Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (37 page)

Blood for Dracula
is already underway as Hideous parks the truck with its tailgate facing the drive-in screen. He gets out to unhook the tarp. Jimmy and Skip give him some crap about the rough ride, while Gordon climbs out and helps Hideous extract several low-slung beach chairs from behind the cab’s bench seat. Soon everyone is seated in the pick-up bed, cracking open beers and adjusting blankets on their laps.

Life doesn’t get much better than this
, is what they’re thinking.

Up on the screen, Udo Kier’s Count Dracula is complaining that he can only drink the blood of
wirgins
(as he pronounces it). Not much later, Udo finds himself sprawled on a white-tiled bathroom floor, vomiting up shocking amounts of bright red non-virgin blood. Dressed in formal eveningwear, he manages to spew with great style, spasming like an auto-asphyxiating aristocrat.

“Puking up blood always looks better when you’re wearing a tuxedo,” Twinker observes.

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time I have a massive bleeding ulcer,” D.H. says.

“Shouldn’t we be firing up a joint right about now?” asks Skip.

“Hell yeah!” says Jimmy.

Skip places the baggie of marijuana in his lap and gets out a packet of Zig-Zags. “Who sold you this lid, Crash?” he asks. “Paco or Leo?”

“Leo gave it to me for thirty bucks. Paco’s waiting on a new shipment.”

Even though he doesn’t smoke pot himself, Gordon often ends up buying it for his friends. He can almost always score weed off the Mexican guys on the lumberyard crew, usually Paco and Leo, who’ve worked there for years. Paco offers the more consistent product–tightly packed sativa buds grown on his cousin’s ranch down in Mexico (or so he claims). Leo’s pot can be more hit-or-miss. Sometimes the highs are staggering, far too intense (“Polio Weed”); other times they’re just right–even better than Paco’s pot. Every now and then there’s a batch of leafy hemp that’s just one step up from smoking dried lettuce, but in those few cases Leo has been gracious enough to provide refunds.

“Any idea what this stuff is?” Skip asks Gordon while licking the rolling paper of the first joint and applying a final twist.

“It’s supposed to be Mexican Red. Leo swears it’s really great.”

D.H. says, “I just hope it wasn’t sprayed with Paraquat.”

The Drug Enforcement Agency under the Reagan administration has been on a tear lately, spending millions of dollars to destroy marijuana crops with Paraquat, a defoliant that’s toxic to humans as well as plants. “Doesn’t it just piss you off,” says Gordon, “that our federal government’s use of Paraquat could be poisoning millions of young dope smokers like yourselves?”

“This whole ‘War On Drugs’ thing is totally screwed up,” D.H. says. “Thanks to the new laws, totally harmless small-time druggies are the fastest growing segment of the prison population.”

“Maybe the government
likes
it that way,” Gordon speculates. “Maybe there’s a profit to be made from supplying prisons with fresh blood.”

“So then who are the
real
vampires?” Jimmy asks, looking around like a spooked deer. Then he bursts out laughing. Up on the screen, Joe Dallesandro is savagely raping a teenaged virgin–ostensibly to protect her from the dark powers of Dracula.

“The truth is,” Gordon concludes, “we all have a lot more to fear from Ronald Reagan and the Moral Majority than we do from our friends the marijuana growers.”

“Fuck it,” says Skip, sticking the joint in his mouth and lighting it. “Let’s just get high and not worry so much.”

“Damn straight!” Jimmy says as Skip passes him the joint. “Gordon, you should toke up if you’re really more afraid of Reagan than you are of pot.”

“So how is that stuff?” he asks.

“Not bad,” says Skip, exhaling. “Smells a little skunky, but it tickles my lungs the right way.”

“Go ahead. Take a hit,” Jimmy says, holding the joint under Gordon’s nose.

“I don’t think so.”

“C’mon!”
everyone says at once, including Hideous, who won’t even drink beer, much less smoke pot.
Traitor….

“This is a classic example of peer pressure,” Gordon protests. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”

“Oh, c’mon, you puss,” Jimmy says. “Do it as a big ‘Screw You’ to Reagan.”

“Do it as a large ‘Lick My Crusty Bunghole’ to Witzkowski,” says D.H., who has a more picturesque way with words.

“Do it for me,” Twinker says, “and I’ll shotgun it for you.”

“Woo-hoooo!”
the other guys howl like maniac coyotes while thumping Gordon on the back.

