No Real Explanation For This One
2007-04-13 - 11:27 p.m.

before/after
strangely non-functional guestbook

I'd like to get a beer with Dave Letterman some time.

Sure, there are a lot of people out of history that I'd like to hang with, y'know, like Jesus, Kennedy, Shakespeare, Thompson.

Alexander the Great.  Caesar.  Julius, not Augustus so much.  Octavian could be a hard-hearted prick.  Julius had the sense of history while he made it, which has to be a rarefied air.

Nope.  Dave.

We'd walk into some trendy New York scene, side-by-side, and the place would just stop.  The chatter, the music, everything as everyone paused to turn to look at us.  Me n' Dave.

And Dave would lean over to me and whisper, in his patented 'dumb guy' voice, "Hey....uhhhh...do ya' got any BLOW?"

"No!"  I'd reply, quietly exhaling and laughing under my breath.

And he'd laugh that loud laugh, that Indiana cackle, slap me on the back, and we'd walk inside.

Slowly the place would come back to life as the trendy New Yorker's slowly receded in awe.

Then I'd buy him a beer.

*    *    *

"Woah, Dave, slow down," I said to Letterman.

Dave polished off his fifth tanqueray and tonic, puffing on a cigar.

"Awww, shut up.  What the hell do you know?" he said, irritatedly.

Then he laughed his big laugh and swatted me on the back again.

"Listen, Rickey-" he started.

"Jay, Dave, Jay," I corrected.

"Whatever." he shot back, then made a patented coughing noise, followed by a patented grimace, "Listen Joey...."

And Dave trailed off, a glazed look in his eyes.  Maybe it was early memories of a misspent childhood in Indianapolis.  Maybe.  Maybe it was the Vicodin we snorted in the bathroom.  I don't know, but I didn't want to disturb his reverie.  Dave can be a bitch when his reveries are disturbed, I had already learned that lesson.

A waitress approached us in the VIP section, with a bottle of champagne.  Dom, 1978.  Sent by a local crew of gangsters from the Banono family.  Connected, but good people.

Dave seemed caught in some sort of fantasy.  A piece of white spittle lodged in the corner of his cheek while he began to talk rapidly, distractedly.

"Listen Joey," he said, "You've gotta' have the juice, the soul, the will, the will to power, and use that power when it comes to you."

"All right, Dave, whatever"

"It’s like that guy that played me in that horrible made-for-TV piece 'The Late Shift'.  I swore up and down on the show after I saw it that he'd never work again, and he hasn't.  I was a man of my word.  A man is only as good as his word, Tommy."

"Jay, Dave Ja-"

"Whatever.  Listen to me, and this is the truth-"

At this point the waitress interrupted him with the proffered bottle of champagne.

"Mr. Letterman?-"

"God DAMN it!-" he shrieked, "I'm trying to make a point here-"

"It’s just a bottle of champagne from those gentleman over there, they wanted me to give this to you."

Not too bright, this girl.  She could have just set it down, and walked away.  Now she was in his web.

"I don't give a damn about those hacks!"  Letterman barked.  Then he stood up and faced the crew lounging in expensively tailored suits at the far end of the otherwise empty VIP section, clearly coming unhinged.  The combination of the vicodin, booze, and lack of sleep was detaching him from reality.  You could see it in his cloudy blue eyes.  He was hanging on by a thread, but even that thread, as sharp as he is, was enough.

"You can keep your fucking champagne, you pack of saggy tits!"

He laughed his big laugh and grimaced.

"Ahmmm.  MMMM.  Ahhhh-GO FUCK YOURSELVES!" he bellowed, then sat down.

The waitress started to pick up the champagne bucket.

"Keep that here!  What the FUCK are you DOING!" he snapped.

The waitress immediately broke down in tears.  He leaned over to me.

"What the fuck is HER problem?" he whispered.

"I don't know, Dave, I think you made her cry," I responded.

He turned to the waitress and pressed a hundred dollar bill into her hand.

"Here here here," he reached into his other pocket and grabbed another benjamin, "Here's another.  Dry your eyes with that."

And she shuffled off.

Meanwhile the gangsters on the other side of the section were looking restless.  I looked at them and shrugged my shoulders, helpless.

"Aww, what the fuck are you looking at?" he barked at them, then followed it up with his big laugh.

Dave leaned over to me, and spoke again in his 'dumb guy' voice, "Hey...uhhh...you got any BLOW?"

