We weren't drunk; we were hammered. The night was brisk, but the alcohol made our shirts stick to our skin with a warm clammy sweat. Colby kept screaming, "Taxi! Taxi!" at every passing car, shaking his fist and cursing them when they failed to stop. "Jeeeesus Christ!" he yelled, "I've got cabin-fuckin' fever! I'm so sick of this block, and this house, and this street, and that, that store," he said pointing a wobbling finger in the direction of a little liquor store call McBaker.
"Where we goin' then?" I asked.
Colby spun on his heel, sizing up the four possible directions of our little intersection.
"Downhill!" he said, and with that he starting plodding down the sidewalk, clopping past a couple coming in from a late night.
"Come on," I said with a sigh to Ian who was sitting on the steps of our building, still nursing a warm beer. Without a word, he set the bottle down and came over. I motioned toward Colby, already halfway down the block. Ian nodded and we started after him.
Our building was in the very heart of the city, right on the corner of McCallister and Baker. We were no more than a fifteen minute walk from the famed Haight-Ashbury district, just a few minutes from the park, and if one was so inclined, no more than 20 blocks from the epicenter of homelessness and drug addiction in the city--an infamous stretch known as The Tenderloin. This was exactly where Colby was headed.
As we crossed the intersection at Van Ness and continued on to a place where the streetlights seemed to grow thinner, the air more full of steam and piss, Ian started to mumble to himself.
"What?" yelled Colby from the front of our little platoon.
"N-n-nothing," stuttered Ian. "This is just sort of crazy," he said looking down at the sidewalk.
Colby, face red and swallowing every few seconds, stopped and turned to him.
"Look," Colby said, "I want some drugs, you want some drugs and Jon wants some drugs. Where we gonna get drugs? At this hour? Tell me man!" Ian looked at him dumbfounded--silent.
"Right here motherfucker! Christ!" said Colby, and he turned and started again toward the growing darkness. Ian looked to me as Colby headed on, his face soft and oily like silly putty.
"It's just another part of the city," I said, "It's all bullshit anyway."
It wasn't bullshit. The stories were true. All along us, in every tiny space between a chain-link fence and a building, every nook and even just out on the sidewalk itself were bags of trash and the people whose lives those bags carried. Shopping carts had been tipped on their sides and made into the walls of little cardboard apartments. Men and women sat slumped against the bricks of the decaying city around them, sucking on bottles and moaning as the ash of death fell on them and filled their pores with a black tar.
Three white kids in this part of town, at this time of night, were obviously not just out for a walk. Out of the grime and the filth along the allies of trash came bums with eyes darting up and down the street as they came... two, three... then four stumbling toward us.
"Whatcha lookin' for? Whatcha lookin' for?" they said hudding together like some debotched Walgreens, each clerk with a different concoction to peddle. Colby stepped boldly into the swarm, while me and Ian stood back. All we could see was the back of his head, and twice he yelled, "Fuck that! Twenty, not twenty-five!"
When at at last he returned he held a grimy plastic bag in his grip. "Come on," he said, "my recording studio is just up here." Some blocks up we stopped at an abandoned ship of a building, it's outside a skin of peeling grey paint, where Colby fumbled for a key and let us in. He led us up a narrow staircase with yellow walls to room number 23. Inside, the floor and walls were covered with a thick black soundproof foam, which in turn was also ventilation-proof leaving the room heavy with the breath and perspiration of the band that had last played here. In the far corner, amid the amps and drumkit, there was a tiny fridge from which Colby pulled at small bottle of vodka. On a stack of amps he laid out his tools: the small plastic baggie, the bottle of vodka and a bottle of Afrin nose-spray.
Colby looked up at me and smiled, but I could only muster a bewildered grin. "Don't worry, it's just cub scout shit I learned," he said, pouring out the remaining few drops of nose-spray on the floor and adding a small splash of vodka to the bottle. "Now... for a little of grandpa's hard candy," he said, opening the bag he'd bought and plopping a big yellowish rock of some sort of drug onto the amp. With the flat edge of his pocket knife he smashed the rock into a powder, and carefully scraped it bit by bit into the nose-spay bottle. "Bottoms up," he said, handing me the little sprayer. I hesitated, trying to put aside the horror building in me. I thought of William S. Burroughs and his book Junky… and I took the hit.
Now, snorting like rabid warthogs, we followed Colby out of the stale little room and down a stairwell at the end of which was a door labeled “manag r,” the letter “e” long gone. Colby banged on the door, sending the echo throughout the building, and I could see Ian scratching furiously at his wrist. I checked my watch—it was 3:40 in the morning. Colby knocked again, and I said, “Colby, you’re nuts. There’s no one here right now. It’s almost four in the morn...” but before I could finish the door swung inward with a zombie of a man holding onto it and peeking his gaunt head around to have a look at us. He wore a thin blue silk shirt that was so loose on him it looked as if someone had poured paint on a skeleton.