Twinker takes the joint from Jimmy and inserts the burning end of it into her mouth. She leans in close to Gordon, as if to kiss him, and blows straight through to the joint’s wet twisted butt, scribbling the air with smoke. Gordon opens his mouth and Twinker directs the dense frond of smoke right down his throat. His eyes close as he breathes it in. His mouth, accidentally on purpose, grazes Twinker’s lips. For a moment, Gordon imagines he and Twinker have been transported to faraway realms together inside a magic bubble of sensuality and kindness. Then Twinker spits the joint into the palm of her hand and picks it up saying, “Wow! That was getting hot!”

“No kidding…” D.H. teases. “Crash looked like he was about ready to stick his tongue down your throat and start mauling your tits.”

“D.H., you’re such a sad, horny dreamer…” Twinker says, secretly squeezing Gordon’s hand, “I’m sure you just imagined that.”

“We’re
all
a bunch of sad, horny dreamers,” acknowledges D.H., “but we hate admitting it.”

That statement causes everyone to look up into the moonless sky, as if in silent prayer. Threatening black clouds have obscured all the stars. A gathering thunderstorm has turned the night upside-down. Skip breaks the silence by saying, “I don’t know about you guys, but that pot’s already climbed right on top of me.” Afraid of getting too high, Gordon coughs out a chestful of smoke.

“Pass that little doobie over here,” says Jimmy. Twinker hands it to him. Jimmy croaks out a “
Yeah, Mon
…” like a contented Rastafarian, then tokes on the joint as if it’s a gigantic spliff. He passes it to D.H., who regards the burning roach with melancholy, then puts it to his lips and inhales like Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard’s
Breathless.

“Hey, look!” Jimmy croaks at the movie screen. “Lesbians!”

“This is so great! I’m rolling another joint,” Skip says with glee.

Blood for Dracula
has ended and a new movie is just starting. Two naked women caress each other on top of a large bed in a shadowy room. One of them is a brunette with ample breasts, full lips, and the dark-eyed allure of a femme fatale. The other is a pretty Scandinavian blonde who looks more girlish and vulnerable. They’re kissing each other like they’re really getting off on it. But then a shadow appears in the doorway. The two women stand up and scream as a mysterious stranger enters the room firing a gun. Blood spatters their beautiful breasts and they fall on the bed in a heap. Then a horde of vampire bats takes wing in the night sky and a title appears on the screen:
Vampyres.

“Hey, I thought we were supposed to be seeing
Daughters of Dracula
,” D.H. complains.

“With hot girl-on-girl
acción
like that, who cares?”

“You’re such a hopeless poon hound, James,” Twinker tsk-tsks.

Gordon tries to be philosophical. “I guess one lesbian vampire movie is as good as the next.”

“Speaking of vampires…” says Jimmy, “how’s your mom these days?”

“Oh man…” Gordon groans, “she’s too hateful to even talk about. Did I tell you she’s fucking my uncle?”

“Your dad’s brother? No way!”

“That’s sick!” D.H. exclaims.

“I’ll bet it happens a lot more than anyone thinks,” says Skip, “although it’s definitely perverted.”

“I guess it’d be worse if it was her own brother, but still, it’s pretty disgusting,” says Gordon. “They’re acting like they plan to move in together. The other day, I was doing homework in my room and when I went out to use the john, I ran right into him. Ol’ Uncle Gerald was just sitting there on the toilet
in
my bathroom
, buck-naked. The door was wide open. He was farting up a storm, too.”

“Oh, man!”

“That’s just not right,” Twinker says.

“You know, of course, that while you were standing there smelling your uncle’s farts, his actual shit molecules were flying right up your nostrils,” D.H. says, taking the scientific view. “Your uncle’s vaporized micro-turds are probably still stuck to the alveoli in your lungs even as we speak.”

“Great,” says Gordon. “It smelled like a putrid dairy farm in there. Like a bucket of cow manure and three pounds of rotten Gorgonzola had been marinating in his anus for weeks.”

“That’s very descriptive, Crash,” Twinker says, wrinkling her nose. “Thanks for sharing.”

“No problem.”

“So is your mom still being a nudist?” Jimmy wants to know.

“More than ever,” says Gordon. “She joined this club–the American Association of Nude Recreation–so now she goes on field trips where she can be all naked with other people. She’s even got my uncle doing it. That’s why he was bare-assed in my bathroom. He thinks walking around in front of me with his dong hanging out is just A-OK.”

“Poor little lambikins…” Twinker says, patting Gordon’s head. “When you get all growed up, you’ll have some terrible psychological scars to deal with in therapy.”