*    *    *

One of the gangsters settled into the cushioned seat next to me.  He looked like Michael Imperioli.  He could have been Michael Imperioli for all I knew.  Dave had a flock of beautiful twenty one year old scantily clad women around him, one seated on the armrest of his chair, one in his lap, and two standing before him.  His hand rested lazily on the ass of the girl on his lap, and he was comparing the mammary qualities of the girls standing before him.

"What the fuck is HIS problem?" the gangster asked, motioning towards Dave with a nod of his head.

I opened my eyes wide and shrugged again slightly.  Dave seemed not to notice.

"Ok, ladies, we can go to my house later, and we can see what you can do?  All right?!  HAHAHA!"  Dave cackled, "And my friend here has LOTS of blow."  Dave said.

"I don't have any blow, Dave."  I said tersely.  His act was wearing thin, but it was Dave.  It’s Dave, that's the thing, its Dave.  It’s just Dave.

"You guys need some blow?" the gangster's eyes lit up and he sat forward in his slouch.

Dave turned to the girl in his lap, in his 'dumb guy' voice, 'Hey...uhh...d'you got any blow?"

The girl lit up at the attention, feeling neglected, yet at the same time sitting in his lap.  She laughed and let her hand run down his chest.

"I DON'T," she said, indicating the gangster sitting next to me "But HE does."  

"You guys need some blow?" the gangster asked again hopefully.

"Awww, fuck that guy," Letterman said scornfully.  The girls laughed.

"WHAT?!" the gangster shouted.  He looked at me, "What the fuck did he just say to me?"

The gangster swatted me in my shoulder.  I jerked nervously at being touched.  I didn't like it.

"Sit down, shut the fuck up," Dave said, playing idly with the blonde girl's hair that sat in his lap, "And leave that guy alone."

"What?"  This guy?!  This fuckin' guy!?" the gangster said, swatting me in the chest with an open hand, punctuating each sentence.

Dave fixed the gangster with a steely glare, his whole attention trained on the man.

"WHAT the FUCK are YOU going to DO about IT?! " the gangster said, swatting me again each beat of the sentence.

The girl in Letterman's lap hopped off and the pack of girls nervously melted away.  Dave stood up and the gangster rose to meet him toe-to-toe.

They locked eyes for a tense moment.  It hung like a pall in the air.  The tension was so thick you could hear a fly buzz, only the throbbing of the music was audible from the rest of the establishment.

Then Dave laughed, tilted his head, and puffed off of his cigar.  The gangster relaxed.

Dave met eyes with me for a second, and suddenly opened his eyes wide with intensity, punching the gangster as hard as he could in the crotch.

The gangster crumbled.

Dave stood triumphant.

"THAT!  THAT'S WHAT I'M GONNA' DO, YOU FUCK!" he bellowed, grabbing the  gangster-sent bottle of champagne from the bucket where it rested, and bringing it crashing down on the back of the gangster's gasping head with harsh violence, "THAT'S WHAT YOU GET!!!"

Letterman looked over at the crowd of shocked gangster's with steely blue eyes.  They blanched.

"Get the fuck out of here," he growled, "And don't forget to take him with you."

Getting up to leave, several of them collected their bleeding associate and made their way to the door.  

The girls were gone, the gangsters left.  It was just Dave n' me.

"That's how I roll!" he laughed his big laugh," Isn't that how the kids say it today? "

He laughed his big laugh again, "That's how I ROLL!"

"Are you sure that was wise?" I asked him.

"Awww, who the hell gives a damn?" he said, actually regarding me truthfully for the first time for the whole night.

"Hey...uhhh...d'you got any blow?" he asked en sotto voce with his 'dumb guy' voice.

*    *    *
We were exiting the place when it all went down.  

Dave had two girls, one under each arm.  They were laughing and he was whispering God-only-knows-what in each ear.  I was predictably alone.

"I told the driver to meet us out back behind the joint." he cackled.

We walked down a dark alley, towards the back of the building.  Out of the shadows jumped two guys, one with a nasty bleeding head wound.  The gangsters from the VIP section.

The one with the wounded melon pointed a gun at Letterman squarely in his face.

"Got anything to say NOW, funny-man?" he said fiercely.

"Yeah, you got anything you want to say now, funny-man?  TV-boy?" his companion parroted.