“Yo Frank,” said Colby. The man blinked and looked at him, his eyes reeling as though he were looking through an invisible rolodex of faces. “Rec room, man, we need in,” Colby said. Without a word the zombie turned and shuffled back, letting us by.
The room was a lightning storm of florescent bulbs, the flickering casting sharp vibrating shadows across the faces of the three or four other zombies that had taken up refuge here. There was a small row of metal folding chairs along one wall, some stacks of boxes, and in the center of the room was a pool table with a huge triangle missing in the felt. Colby moved toward the pool table and starting gathering up the balls.
As he racked them up, my eyes took another pass around the room and there in the back, buried under the mother of all dust and grime I could see the top marquee of an arcade cab hidden behind a pile of boxes. "What game is that?" I asked.
Colby looked up at me and smiled, "Fuckin' eight ball," he said.
"No, that thing, does it work?" I asked, pointing toward the cab.
"Ah shit, never even saw that before," said Colby.
"Is it cool to check it out?" I asked.
"Gotta ask Frank on that one," said Colby. I turned and saw Frank slumped against the wall in one of the metal folding chairs.
"He says it's fine," I said.
With Ian's help I cleared away the boxes, most of them filled with various cables and such, and plugged in the machine. The monitor blinked to life, displaying the standard boot-up garbage that arcade games do. "Presented by Cave," boomed out of the speaker... "Doh-doh-doh-doh-doh...DODONPACHI!" it screamed. The burnout zombies sprinkling the room looked up at the machine startled. A sick grin crept across my face.
"What the hell game is that?" asked Ian.
"Freakin' Dodon," I said, my hands now shaking like mad. "I can't believe this is here."
The demo started in and Ian said, "Ah, it's just some old shooter. I hate these kind of games. All they do is take your quarter."
"Damn right," I said, my face now getting a little sore from smiling. I patted my pockets, and checked my coat but I only had a few pennies and a dime. "Got a quarter?" I asked Ian. He checked too, but had nothing. Suddenly I felt a tapping on my shoulder, turned and there was Frank standing right next to me, holding a quarter up between his bony thumb and forefinger. "All you," I said, stepping aside. He shook his head and held out the quarter. I took it and popped it in.
"What are you doing?" asked Colby, "We're playing pool."
"Play pool," I said. Colby looked to Ian.
"I'll play," said Ian.
"Fine. It's better with only two anyway. Three's just a pain in the ass to figure out," said Colby. I saw him fish for the nose-spray bottle, take another long snort and hand it to Ian who did the same.
"Hit me with that," I said, "I'm going to need it." Colby tossed me the bottle and I took a hit, the alcohol-mist searing through my nasal passages like Drano, making every little capillary scream. I held the bottle up for Frank, wanting not to be rude, and he shook his head. It was then that I noticed the blackening needle marks on his arms.
I tossed the bottle back to Colby, hit start and said, "Now let's see if I can get the chain."
"What?" asked Colby, slipping the bottle back into his jacket pocket.
My first ship went down in flames, tagged by the first bullet fired by the first helicopter on screen.
"Fucking forget it," I said to Colby.
"Still cool. Extra man at six million," mumbled Frank. I glanced at him as I made my way to the mid boss.
"Yeah. True." I said, "And maybe I'll have some luck and get to twenty million."
"Secret one on stage three," said Frank.
"Yeah, on the..." I began.
"Big ship," he said.
"Yeah," I said, smiling at his surprising knowledge.
The first boss went down, and I breathed a little, trying to calm myself as the game tallied the score. The controls were slick with the slime of a million junky hands and I wiped my hands on my pants to try and get a clean grip as stage 2 started in. I kept my chain going pretty good up to the big rows of flowers just before the giant mid-boss tank came out.
"Gotta get through here without a damn bomb," I said.
"You can still get the max bomb bonus if you use one and grab the bomb coming up," said Frank.
"Yeah sure," I said, "but then it's only times one. If I get that bomb with a full stock I'll get a times two bonus." Frank looked at me confused.
"Everyone you get on top of your stock adds another multiplier," I said. "If I get this one and the one on stage three I can usually keep a times three going up to the boss." Frank smiled and nodded as I took out the mid-boss and nabbed the bomb.
"Check it out," I said, pointing up to the multipler flashing 'X2'.
"Ah shit yeah," said Frank with what little enthusiasm his weak frame could muster.
As the game tallied stage 2's score, Colby came over.
