A Lizard's Tale

"The meds are working, Harry. Since I've been taking them, I haven't heard any voices since and it's been two weeks...almost."

"Good stuff."

"At least I'm thinking clearly...almost."

"Then maybe now we can finally get back to the script? We haven't done dick for weeks."

"Well I've been too busy being crazy and you've been wasting time with the coat-check chick."

"Gina...And she also waitresses catered events."

"A waitress! I always wanted to do one. Y'know the way they stand over you with their cleavages busting out, taking down your order? I'll have a 69-combo as an appetizer, a doggy-style bang-fest for my main course and nipples with whipped cream for desert. Man, are you lucky, Harry. I want me a waitress too!"

"Well I"m on hiatus now. She thinks I'm back in L.A...ha...So I have to lay low for a while. A good time to  get back into the script. Let's start tonight."

Finkie pulled out a baggy with grass and started rolling a fat joint.

""Do you really think that's a good idea, Finkie? I mean, you're on medication."

"I need the grass, especially if we're gonna get back into the script. It brings me up. Otherwise this medication just numbs me out."

"I dunno..."

"I'm okay, Harry. I really am."

"Then let's work on the script...tonight. Why put it off any longer?"

"Tonight's no good. I've got Uncle Hershie's Christmas party with the guys at work and I'm not gonna miss that."

"Bad idea, Finkie. You go wild at those parties."

"One night, " Finkie lit the rolled joint and inhaled deeply. "What's the big deal?"

What's the big deal?

CUT TO :

A LITTLE LATER AT HERSHIE'S CHRISTMAS PARTY.

 Hershie stands at the holding up a crisp $1000 bill.

"A G-note to anyone here to anyone who gets up on stage and does the stripper," Hershie announced.

The stripper turned her round butt towards the audience, bent down holding her ankles and jiggled and gyrated.

The men cheered her on, but no takers to join her on stage.

"What's the matter?" Hershie taunted. "No real men around here?"

Finkie sprang to life. "I'll do it," he selflessly volunteered and bounded up on stage. A thousands bucks and a chance to do a wicked hot stripper. A no-brainer. So the guys saw you with a hard-on. Not the end of the world.

Unless the guys see you nude on stage with the wicked hot stripper, but without the hard-on. Just about the end of the world. And he didn't even get Uncle Hershie's G-note.

A WEEK LATER AT WORK

Finkie slipped out to the back alley during break-time to smoke a joint. A trashy Carol Burnett look-alike saw Finkie smoking the joint and approached him.

Hot tramp, I love you so.

She smacked her glossy lips and asked, "Can I have a smoke, baby?" Finkie held out the joint and offered it to her, but she shook her head.

"Not that kind of a smoke, baby," and then tugged at Finkie's crotch.

Finkie laughed nervously and nodded. A few minutes later Finkie was zipping up his pants.

"Now your turn," she said while wiggling out of her tight skirt.

But she was a he and Finkie went running wee wee wee all the way home.

After that Finkie stopped taking his meds and replacing them with grass. He quit working for Uncle Hershie. And writing, forget about writing, forget about L.A.. Weed was his new world and  his dealers,  Lenny the Lizard and Cross-Eyed Fred, his new best friends.

"They're good guys, Harry. You should meet them."

"I dunno, Finkie." Lenny the Lizard and Cross-Eyed Fred?

"You have to know the secret knock to get in," Finkie said while rapping on the door a clumsy version of the chorus of Beethoven's Fifth. Da da da da, da da da da. Harry tingled with anticipation.

Cross-Eyed Fred answered the door, each of his chameleon eyes independently sizing up Harry and Finkie as if they were potentially insects for dinner.

"Finkie man, you know that you just can't bring along anybody new like this.We need references first."

"What references Fred? This is Har-"

Harry kicked Finkie in the shin and said, "Harvey Potashner-"

"Yeah, my best friend, Harvey Potashner. He loves grass. Is crazy about it. Crazy, man."

Cross-Eyed Fred looked over Harry and nodded. "Yeah, okay. Come in," he shrugged and led them through a purple haze of smoke and into the grungy kitchen where Lenny the Lizard was rolling a joint.

"Gentlemen," Lenny the Lizard said after licking the rolling paper to finish the joint. "Care to partake in some primo Acapulco Gold?"

"Sure, but I have to take a dump first. It'll be quick." Finkie said and dashed to the bathroom.

"What's with this guy, man?" Lenny asked. "Every time he comes here, he takes a dump first."

"Yeah, well, that's Finkie. He likes to brag that he's so thin 'cause he craps six times a day," Harry answered.

"All I know man, is that I don't feel like passing a joint around with a guy who's just taken a crap. Let's smoke now before he gets back," Lenny said.

"It's not like I wanna bail on my best friend, but yeah, it grosses me out too," Harry said.

That and your awful case of facial psoriasis, Lenny the Lizard. What if a flake flutters into the joint? Oh fuck, now he's licking the joint.

"Where do you guys keep the plunger?!" Finkie yelled from the upstairs bathroom.

"Oh man!" Cross-Eyed Fred groaned and made a beeline to the kitchen closet. He opened the closet door and a bat flew out.

"Open the window, open the window!" Harry yelled.

Cross-Eyed Fred lunged towards the kitchen window and opened it wide. The bat which was flying herky-jerky circles around the kitchen table, flew straight out the window as if trained on command. Cross-Eyed Fred slammed the window shut and panted. "Good one, man," he said to Harry.