Dave eyed the gun for a moment, dropped his head to a suave angle, and locked eyes with the wounded gangster.

"Yeah, I do," Dave said, dropping his gaze to the ground quickly, then back to the gangster, who had glanced over at his friend to laugh, expecting a cowering, blubbering apology.  Not from Letterman. Letterman never backs down.

Dave's eyes widened with wicked intensity.  "YOU'RE A BITCH!" he spat, kicking the wounded gangster square in the nutsack.  The wounded gangster folded like a lawn-chair, dropping his pistol on the ground.  Dave punched him with and uppercut as he bent down to scoop up the side-arm, laying the gangster out like a rug.

He pointed it at the other hood.

"Now what, motherfucker." he said in a gravelly tone.  I knew it, I felt it, something bad was going to happen.

The gangster paled and stared at Dave with wide eyes.

"No Dave, dont-!"  I shouted, I pleaded, too late, too late.

A shot rang out at close range into the gangster's forehead as the girls screamed and jumped, terrified by the violence, shocked by the noise, stunned into in-action.  Blood spattered on everyone as Letterman walked up to the unconscious gangster and administered a coup-de-grace.

"Fucking bitch.  I haven't killed anyone since the Carter administration."  he muttered.

"What did you DO?!  WHAT DID YOU DO!!!"  I wailed helplessly.

He looked at me and the girls, and waved the pistol at us, "Come on. Back to the car.  And I don't want to hear anything."

We scuttled off into the dark, to the waiting limo.

"It’s just a bad night."  Dave said simply, shrugging his shoulders, spitting on the corpses.

Dave hopped in the limo beside me, across from the girls, stuffing the weapon into the front of his pants.  He leaned over, "Hey...uhhh...d'you got any blow?" he said in his 'dumb guy' voice.

*    *    *

I sure as hell wasn't going to fuck with Letterman, and I knew the girls definitely weren't.  We were caught in a web of fear.  We just saw him kill two guys, at close range.  There was no way he could let us go, not as witnesses to a capital murder charge.  You know how it goes:  same penalty for two as it was for four.

Dave seemed to exhale and loosen up a bit.

"Listen, Johnny- you know, Johnny used to write jokes for me for the show" he said, interrupting himself, getting my name wrong again.

I paused.  

"It’s JAY, Dave JAY.  And, yeah, I knew Johnny wrote jokes for you."  I said with irritation.

Dave picked up on it.

"Oh.  It’s Jay, huh?  Well, how about that?"   He laughed his big laugh. "Well, the night doesn't have to be a TOTAL loss.  Let’s go back to my place with the girls.  You've got some blow, we can still have a good time.  Y'know, DO some things, WATCH some things being done."

Silence in the car.  Letterman grabbed the handgun from his pants.

"You girls like blow, right?" he asked the frightened club-girls.  They nodded in terror.  "How about 'the human table', have you girls ever played 'human table'?"

They froze in silence.  Dave's eyes widened.  This scared them into action, and they shook their heads with sharp jerks of fear.

"D'you WANT to?" he said, laughing his big laugh.

"What's 'human table', Dave?"  I asked calmly.  

And this seemed to break some sort of ice with him.  

"Well, it’s where we go back to my place, spread some blow on one of the girls here and take turns cleaning up the table." he said personably, “Who wants to go first?"

One of the girls broke out of her trance of fear.  The brunette.

"I will," she said, haltingly, looking at the blonde, "I'll go first."

I don't know, maybe she saw it as her way out.  The blonde sensed this, and volunteered.

"No, I will.  I'll go first." she said.

"Girls, girls, don't fight," Dave chuckled coolly.

"It doesn't matter," I said, "I don't have any blow, anyway."

I looked at Dave, and he looked at me for a moment.   The limo slid down the dark streets coolly and went over a bump.  The pause hung in the air for what seemed like an eternity.

Dave reached into a side compartment and pulled out the largest zip-lock bag of coke I'd ever seen.

"Well, good thing that I've got this!" he cackled madly with his big laugh.  

There was a pause as we all looked at each other.  What the fuck had we wandered into tonight?

Letterman leaned over to me.  "Hey...uhhh...d'you got any blow?" he asked in his 'dumb-guy' voice.

*    *    *
Back at Letterman's place the thin blond girl was naked on all fours in front of us.  She was sobbing loudly.  Remains of white powder wear smeared all over her back and thighs.  Dave lashed a long white line off of her ass.  

