Pink Day, Pink Night

I looked down at the pile of pills in my pink palm and thought, "Well, at least most of them are the same colour." I placed them, one at a time, on my reptilian tongue and swallowed them with the assistance of the last half of a tall Anarchist ale. The sun was rising on yet another day, it was time to get moving, like a parallelogram. I got in the car beside Sonja, almost belched the pills and the beer on to my lap and aimed the car towards the horse races being held later that day beyond the mountains that rise to the east of Dope City like Michael Jackson's sparkly tombstone.

Sonja looked up from the pornography she would read until we reached our destination and asked, "You sure you don't want me to drive?"

I told her, "If I get arrested, the wheel is yours." There were not many people on the highway. I like it like that. I stepped on the gas and tore into the mountains like Michael Jackson into a vial of opiates.

When the radio stations and their crap faded I asked Sonja to, "Put on the new Iggy cd." If you do not already own a copy of Preliminaires call yourself a fucking asshole every morning you look in the mirror until you do. It is all about fucking, love, death and dogs: the same shit I write about.

There was a semi rolled into the mountainside. The mop up team was mopping up the guts. I thought about death. I thought about love. I thought about fucking. I thought about dogs. Then I stopped thinking at all. A man can only take so much of that thinking stuff.

At the top of the mountain pass, before the town we would descend into to watch the races, we stopped and stretched our legs. We had a couple drinks and talked to the bikers doing the same. I had lots so I asked the bikers, "You fuckers want some pills?" They did not know me but they traded some dope for some pills. I could trade the dope for other shit later. The bikers were going to a fucking Elvis Festival somewhere. They needed all the pills they could muster.

In the town we went to a restaurant for lunch. We would need nourishment to help us reach our final destination. Our destination was right there on the map: Shitface, British Columbia. As I approached a table overlooking the sidewalk the owner rushed up to me repeating the words, "No breakfast!" over and over. I told him, "I don't want any fucking breakfast. Do I look like a breakfast man to you? Get me a fucking beer - No! - get me two fucking beers and a wine for the lady." There are all these rules about food nowadays. No breakfast after 11 is prominent among them. Really, I think everybody should just fuck off.

We ate, we drank, we were starting to feel alright. We listened to a couple locals share their wisdom about women with one another. I think they learned what they know about women from listening to Michael Jackson records. Motherfuck all.

I left a good tip for our waitress. She had the smelliest ass and she kept the drinks coming. She knew about shit I did not know anything about.

The race track began to fill up soon after we got there. There was only beer for sale at the track, no wine. Sonja asked me, "How many beer equal a glass of wine?" I told her, "About two and a half." That's right, isn't it? The horses raced to win. The people raced to get fucking bombed. The people raced better than the horses.

When I was in the can taking a leak a drunk cowboy looked me over quick and said, "Ha! A motherfucking rodeo clown!" I shot back, "I didn't think the owners of Brokeback Mountain Ranch would let their hands come to the fucking races." Luckily the cowboy thought that was funny. He slapped me on the back so appreciatively puke rose to my mouth. I did not let it out.

Back in the beer garden I bought the cowboy a couple glasses and we both went to look for Sonja by the rail. When we found her a biker named Shitty or something was fondling Sonja's ass. The cowboy guzzled his two beer quick and said, "Hey! That's Rodeo Clown's old lady." As the soon as the two of them started tangling I grabbed Sonja's arm and pulled her away before she joined the trouble. Good thing there was an ambulance waiting at the gate of the track. The RCMP watched from a safe distance, dreaming of the good old days when they could bring a good cowboy/biker tussle to an end with their tasers.

One race followed another. I was winning, winning big, I was winning big quinellas. I was drunk, I was a fucking genius, I was a fuck up. I put a lot of money on the 5 in the 8th race. Played him with the 4 in the quinella. I could not lose. The 5 reared in the gate as it opened and shot his jockey into space.

I made it all back on the 1 and the 6 in the quinella in the last race. I was delirious. And soon I was back on the highway.

An hour later my biker dope was gone and I was drinking double Pink Pearls in a Chinese restaurant. My old pal Henrik was trying to buy a winery off a shady Italian. I ordered breakfast and we roared like the Jackson Five into the night.