months?!"
" She was kinda rough, you know."
"But six months?! Have you been practicing safe sex?"
"I haven't been practicing any kinda sex, if you gotta know the truth. That's why I'm here. I wanna start practicing again."
"Did you practice safe sex with your girlfriend?"
"Well, uh, no, not really. But she'd tested negative for HIV."
"Which is why you probably have syphilis."

Eddie's ex-girlfriend was an ex-crack-addict ex-stripper who worked briefly for Heidi Fleiss. She assured him however that she didn't whore for Heidi. She just used the call-girl thing to get her foot in the motel-room door so she could rob 'em at gunpoint. She figured an upscale clientele like that could afford the money but not the scandal. He'd never heard of anyone catching an STD from pointing a loaded gun at someone.

So he drove up to 20th and Long Beach to get his blood drawn at the Beach Mobile STD Van parked in front of the 99-Cent-Store. Eddie filled out a bunch of Health Department paperwork then waited under the awning and read a few Spanish language pamphlets on abstinence. If it turned out he had anything, he guessed he'd end up on a list somewhere, get a call from the Health Department, maybe they'd be keeping tabs on him, get his name posted on some website or printed in the newspaper or something. He coulda lied on the paperwork, but didn't. At least they didn't take any Polaroids. Maybe that comes later. And if it turned out he didn't have anything there was still the mystery of that thing on his dick. Maybe it really was from rough sex. Maybe he just didn't heal as fast as he used to.

His friend Joey suggested syphilis 'cause it sounded like the same shit Joey'd once had. But Joey was a gay ex-IV-drug-using punk rocker in his late thirties, whereas Eddie was a straight ex-IV-drug-using punk rocker in his early 40's whose last girlfriend was an ex stripper who supplemented her income robbing prospective johns at gunpoint, so it made more sense to Eddie that Joey'd catch something like that. His fag buddies were always up to some wacky shit.

"Syphilis?! You mean I'm gonna be all brain damaged and drooling and shit?"

"Come on, Eddie. You're not some old black guy in Mississippi in the 1940s. They can cure it now. A lotta famous historical people had it."

"Yeah, right. Idi Amin."

Eddie didn't take well to the suggestion that he might have syphilis. It seemed like such an old, dirty disease. It wasn't like herpes or clap. It didn't sound like the kinda thing you'd catch from having too much fun with modern women. It sounded more like the kinda thing old men used to get from worn out, lowdown, rundown, cheap broads who were looking to make rent after spending all their money on booze; you got it in tilting clapboard rooming houses, you had to be near a railroad track, maybe hoping to catch a freight train to the next town and the next job yourself. You needed to be a character in a bleak pulp fiction novel written by an embittered and impoverished alcoholic like Jim Thompson. You had to be lowdown and desperate in the first place to catch something as lowdown and desperate as syphilis. Eddie was a nice bohemian white boy from a good, proper, dysfunctional upper middle class family; he had a university education; he was an artist who did official shows in official art galleries and in coffee shops. Important people heaped praise on his work, and other important people said terrible things about it, and the controversy looked impressive in his press kit. Eddie himself used to be an important person, or at least a person of minor importance and some notoriety back in the punk rock days. And his ex, who probably gave it to him, she came from a nice family too, and used to play in a goth band, and in her death rock hey-day she'd done drugs and had sex with a lot of famous guys and a decent number of famous women. Okay, he thought, yeah, after that she was a stripper and a crackhead and an armed robber; she was angry and bitter and had body image issues and racial identity issues and incest survivor issues; she hated herself and hated menÿshe wasn't perfect. Then again neither was he. Eddie had a good imagination. He could tell she'd been a very attractive woman once, and she still was if he caught her from the right angles, like looking up at her when she was on top riding him with her head thrown back; he could see the Puerto Rican she tried so hard to hide in the flared nostrils and the almond eyes, and it softened the hard edges that years of anger, hard living and self hatred had put there.

