In short, advertising doesn't work, is what your lawyer was now spieling off about while you stood in some kind of antechamber of proceedings where your lawyer had BTW'd in mid-sentence while describing the futile nature of a sexy billboard, "oh and totally cool to do a line in here, but I wouldn't chance 'shootin the baby' as Neil Young would phrase it" something about having just enough time to hear the door creak as it begins to open in order to wipe up as the pseudo police guy holding door tells your ass it's time to get in there but not enough time to loosen the belt from your arm and get that little bit of plastic back on the tip of the needle in case you jab yourself in the middle of the deep concentration required to tell adequate lies about where you were the early hours that day Dot Larso pulled a butterfly knife from her nethers and sliced the offal right off of Jersey cab driver Sam "Winkem" Salva, in such a way that the defense can't work you down into a thin and narrow three days later because you didn't take down notes on your side of the story like you promised even yourself that you would. Your lawyer's melodrama whiffed of an amateur or a deep cynic with a history of alcoholism only without the resourceful Jewish assistant there to pass him notes in court and keep his neurons from firing in a way that didn't resemble Lloyd Bridges' hair on any given Sunday circa that last fruitful decade he had with us.
That initial realisation that your wallet had been replaced with what felt like, yes most likely, a bagel was somewhat extinguished by the unleashing of action via people directing you into the room where you knew you didn't belong like that dream where you're Jerry Lewis and you have to mime a bunch of songs for the King of Belgium but they totally dig how bad it is more than how good it would've been if you'd done it right. "But ain't that just life nowadays?" You tell your lawyer you don't want him whispering anymore of his little observational tidbits on the whys and hows of--that you just want this over with and really you'd just be happy with no additional time added to what we're looking at here. And please no big speeches. His response to that was putting a cigarette behind his ear patting you on the shoulder and saying like "No Dramas Squirt" or "No dramas, Squid" like all of a sudden your tentacles would get the better of you and be up that ladies skirt while she was trying to put you away for like a feel that totally wasn't what that butt advertised. Broad had a silicon butt, or half a butt. So does that even constitute "touching"?
But your squid bits were getting a bit antsy by the sit down even and before you could even get a glass of water that subordinate was up taking the jug explaining how it'd been there for too long like it was only good for topping up goldfish, in fact perfect for that. And you were like "buy it off me bitch" but it had already been replaced. You waited for the right moment in which the defense was occupied with barking accusations at some witness about whether her prosthetic ass was or wasn't asking for it, and as you went to pour a glass with such care it bore the facade of a mighty river, like some canoeing expedition you had barely survived in your twenties or that you'd seen a movie about. You felt eyes turn in your direction as though the pouring of a liquid had just then disrupted a testimony so fragile the stenographer needed her fingers to be replaced with q-tips which socketed in at the middle knuckles and the end of each tip was lubricated with an oil lightly scented to evoke a memory of chimney smoke from open fireplaces (not of a strong enough odour to suggest the dead of winter but rather an easing in from autumn, a kind of "oh, December certainly creeped up on us quickly this year, and I suppose it's too late to start looking for Ugg boots on sale; there's always next year (but you say that every year!)" kind of vibe) but even with the lubrication and the fingers that have made such commitment to this very moment in court and you wonder does she just wear false fingers over the top all the other times, and if this were a more tense trial where people were at the edge of their seats and Richard Gere was up there telling us all about how his particular methods of sex with the finest pussy in Hong Kong saved a busload of Polish girls from being traded off into shady Chinese prostitution circles--if something like this were the case would this woman have pulled off her falsies to reveal stainless steel machinery like sewing machine parts tapping against her brachygraphic typeset like morse code that only our unconscious can take in on some deep emotional level to heighten the tension and in that final slam of the corrupt Chinese judge's gavel, Gere slides his hand under, shattering it in two places but he does not scream in pain, he bites down on his cheek and he says: "Your honour, if I may just say one more thing."
Four or five hours later you finished your loud slurping of the drink, which someone in the further back rows of your mind likened to a slow cold fellatio. You were growing paranoid that the audience surrounding you was privy to the sexual connection, or even enjoyment you took from your way of drinking and that they would link it to the misconduct regarding your charges. That this guy can get off to anything kind of thing. But your lawyer just kept saying "take your time" but maybe that was code for "hurry the goddamn up or they'll give you the chair." You signaled by chromatophore to the court that you were ready, however subtle, it was still hormonally succinct enough to summon an escort to the stand by two five foot nothing hourglass women in black lace lingerie, skin like autumn and hair flowing in velvet black. Their wide almond eyes promised what their racing red lips would deliver and as they both leaned over the table where you sat the right bra strap on the right girl and the left strap on the left girl slipped off their shoulders in a simultaneous motion suggesting that these two beings were synchronised to function as one entity of pleasure and before you were to take the stand, first they would lead you by the tendrils back to that little room where the opportunity to do some coke was still very much out there.