"Dave," i asked, "Isn't that bad for your heart?"

"Ehhh," he murmured, "It’s all a sham."

"It’s all a sham?"  

"It’s all a sham.  None of its real.  No heart surgery. Nothing.  Just an act.  A con.  A sideshow. A distraction."

Pause.

"A distraction?  From what?"

He looked at me with a knowing gaze that spoke volumes.  I felt the years of running a societal side-show between us hanging heavy on his shoulders.  It was the million dollar question, and he didn't want to say any more.

"You're up," He said, holding his nose, waving me towards the sobbing girl with the pistol, "Man up!  Man up!"

I put my hands on her hips, and spoke softly to her.

"Don't cry, don't worry, this will all be over soon," I said, trying to soothe her.

"WHEN?!" she gasped, "We're all going to DIE!"  

Dave looked at me with glassy-eyeballs.  He spoke in a level voice.

"D'you want to...do anything to her?" he asked.

I shook my head.

He inclined his head to the brunette sitting placidly to his right with her hands in her lap.

"How about her?" he asked.

"No," I said, my voice almost a whisper.

"Don't worry, I won't touch myself...or do...anything WEIRD." he blurted.

"I'm alright," I said, looking at the terrified brunette.

"Man up, then.  Man up," he said, encouraging me with his gun.

Stephanie, one of his personal assistants came into the room.

"'Human table' again, huh, Dave?" she asked, "You pig."

Dave lolled his head back at her. "Shut up and get out, Monte."

She melted back into the immense darkness of the apartment.

As I leaned down to lash a mondo-line off of the blonde-girl's buttocks, Dave nudged the brunette hard in the ribs, making her jump, startling her.

"Hey...uhhh..." he said in his 'dumb-guy' voice, "...d'you got any blow?"

*    *    *
I was sitting next to Letterman, and both the girls were naked in front of us.  He spread some cocaine on the brunette's buxom body and yelped at the blonde.

"Go get it," he said.

"Wh-Why don't y-you just k-KILL us and get it over with," she sobbed.

"What fun would that be?" he asked innocently, shrugging his shoulders.  

He waved his gun at her.

"Get to it." he said imperatively.

The blonde started lashing up the powder while we watched.  With each snort, the brunette twitched.

Letterman nudged me in the ribs.  I didn't move but to look at him with a level stare.

The girl’s actions were reflected in his eyes.

"Hey..." he said numbly in his 'dumb-guy' voice,"...uhhh...d'you got any blow?"

*    *    *
"Whaddya' think," he said, as the girls acted out his directions in front of us.

"I'm not hiding any bodies for you, Letterman."  I replied.

He looked at me in genuine shock.

"You wouldn't do that for ol' Dave?" he asked, mockingly.

"No."  I said simply.

"Oh well," he said, "if everything goes all right I'm not killing anybody tonight."

Pause.

"Well...not anybody MORE tonight." he corrected himself.  

"No?"  I asked hopefully, "I figured you'd have to do us all."

"What, and you were just trying to weasel your way out, sacrificing the girls?  How chivalrous of you. How GALLANT." he said, "No, no, no.  I'm a CELEBRITY, man.  I can get away with anything."

"Even murder?"  

"Murder, degradation, drugs, whatever.  I'm above the law."

"Really."

"Hey, it’s your word against mine, pal."

*    *    *
Later, in the limo on the ride home, the girls sat in terry-cloth towels, shivering, silently crying.  I wanted to hold them, console them, I don't know what I wanted to do.  I wanted to cry myself.  I felt a bond, we had all been through something together, but there was a coldness, an anger between us all, and we could do nothing for each other.

He had shoved us out into the night with a salutation and that was it.  We filed down to the limo without a word.

The partition slid down between us and the obese African American chauffeur.

"Y'all'd best not tell no one," he said, "No ones gonna' believe you, anyway."

No one said a word as the limo moved down the street, the sky graying, the end of our misery near.

As I stepped out of the limo, it was as though I emerged back to reality after falling down the rabbit-hole into some sort of bastardly twisted bizzaro wonder-land, where celebrity rules and simple people are punished for their simple values and ways, valuing the shadow puppets on the walls of our cave, deceived into thinking everything was all right.

Who the fuck would believe me?

*    *    *
Hmmm...to think about it now, maybe I DON'T want to grab a beer with Letterman.

He might just be a bit too intense for me.