“Hey, how would you like it if
your
dead dad’s incredibly hairy naked brother started dating your mom?”

“I’ve seen worse,” Twinker says. And everyone believes her.

“Jesus Christ, I’m high!” exclaims Skip. “Are those the same two women who got shot earlier?” He passes around another joint, already burnt halfway down, as everyone’s attention returns to the movie screen.

The blonde and the brunette from the lesbian love scene are now somewhere out in the English countryside wearing long satin dresses and velvet capes. They’re looking quite sexy. The brunette stands by the side of the road trying to hitch a ride, while the blonde watches from a hiding place under a gnarled tree. A little blue car picks up the brunette and drives off with her to a creepy Gothic estate.

“Hey, look! It’s the same mansion they used in
The Rocky Horror Picture Show!”
says D.H., who knows about such things.

“It is!” Hideous seconds him. And then he sings, “
I weemembah… doing the time whoap….”

“Sing it, Hideous!” Skip encourages him. But Hideous has already sung enough.

The man who offers the brunette a ride is a suave, aristocratic Englishman with a trim waistline, an aquiline nose, and starched French cuffs. He says his name is Ted. Ted looks like he races vintage sports cars for a living or spends most of his time on yachts. The brunette leads him up the steps to the mansion. They pass under the leaded glass roof of an atrium, then step inside through the gargoyle-guarded front doors. Standing in darkness at the foot of a mahogany staircase, the brunette asks: “Does this kind of thing excite you?”

“Hell yeah,”
Jimmy answers for Ted.

Ted and the brunette climb the stairs and she shows him into a lavishly decorated room lit by Tiffany lamps. There’s a lot of tropical greenery and a zebra skin rug on the floor. Ted goes over to stand by an ornate marble fireplace flanked by two life-sized Balinese puppets while the brunette goes off to find some wine. He suspiciously eyes a glass shelf that displays two blue Chinese vases and a knife with a handle that appears to have been carved from a fossilized walrus penis bone. When the brunette returns with the wine, Ted asks her a few questions about herself, gets some unsatisfactory answers, and then they start making out. In no time at all, they’re in bed together, naked, and Ted is asking, between gulps of wine, “Are you sure we’re alone?… I get the strong feeling we’re not.” To put his troubled mind at ease, the brunette thrusts her spectacular breasts in Ted’s face, then turns around and fucks him cowgirl-style.

It’s a surprisingly explicit film. “Oh, baby,” moans Skip, sneaking glances at Twinker. Jimmy, D.H., and Gordon are doing the same–all of them shifting around uncomfortably beneath their blankets. Only Hideous appears to be unperturbed.

“Yes, Skip, I’m turned on, okay?” Twinker says, catching his furtive stare. “I’d let Ted stick ’is willy up me bum, any day. Those English accents really do it for me.”

“You tawdry Mexican slut!” D.H. says, attempting an English accent of his own, which comes out sounding like John Cleese from Monty Python. “You’ll have the dons of Oxford rogering you like mongrel dogs if you keep up that sort of talk.”

It does the trick. Twinker falls into D.H.’s bony arms with a swoon, gushing, “Oh, yes, D.H., roger me! Yes!
Please
, yes!” Then she sits up and pats him on the cheek, saying, “Nice try,
amigo
, but we’re still in Fresno.”

“Damn!” says D.H., slapping his baby-smooth forehead.

After having a powerful orgasm, Ted falls asleep and awakens some hours later when he hears the bedroom door opening with a creak. The brunette is asleep at his side with her eyes wide open, which Ted finds kind of creepy. He tries to get out of bed to shut the door, but he’s so spent he can barely sit up. When he wakes up the next morning, the brunette is gone and there’s a deep, bloody gash across the inside of his left elbow. Ted wonders how it got there. He finds a knife-like shard from a broken wineglass and bends over to examine its bloody edge, wrinkling his aristocratic chin like a tortoise getting an enema.

“Man, I must’ve been really fucked up last night,”
Jimmy says, speaking for Ted again.

“Dude, you were
soooo
wasted,” Skip confirms for Ted. He lights a third joint and passes it to D.H. as a sort of a consolation prize for not getting to hump Twinker. D.H. takes a melancholic hit and says, “I’m starting to feel slightly odd….”

“Me, too,” Jimmy admits.

“Hey, is anyone else seeing a big black frame around the movie screen?” Gordon asks. The picture up there is starting to look three-dimensional to him.