He asked Joey "Can I get on disability or something if I have syphilis?"

Joey was an expert on getting public assistance. He laughed.

"What about if it causes me mental anguish?"

"The thing about disability, Eddie, is you need to show you're no longer able to work, but you haven't done any work in years."

"WellÿI'm an artist."

"Maybe you should try GR. Tell 'em you're homeless. They'll give you some food stamps."

A 42 -year-old artist on food stamps with a mystery STD. That, thought Eddie, was exceeding the boundaries of bohemian cuteness. It was the 42-year-old part that killed it. 15 years ago he coulda gotten away with that shit. Hell, 15 years ago he did get away with that shit. And worse. But now? Maybe he'd been lucky to attract a woman of the caliber of his ex-crack-addict, ex-stripper, ex-armed-robber ex-girlfriend. Maybe he should've been more patient with her.

Eddie resigned himself to the fate of having whatever the fuck it was he had, if in fact he had anything at all. The Health Department now had possession of pretty much every bodily fluid he could deliver. It wasn't the blood test that made him look so nervous to his friend on the bus. It was because he was driving his car.

Eddie and Joey had classic cars. Eddie's car ran great but it didn't steer for shit. A pothole on the 710 freeway had jarred loose something in the suspension that wasn't attached all that well to begin with; he was terrified that his front wheels were gonna go flying off at some very inopportune moment. Joey's old Cadillac ran like shit but steered well, so they took Joey's car up to LA to see Sonic Youth, who were in fact as old as Joey and Eddie were. Eddie was moaning the whole ride up about the dim possibilities of meeting quality women down in Long Beach, since everyone and everything within walking distance of his place was either gay or lesbian. Everyone and everything except for Bunny. Bunny was omnisexual. Bunny was also 6'4", weighed 275 pounds, and was very loud. She was a nice gal, but not exactly his type.

When Eddie first considered moving down to Long Beach he asked a guy at a coffee shop what the population was. "42,000 bottoms and 2 tops" the embittered queen replied. Of course, he was a queen, and so he didn't take the women into account. The women were all Daddies. They looked like they'd either just gotten out of prison or just got off work there. They all wore work boots and Levis and had mullets. They scowled with delight whenever they saw each other, and gave each other crushing bear hugs. The men all had soft bellies and shaved heads to hide their male-pattern-baldness, and wore flip-flops and tight pink wife-beaters. Whenever they saw a cute new boy they'd wiggle and squirm like they really needed to pee.

Eddie and Joey got back to Long Beach from the Sonic Youth show. 12:30 on a Friday night; Joey thought maybe they should check out Ferns, the local punk hangout, maybe scare up a cute girl for Eddie or at least give him the consolation of knowing there were some out there. Ferns was not very consoling. Either someone was providing the under-age youth of Long Beach with very good fake Ids or Eddie really was getting old because these looked like children to him, and he was afraid to start a conversation with any of 'em for fear they were gonna call him "Mister". They were all reveling in the novelty of '80's new-wave and rock music, singing along to this cool old-timey stuff that Eddie was listening to when he was their age, or maybe even older, when those were the "modern sounds" of trendy underground youth.

"But you don't look 42" said Joey.

A couple of very cute punk girls with tattered fishnets, big safety pins in their tight little mini-skirts, looking very early '80's aside from their dyed black Betty Page haircuts sat on the stools next to them, looking in their direction, giggling, peering up from under their heavily mascara'ed false eyelashes, doing the coy maneuvers, their tongue piercings sparkling in the light when they laughed, perfect orthodonture. They were really much too cute and far too young to know anything, and especially to know any better, which Eddie didn't reckon happened until you were not so cute and not so young, and maybe not even then, judging by his situation.

Joey leaned into him. "They're checking us out. We should make a pass at 'em."

"Yeah, but Joey--you're forgetting two important things. You're a fag, and I got that mystery rash on my dick."

"Oh yeah. I guess it wouldn't work out so well, huh?"

"Naw. Let's get the fuck outta here."