"Just joking !" Finkie hollered, as pleased as punch that his latest party-grabbing antic was a winner.

"Fucking guy," Lenny said while firing up a joint. "Let's smoke it fast before he gets back!" He took two long hits on the joint and passed it to Harry, who in turn took another two deep halls and then passed it to Cross-Eyed Fred who finished it.

"We'll leave him the roach," Lenny said.

The toilet flushed. Finkie leapt down the stairs into the cloud of purple smoke in the kitchen, chuckled to himself and grabbed the burning roach. All disapproving eyes were on him. Time for a party ice-breaker.

"I haven't tasted stuff like this since the old One-Ball Spiegel days," Harry said.

"Oh man, One-Ball!" Lenny said, happy to change the mood and slow things down. "I remember him well. We did a few deals with him. Fucked up dude."

Cross-Eyed Fred took a couple of tokes and then walked over to his cello propped up against the wall in the corner of the kitchen. He clutched the neck of the instrument sat down and began to play Bach's Cello Suite #1.

"You know how Speigel lost his ball?" Finkie asked.

"Who doesn't know that story?" Lenny said. "One hot August night the dude was playing frisbee high and nude in Sunnydale Park. He over-throws the frisbee sailed into the backyard of this house that bordered the park. And like a real bozo, he hops the fence to get his fucking frisbee."

"Naked?" Harry asked to be sure.

"Fucking naked, man," Lenny confirmed. "Meanwhile there's this Doberman in the backyard that's been waiting all its life for that moment. GRRRRRR!"

Harry flinched. Lenny jumped from his seat and got down on his hands and knees acting like he was a dog.."RUFF RUFF RUFF!" he barked and jumped on his knees. "Jump-jump-jump!" He bit into Finkie's thigh. "Bite-bite-bite," and faked ripping out Finkie's balls. "Twist, rock and roll. Chomp-chomp-chomp." Lenny swallowed hard. "Gulp."

"Bravo, a fine performance," Harry said and applauded.

"Paw lickin' good," Lenny said. "And da da da da, dadadada, the creation of a new St. Claire legend: One-Ball Speigel. The moral of the story dear friends, is never play frisbee au natural and buzzed."

"Bummer," Finkie said.

"And to cap it off, that that happened to be the home of his principal, the fuck-face who flunked him at the end of the year."

"Another flunker bites the dust," Harry sighed.

"That's just part one of the story, dude. When Speigel recovered he took up kung fu, he was fucking crazy mad at the world."

Cross-Eyed Fred was still playing Bach on his cello.

"That's true, man," Finkie said. "I remember playing hockey against him. He got thrown out of the game for fighting before the first face-off. What a fucking total fuck up!"

"Tell me about it," Lenny said. "He murdered his mother."

"???" Shivers ran up and down Harry's spine. Finkie laughed.

"Whaaat?" Harry chattered.

"I shouldn't repeat it, but everyone knows," Lenny said. "One night Speigel smoked some Thai sticks I sold him. He was acting like a fucking moron with these numchucks he bought from some psycho. He almost killed Fred that night for playing the cello, so I kicked him out. So Speigel's pissed at the world, goes downtown, spends a few hours at a strip joint, smokes more Thai sticks and rolls into his house at like three in the morning. Meanwhile his mother's worried sick, alone, waiting up for him.So he's blitzed out of his mind, reeking of Thai sticks and then his mother starts yelling at him. 'Why are you taking drugs? Why are you doing this to me?" et cetera, et cetera. He just wants her to shut up, he can't take the yelling."

"Then Speigel snaps. He just fucking snaps. The dude whips out his numchucks from his coat and fucking whacks his mother over the head, killing her on the spot. He's freaked out, didn't mean it, but he knows one thing: that he doesn't want to go to prison for life. His mother had warned him before to stop with the drugs before he ends up in jail with all the scumbags. So even though he just killed her, Speigel rationalizes that his mother, rest her soul, would do anything to keep him out of jail, so he gets the idea to fake her suicide."

"He actually ties a scarf around her neck and hangs her from the chandelier. Then he realizes that she's got this numchuck wound across the head, which would do him in. And then to his good fortune, if that's what you want to call it, the scarf rips and his mother's body goes crashing to the floor, ultimately decapitating the head from the body, but saving his ass. He then leaves the scene of the crime, drives back to my place and asks me if he can crash here for the night claiming that he got locked out. He goes home the next morning with his alibi, calls the cops and again to his good fortune, if that's what you want to call it, the cops rule the death a suicide and close the case. A few days later, Speigel tells me the real story."

"And you never told the cops the truth?" Harry asked.

"What for? To make a tragic story worse? I figured his punishment was to live...at least for the short while he had left..."

"Oh right," Finkie said. "There was that kung fu demonstration at the St. Claire Mall."

"Right," Lenny said. "With his mother's inheritance, Speigel opened up a martial arts studio and to attract new students, he'd do these road shows where he'd crack bricks with his head. He was doing one of those demonstrations at the St. Claire Mall during a Canada Day celebration, but this time it didn't work out so well."

"Standing in the front row of the crowd watching the demonstration was Resnick, his high school principal who flunked him out, you know, the guy whose dog bit off Speigel's ball. So when Speigel notices the fucker just before he's about to break the concrete brick with his head, he loses his concentration. And when Speigel tries to break the brick, his head cracked like an egg. And all of the nurses and all of the doctors couldn't put One-Ball Speigel back together again."

"The Curse of the Flunkers!" Harry shouted.

"Who's next?" Finkie shouldn't have said.