Saturday's Storyteller: "I was going 92 down the Bay Bridge in my Chevy Astro. The hippie couple in the back still hadn't finished making love and I was afraid the drugs were starting to wear off..."

by Belinda Roddie

I was going 92 down the Bay Bridge in my Chevy Astro. The hippie couple in the back still hadn't finished making love and I was afraid the drugs were starting to wear off. Mind you, the dope and the pills I had enjoyed weren't exactly the heaviest, but the high they had granted me was enough to ignore the horny hitchhikers as they attempted to make a baby right on the just freshly steamed backseat of my beloved Neil Armstrong.

Yeah. I named my Astro Neil Armstrong. If that's not the most appropriate fucking name, then I don't know what is.

Anyway, I screamed my way into the city and dropped those fornicating bastards off at the closest liquor store so they could smoke cigarettes in the afterglow, before I drove almost another mile out to Hotel Griffon. Now, normally I could never afford a room at that little "paradise," as my more "educated" friends liked to call it, but it turned out that a buddy of mine was staying there for the night, and I knew that he had a spare queen bed for me to crash on. I also knew that he had a Ziploc baggie full of white staff and brightly colored capsules to move my downward spiral curl back up toward the heavens. I was sobering, man. My hands were becoming too steady against the steering wheel. When I careened through San Francisco in my sweet van, I wanted to do it with style - not just with goddamn purpose.

I heard sirens behind me and cussed before pulling over. Luckily, the SFPD car swerved right by me, and some bad boys in blue uniforms decided to pick on a homeless guy with dreads by the Embarcadero. I didn't understand it. I looked as grungy as he did, but I was also as white as fresh fucking snow in the Sierras. Obviously, they hadn't smelled the weed in my van, but they were happy enough slapping around a poor kid who couldn't have been older than thirty holding an old Starbucks cup full of nickels and Washingtons. I would have braked right then and there, stepped out with the only blunt weapon I had and took on those cops with venom and vigor. But at this point, I was still going at least sixty downtown, and the blunt weapon I had was an umbrella, and despite feeling more lucid, I was still too fucked up to risk hurting myself or the bum I was trying to help.

So onward to Hotel Griffon. Joey was staying on the second floor, but fuck if I knew which room number. I parked my beloved Armstrong in front of the lobby and walked in with all the grace and charisma of a hobo who had just pissed his pants. The concierge at the front desk immediately averted his eyes when he saw me. He asked me if I had a room. Course I didn't. I was there to see a friend. He told me he couldn't look up the name "Joey."

"Well, why the fuck not?"

The dude looked terrified now. "Ma'am," he stuttered, "with all due respect, there's more than one Joe staying here."

"But I'm not asking for Joe, am I? I'm asking for fucking Joey."

I knew the concierge was one phone call away from redirecting those cops from the Embarcadero over here, so I didn't push it. I gave him Joey's last name, and he reluctantly told me his room number. Jackpot. I popped my shoulders beneath my shitty canvas jacket and headed toward the elevators. Something rustled in my backpack as I jostled it, and I wondered if a live animal had crawled its way in there. I wouldn't doubt it. I had found a family of raccoons in my Astro once. Builds character, I guess.

So I got to Room 333, which reminded me of 666 for some reason because multiplication or whatever, so I laughed, and Joey answered the door before I even knocked. He was already pretty pale with dust around his nostrils, and his eyes were as wide as flying saucers. I felt like aliens are gonna pop out and abduct me at any moment.

"Mads, what - "

"Just let me the fuck in. You know what's happening."

He let me in. Joey was the only one to call me Mads. My mom called me Madison, but everyone else called me Madman. I liked it. I was known in high school for freaking out after a shroom binge and flipping over a table after a biology teacher asked me where Charles Darwin or whoever the fuck went to study birds. Another time, I smacked my soccer coach with one of my cleats because I was on my first acid trip, and I never got to play soccer again. While some of my buddies went to college, Joey and I always wanted to be free. He was visiting from Wisconsin, and I had just hauled two kindred spirits with overactive reproductive organs all the way from Shasta.

Joey, with his manic red curls and his freckles and his long-ass nose, coked out of his mind. Me, gangly and emaciated with a shitty pixie cut and rings around my eyes. We were fucking pageant queens. Gorgeous.

Anyway, dude sat down on his bed with the TV, and sure enough, there was a spare queen bed. I was psyched. "Dude, you're letting me stay, right?"

"Sure. How did you know I was...?"

"You told me, Joey. You fucking told me."

"Yeah?"

"Sure, dude. When you called me in Shasta. I told you I was gonna be in San Francisco, and you said you'd be, too."

"I must've been high as balls."

"As two men's nutsacks, my man."

Joey blinked. "I'm supposed to be seeing my father right now."

I shrugged. "I just found these two wanderers on the side of the road. Kat and Bernie. Fucked the whole drive down."

"Impressive."

"Ready for some hits?"

Joey chuckled. "I'm already a disappointment. Why not?"

Sure, why not, Joey? I was happy to be a disappointment together with him.

This week's prompt was provided by Nic Smith.