The only thing your lawyer could do right there was kick you in the shin--and hes' got the shoes for it--since just flat out saying "did I fucking just catch you trying to jerk off in court while you're being prosecuted for charges of a sexual nature; really?" wouldn't really fly under the radar no matter how quiet he whispered it, and one guy in the jury with a keen eye for attention to detail might've already seen it just in that second from kick to shin to sliding out the hand but you were quick enough off the bat (n/p/i) to make it look like you were looking for change or something in your pocket and luckily there was something in your pocket the rest of that kind of green in the middle cupcake you'd been slipped in exchange for your wallet at a point in the day you could no longer distinguish. And your lawyer was like: Oh Jesus, you didn't.
* * *
Fake ass woman wobbled her way down to back to the desk that sat to the right of you and your defense, who was in the midst of scrunching a piece of paper he had read over twenty or thirty times and he was getting sweat allover the desk, a kind of gushing sweat any healthy man could only produce running flights of stairs in mid afternoon desert. Her testimony was delivered with clean confidence, no fumbling, no unsuredness in her time of day about the what's and when's (this suredness being totally against your personal recollection but maybe that said more about your own sexual mania and the inaccuracies coupled with it)
The words rolling from her tongue stung you in the face with red splotches that your lawyer was secretly wishing would unravel into some really massive aneurysm and he could get out of there early before that Mongol pushing the cart of Bactrian marmot on a stick closes shop. That bitch--her words were physically slapping you around like those dudes with rippling arms loved to do to matchstick women of putrified ethnicity--no border would take them--in the only porn left that you were down with--that cunt up on stage grabbing you by the ankles and pushing you face first through the drain hole over some piece of silicone under her dress that now is for whatever fucked up reason a part of her body well fuck this you thought it was time to screw your feet back on roll on over there and give these fine people a piece of your own recollection of events.
* * *
The problem wasn't standing at the wrong time, you'd been doing that the whole trial and he wasn't just being a total faggot when you noticed your lawyer's hand clenched firmly on your thigh. The problem was that over the course of the trial you had defecated where you sat no less than three times and so when you stood up long enough to walk over to the stand, after much encouragement from your defense ("Yes, it's OK to go now...I mean it...really...what? Yes fine I'll hold your house keys so they don't fall badly against your genitals when you sit down again just --cking go.") the shit began to flow down and through your pant legs in runny clumps and maybe nobody had noticed the smell so much up until then since whatever you had taken had dropped your body temp to corpse levels but as you became active again your muscles began to burn hot as though they were in no state to do anything and you became a walking stink factory not to mention a walking shit dripping factory and honestly the judge really had to take a moment to decide what to make of this before slamming down the gavel and demanding that court go to recess until the defendant could approach the stand in a hygienic state deemed appropriate, specifically, sans the shit down your legs, and out of nowhere a slightly retarded man with a bucket and a mop was in his inarticulate way gesturing you aside to do his best to make as though this whole unpleasantness never happened.
The way you saw it, this here, out in the open, this was your only chance. There was no fucking way you were testifying like this, you had one option left and that was to make a run for it. You coaxed your lawyer down the steps a bit while he was chain smoking those small yellow cigarettes that no one in America smokes and you started out by asking him how much money he had on him. Straight away he could see it in your eyes. "Don't even..." but you already had him in a choke hold, whispering in his ear to slowly go into his pocket and remove the wallet and all you wanted was the cash, and assuring him that you'd never snapped a man's neck before but after eating some homeless guy's technicolour dream muffin who the fuck knew what you were capable of. Instead of breaking him from this mortal coil, you told him to fold his chubby ass down against the pavement and count until he lost count and then start counting again.
* * *
Later that day police found your body under a tree in the park along with a derelict looking chap who was wrapping tape around a plastic bag filled with sand so that it took on a long cylindrical shape. He was arrested on suspicion of having mutilated your genitals and letting you bleed to death but his story was always that you'd paid him to perform a very delicate cosmetic procedure, and that in your heart of hearts, you believed in him one hundred percent of the way.