*****************************

Eddie hadn't hustled up the money to fix his car, so he walked to the free clinic, a boring 20 minute walk now that he'd already thoroughly window-shopped all the thrift stores on 4th street. He did what he usually did on boring walks. He read a book. Charles Bukowski's Septuagenarian Stew. Every now and then he'd look up if he had this sense he was about to walk into a lamppost or trip over a newsrack. He prided himself in this uncanny sense, although it generally failed him. His walks were becoming bruising affairs.

He was almost run-over by a high-speed pursuit. He started meandering across a crosswalk, oblivious to the sounds of sirens, but eventually his special sense kicked in and he noticed about 12 cop cars careening down the block in hot pursuit of a little white Honda. He stepped back onto the curb and watched.

There was this little Mexican gangsta looking very intent behind the wheel of the Honda, powershifting, gunning it up to 40, maybe 12 cop cars right on his ass, sirens blaring, and more pouring out onto 4th from the cross streets. The lead cop was about a car length behind the Honda. It was pretty slow for a high-speed pursuit, but Eddie reckoned it was about as fast as a high-speed pursuit could get going down busy 4th street at 5:30 on a Friday afternoon.

The little gangsta was determined to get away. People gathered out on the sidewalk to watch. Most scratched their heads in wonder and a few laughed. Eddie looked over at a big black guy. The guy shook his head, laughed and said "I don't think it's gonna work."

"Naw," said Eddie. "It looks like a bad idea."

Eddie continued strolling to the clinic. It really did look like a bad idea, but the little gangsta seemed determined to make it happen. Eddie thought about his own life. It seemed like there were a lotta bad ideas in there, things that were destined from conception to go horribly awry, ideas that were obviously bad to everyone but him, the guy who thought them up and was determined to see them through to catastrophic failure, somehow convinced that this time it would end different. It never did.

He waited a while in the lobby before his number was called. The counselor looked at his chart. He was clean. No HIV, no chlamydia, no gonorrhea, no syphilis. He had official clearance to practice sex. He grabbed some condoms on his way out. The day, almost over, was starting to look up.

*****************************

Another day, another free clinic. This one was 3 blocks east of Easy Street. Not on Easy Street, mind you, but three blocks east. And on the West Coast at least, east always seemed to be the wrong direction.

It was actually a cheery little place, just down the block from a nice little church where a bunch of Vietnamese immigrants waited in line for free groceries. Everyone seemed to be getting a lot of boxes of cereal. He filled out more paperwork. The nurse checked the box labeled "indigent". "Indigent," thought Eddie. "All this time I thought I was bohemian." He sat down and read a farm-workers pamphlet telling him how since he was over 40 he was entitled to special anti discrimination rights. One delusion after another quietly dropped away.

The doctor asked him a bunch of questions. "It sounds like herpes," he said. "But that's a long time for an outbreak. Have you been under stress?"

"Have I been under stress?!" Eddie thought. "Jesus Christ, doc, I been under stress since the day I left the womb, the first in a long line of bad decisions. It's been all downhill since I turned 1". But what he said was "yeah, it's been a rough coupla months."

The doc brought in a second opinion. An attractive second opinion. She took Eddie's cock into her rubber-gloved hands and smiled.

"That's classic," she said. "Fungal. You ever hear of ringworm?"

"I got ringworm of the dick?!" Eddie almost shouted in alarm. His life was getting less glamorous by the minute. "How long's the cure?"

"A couple of weeks. Are you sexually active? It's not sexually transmitted, but you oughta wear a condom."

A couple of weeks. Shit. Lea was coming in from DC in a week exactly. They had the hots for each other big time. This was gonna be an embarrassing sexual introduction. "I guess oral sex is probably outta the question, huh?"

Eddie's dick was still in the doc's rubber gloved hand. She looked up with a seductive smile. "I wouldn't put that thing in my mouth," she said.

They gave him some ointment. He walked over to Easy Street and waited for the bus.

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