SKUNK OINTMENT

Even today I still don’t know how Marcus survived. By all reason it was a medical emergency and he required expert attention.
Which is not available in a holding cell.

The evening had started quietly enough.
I had gone to the bar to have a smoke on the patio out back, just me, a pipe, and some fine tobacco. Marcus was there drinking bourbon and sharing the joint which was being passed around.
He's a really nice guy, albeit from Texas, and gentlemanly even under the most trying of circumstances.

Two Mexicans from a nearby restaurant came in to relax after a long day.
Marcus likes Mexicans, he really does. Some Texans are like that, it's a strange racial forbidden-fruit thing. His eyes lit up, and he invited them over. The rest of the evening Marcus kept buying them beer. With each bottle that he bought them, he would have another shot of Bourbon.
I was still on my first drink when the three of them had already had half a dozen.
Marcus was telling them in great disgusting detail what he would love to do with them - it definitely involved pig grease - and they were just smiling back at him and saying 'que?' They didn't have a clue what he was on about, but he was buying them Coronas and seemed like good company.
The bourbon eventually gave way to tequila and another joint, all three of them were in a fine mood by this time, and because the bar was closing it was decided to go to where the Mexicans were staying and get some pizza on the way.

I tagged along. I had had two drinks, and pizza now sounded real good.

There were three other Mexicans living in the apartment. Between the seven of us we had four large pizzas - all with pineapple and ham. Apparently Mexicans just love pineapple and ham.
One of them sliced up some Habañero chilies in the kitchen while the others stoked up the communal bong. Marcus took several deep drags.
I abstained, because pot makes me nauseous - I've never like marijuana.

I did mention that Marcus is from Texas, did I not?

Texans have a macho thing going on. It's like a monumental chip on their shoulder.
They're bigger than anyone else, better than anyone else, and a damned sight tougher than anyone else, dagnabbit.

Marcus was drunk. Marcus was stoned on pot and getting worse - there was a big bong in the room.
And Marcus had the munchies real bad.
He was going to prove his manhood to the Mexican fellah with the nice hard buns.
Heck, to all of them. The honour of Texas was at stake.

The first bite of pizza with Habañero nearly floored him.
The Mexicans laughed.
Once Marcus got his composure back, he went into the kitchen for another beer. When he came out, he whispered that he had just put some cocaine on his tongue.

Manfully, he picked up his piece of pizza, and several slices of Habañero.
Yum.
It tasted sweet; he had another piece of pizza, and much more Habañero.
The Mexicans were impressed, they had never seen a Gringo tackle so much fire.
Here, have another beer!
And another drag on the bong!

Surreptitiously he put another dab of cocaine on his tongue and swirled it around his mouth.
He couldn't feel a thing, and he was now slurring because his tongue was numb.
But he sure was enjoying the pizza.


WARM FOR YOU!

I was wondering how on earth Marcus planed to seduce one of them with all the others in the room, after all that booze and pot. And cocaine.
Even if the Mexicans didn't get offended - I had NO idea how the Mexicans would react to an amorous and totally crazed San Francisco Texan gay man - he was in no position to consummate, what with being so utterly wasted.
I need not have worried. The Habañeros took care of that.
At one point Marcus got up to pee. Shortly after he sat down again, it started. Habanero chilies, as you know, are very hot. He had touched a sensitive part of his body with fingers that had Habañero juice on them. He started wriggling and turning purple, but he was still pretending that oh yes he was a Texan of course he wasn't a wussy, Habañeros were mothers' milk to people like him.

Mothers' milk doesn't brutalize your manhood with a blowtorch.

Scratching when you think no one is watching only makes it worse.

Panic and pain accentuate the effects of booze, pot, and cocaine.

When I came back from the kitchen with another beer, Marcus was ripping off his clothes and rubbing himself all over, screaming about skunks, rabid skunks in his pants! He grabbed what was left of a pizza and clapped it over his groin, then opened the door and ran down the hall of the apartment building yelling about how they'd need all the water in the Rio Grande one day for a swimming pool. He stumbled and crashed into the walls several times, hurting himself. When one of the other tenants opened the door to see what all the ruckus was about, he grabbed her by her bony shoulders and told her that she was cold, so sickeningly cold, she needed some hot pizza to warm her thin frame - "look, you frozen old virgin, I've kept it warm". He was weeping and all jangly as he shouted, and blood trickled down his face and nude body from a cut on his cheek where he had smacked into the wall.
He was quite the sight.

Especially stark naked with pizza stuck to his pubis.

I could hear police sirens getting closer, so I returned to the apartment, opened a window, and quietly let myself out, landing in the utility space behind the building. As I opened the gate to the alleyway, I could see the flashing lights on the street near the entrance.
I walked the other way, and then downhill.

I heard later that Marcus was held for 72 hours, because whatever he told the cops made no sense, even in San Francisco.
After he got out, he went to the clinic to have his gonads examined - at first the doctor thought he had a horrible new venereal disease.
Marcus himself didn't remember how he gotten nasty burns on his reproductive parts, and showering hadn't removed all of the pineapple and cheese.
He thought he had experimented again with heterosexuality, so that's what he told the doctor.
The one thing that really disturbed him was why his guts ached.

The doctor prescribed some ointment, and advised him to be more......

When I saw him again a few weeks later, he still couldn't recall what he had done, or why he had woken up in a cell, or even where he had been.
He didn't remember having met me at the bar that evening, he was sure he hadn't seen me in months.
The woman with the bony shoulders didn't press charges.
And the Mexicans weren't talking.


The paperwork the police filed would make for some mighty interesting reading, given that nobody they spoke to that night made any sense.
I could probably clarify everything for them, but first I'd have to explain my role.
Witness, participant, and then very deliberately an uninvolved third-party.
And manifestly not the voice of sanity which I should have been.

No.

It was several years ago.

Marcus is now happily settled down with a fine gentleman from Sinaloa.
The hottest green chiles they use for food are probably Serranos.
Which are, comparatively, quite mild indeed.
So there's no cause for alarm.

Both of them hate skunks.

There's probably an ointment for that.


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