"Hit time?" he asked.
"Uh..." I said, hesitating, worrying that it might kill my ability to keep the controls still. "Screw it," I said, taking the bottle and another hit. As stage 3 started in, the sounds of the game faded out, and I sniffed violently trying to calm the fire inside my head. All I could hear was a great "Shoosh - shoosh - shoosh -shoosh," seemingly pounding from within my eardrums.
I shook my head, trying to shake the sound away, and I heard Frank say, "Cauliflower-shooting bastard coming up," as a big ship firing splashes of blue balls came on screen. With luck I slid through the attack and was able to nab the bomb that came up soon afterward, thus getting the "X3" mulitiplier rolling. The score cracked six million and as the chime came in for the extra life, Frank started panting like an ape, with a weird raspy grunt.
"How we doing over there? Feelin' good?" Colby called from the pool table. I didn't say a word as I nabbed the extra life on the ship and headed into the boss battle. I had to blow two bombs to get through as my eyes were watering up so bad I didn't want to risk dying in the tougher patterns.
When at last he went down, I pulled off my glasses and wiped the water from my eyes and snorted hard. The inside of my nose seemed hollow and stripped of all moisture.
"Toss it," I called to Colby who threw me the spray-bottle. I took another long inhale on it, and the "shoosh-shoosh-shoosh" came back, building to a vibration that coursed out of my head and into my shoulders, seemingly pulling them up. I tossed the bottle back to Colby and bore down on the controls, trying to fight the energy that was trying to lift me up from the machine.
Through stage four a creeping slowness began to come over my vision. The game no longer screamed by, but rather came in little flashes, as though I were looking at it on a projector that was running at half speed. The patterns were rolled out like carpet, calmly unfolding before me, the path through them clear as lines on the highway. The "shoosh-shoosh" continued as I skated through the boss without using so much as a bomb.
As stage five started I could hear Frank saying something, but the "shoosh" was too loud to make out anything. At some point I became aware that I was keeping the combo going through the stage, the number climbing up over 350... and I could no longer feel the tip of my finger on the shot button. The boss came and I whizzed through it's first pattern and heard myself laugh a little as the big orange balls it fired next lazily rolled past my ship. I took out the little orbs firing pink triangles and finally decided to just bomb my way through the last barrage of pink death and blue balls it fires.
The score began to tally and in the reflection in the black part of the screen I could see a mass of bodies standing behind me. I turned and found that I was encircled by all the junkies with Colby and Ian peeking over their shoulders.
"Did 'ja beat it?" asked Colby.
"Not yet, one more stage left," I said, turning back to the machine just in time to see my ship get destroyed. As my new ship blinked to life I checked the score. I was at 28 million with three ships left. "I've got it," I mumbled to myself, but that realization broke my concentration and I went down again, full bomb stock and all.
"Fuck!" I yelled, as yet another ship came on for me.
"Chill the jets," I heard Frank say, "Mother bee's got sweat on her brow by now..." I smiled hugely at this and let my tension go as I passed the halfway point in the stage.
Suddenly I felt an arm working it's way under right side and up my chest. "Just delivering your prescription sir," said Colby with a terrible british accent, and before I could object he had the sprayer up my nose and gave it a big squeeze. I snorted, and coughed as most the liquid ran down into my mouth, and I tried to lick away the bitterness as I saw another ship go down.
"Colby! You fuck!" I said, trying to keep my wits about me so as to not lose yet another ship, but I knew I had it as the life bar for the final boss came on screen. By this point my nerves were destroyed and what focus I had been able to conjur earlier was long gone. I mashed on the bomb button and roasted the boss without hesitation. I stood, disapointed by my last-stage bumbling and turned to face my bedraggled crowd of spectators.
"Oh Yeeeah... *wheeze* ... yelled Frank. "You... *HACK*... freakin' destroyed... *wheeze*... it all!" he said, now doubled over and coughing from all the excitement. The rest of the zombies wandered back toward the walls and slid again into their crumpled hibernating positions on the folding chairs.
"Ready to roll?" asked Colby.
"Yeah," I said and we headed for the door. As we were about to leave Frank called across the room, "Next time we go for the clear!"
I could still hear him coughing as we came out the hallway and stepped back out into the cool night air.
*my thanks to anyone who read through all of that.
Killing bees in San Francisco (I promise it's about shmups)
Killing bees in San Francisco (I promise it's about shmups)
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MovingTarget
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Thunder Force
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MovingTarget
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Nice story. It's like an urban shmup-legend - finding an abandoned Dodonpachi and clearing the first loop while under the influence. 
No matter how good a game is, somebody will always hate it. No matter how bad a game is, somebody will always love it.
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