Good Lord...I haven't thought about the escorts in a long time. Two greasy bastards, as I remember. One of the guys was somewhat portly, and I seem to remember him having a mottled mess of short, dirty, very curly hair. He reminded me of some guy who is a fixture at the local dog track, trying to play up all the angles in a wry manner...but showering far too infrequently to be a succesul con man. I remember, and this was hilarious to me, when we got into whatever California airport we landed at he knew some woman at a newpaper/magazine kiosk in the middle of the airport. And he when he saw her, he kinda shifted his gait and started strutting, and at the same time he instantly changed the tone in his voice. He started speaking very loud and aggressive...and this woman, (who was actually very attractive,) was CLEARLY distressed at the site of the guy. It was great...because I had nothing on these guys...they both owned my ass, and there was nowhere to fucking run...but for that moment I watched this douchebag who bullies frightened juveniles for a living crash and burn in the worst way imaginable. It was so bad, it was almost uncomfortable. The space she was standing in behind the counter was tiny, but she managed to squeeze as far back into the corner as she could as soon as we got close. And then, after we left the horrible awkwardness of his pathetic attempt to charm this girl into banging him, he started bragging to me about how this is "his airport," and, "everybody knows me around here." I said something like, "oh yeah man, I can see that. That chick was REAL excited to see you." And I kinda scoffed. It wasn't much...but at the time it felt like a minor victory. This pompous jackass, who made such a display of his firm control over me when I first met him, was trying to impress me with total fucking bullshit. And I just smirked at him. He knew I was laughing at him behind my eyes. Yeah...they won. I ended up at CEDU. But it was great watching a Hall of Fame masturbater strike out miserably.
They didn't come to my house. The police came to my school and arrested me because I showed up on the first day at my Alternative School running on pure vodka fumes. I sliced my hand wide open the night before when I dropped a 40 on concrete and then, in a futile effort to catch the bottle as it fell, ended up toppling over myself. I put my hands out to brace myself for the fall, and landed right on top of the shards of my bottle. It wasn't a horrible cut, but I'm sure most of you have had a decent sized cut on your hand at some point in your life, and those injuries bleed like crazy. Add in the copious amounts of booze, plus the fact that I refused to go to the hospital for 3 or 4 hours, and you can understand how fucked up I was. I lost enough blood to get woozy, but I kept boozing the whole time, so my mental and physical state was less then exemplary. After I left the ER with a fresh batch of stiches in the same hand that I had just had stiches REMOVED from 5 days earlier (I was in a car that flipped) I went back out, and pounded down a good half a 1/5 of vodka. I stumbled home at 6:30 in the morning. My parents woke me up at 8:00 for school. Bad, bad, bad fucking scene at the house. I'll spare the details...but they sent 3 cops to remove me from school immediately after I was dropped off.
So I went to an impatient ward at the hospital. They were searching for someplace to send me for an extended period of time. I was there a week and a half, and then the morning finally arrived when these so-called "escorts" were due to take me to the place that would fix me forever.
There was this long hallway in the ward, and at the end of it was a locked, video monitored door that was the only entrance/exit for that particular room of fools and derelicts, and lunatics too. Every morning they would always play a local oldies station on the radio while we ate our hospital breakfast o champions. Usually, typical harmless fare from the 50's and 60's...Crimson and Clover, sappy Beatles tunes about holding hands, that kinda thing.
So I'm staring at the door...all the way down that long fucking hallway, waiting nervously, pacing, irritable. Suddenly, and I swear to God this is exactly what happened, I saw the door swing open, saw two guys who undoubtably were my promised captors...and a song came on the radio. I heard it immediately...gripping my awareness firmly. It was The House of the Rising Sun. I see these two lumbering Neanderthals making there way down this obscenely long hallway, and I'm rigid as all hell...tense. And it's taking them forever, as I'm waiting for them to box me up and deliver me into some fresh nightmare that I don't even want to begin to imagine...and in the backround, like Tarantino himself selected it, I hear-
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one
I'll never forget it. I have always loved that song...I was a huge Doors fan since I first played my dad's vinyl of their first release on my old Fischer Price record player when I was no more then 3. I always loved Ray Manzarek on the keyboards. And the House of the Rising Sun has this great keyboard solo in the middle of the song. They got to me right about when it started. This haunting, foreboding kind of sound dancing in my ears as these two brutish thugs make a big display of handcuffing my wrists...you know, to protect themselves from my towering, terrifying 5'7" frame...and then they had me all set. Pointed me towards the hallway. Just as the keyboard solo ended. And I started the long march towards an unknown that promised nothing but discomfort...and I looked back over my shoulder at my mom and dad standing behind me. My dad's eyes and my own both locked for a solid two seconds as I was being walked away like some kind of fucking rapist or murderer, and then the first chorus following the keyboard solo played-
Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun
It was unreal. And perfectly suited to my emotions at the time. And I hear that song, every now and then. And I think about those fucking escorts, and Ascent, and CEDU, and how eventually they just declared bankruptcy and ran to the hills as fast as they fucking could. I think about you guys, too. I always bet that you guys have similiar shadows that obscure a year, two years of your lives. Cuase you can't effectively explain the experience to anyone who didn't live through it themselves. I listen to the lyrics of that song, and how gritty it is, and full of insinuations about the darker sides of human nature. I equate that phantom house in the city of sin to CEDU in a way.
