The Ishmael Gradsdovic Papers, part twenty-five


Ishmael Gradsdovic hangs out with his dealer in part twenty-five of the papers.....


7 August 1994

"Her pussy is so beautiful that if you threw it in the air it'd turn into sunshine." I laughed and smiled. B----- my drug dealer had just formed the most poetic and arresting sentence I've ever heard that contained the word "pussy." I'm a little stoned (courtesy tokes of the purchased weed given to the dealer and all in attendance), and I'm watching his mouth-one of the front teeth is missing-and trying to follow what he says; I don't remember how we got on this topic. Must have gotten distracted looking at the fishtank. Aquarium gravel and little aquarium toys like skeletons and treasure chests, and then marbles and shells from the beach. A bunch of colorful little fish share the big tank with two small turtles, a newt, an eel and a couple of large pollywogs. A scorpion is in one of the dry tanks ("I don't think his poison sac has been removed yet," a friend cautions me).

I remember. We were coming in to the parking lot of the apartment complex (not very complex, just four apartments) and we were remarking on his collection of buried things in that little patch of ground between the parking lot and the walkway in front of the apartment door. Some of them, some little succulents and pepper plants, were growing. Some of them, like the owl claw ("Got run over by a car. I just took the foot off. The ants'll do all the work for me, then alls I gots to do is glue the bones back together") are being decomposed. With some it's hard to know what process they're going through.

We go inside and he walks over to his fishtank, knocking over a small fan along the way. He kicks the fan, sending the front cage rolling across the room. He pulls a pump out from behind the tank, lifts it over his head, and throws it straight down at the floor where it shatters into little bits of plastic and metal. "Son of a bitch," he says. "Well, that isn't going to be bothering you anymore," I say, reassuringly. "Next time it bothers me will be when I pull part of it out of my foot."

Then he sits down on the couch and he pulls out a handgun, black and metallic, as if he was picking up the phone, and he turns and fires it at the table. Turns out it's a pellet gun using air pressure and it doesn't have a pellet in it. B----- uses it instead of a fly swatter. "You can get right up to em and they're all waitin for you to move, and you just sit there and then whammo they're all over the place." Anyway, he puts down the gun and lights up some incense and turns up the stereo (The Eagles, Victim of Love) and puts the incense stick in a fly-tying vice on the table so that the burning end is hovering over an ashtray. He wants New Jersey C----- to look at one of those little liquor bottles they sell in airports and such. It's got real ("Twenty-six carat") gold flakes floating inside. Looks pretty cool. C----- tells me the finer restaurants have gold-foil filligrees on their desserts.

People start dropping by, alone or as pairs, or as one dragging a kid along. The kids love the aquarium, and pick up the turtles and play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with them (look mommie, he's flying). They throw twenties on the table and take baggies from a black lacquer box. One of them is making sad excuses for not calling first, as is the house rule. "I just had some problems, I was embarassed that I hadn't been by in a while." "Hey man, you got problems, you call and tell me your problems. I can listen to your problems. I don't expect a happy call every time. Better problems than no call at all." They get back on friendly terms in no time.

But how did we get onto that pussy thing. Jeezus, that short-term memory loss is running away with me. Okay, I've got it. He comes back into the room with the three baggies (he made some calls while we were there but couldn't find any more on short notice; come back Tuesday, he says), sixty bucks worth, and switches the CD on us to The Beavis and Butthead Experience. I never really was much into B&B, and I'm starting to remember why. Anyway, most of the commentary so far has been a sort of playground joke type talk about sex with lots of euphemistic references to masturbation and guest appearances by Anthrax. Great name for a band, Anthrax.

I think this starts B----- talking about his harem. D----- (the one with the vulva that were it made airborne would reveal the coming dawn) is scaring the others away. "Had this one chick back there on my bed, and my hand's on her pussy and I'm sucking her titties, right, and she says `No way' and it's because the door's unlocked and she just knows that D-----'s gonna come in, she says, `and she's gonna kill me and then she's gonna kill you.'" And I say something sympathetically about how this D----- is cramping his style and then he started waxing poetic about pussy. Just a few words and I completely understood.




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