Hummingbird Read online

  this is a genuine rare bird book

  A Rare Bird Book | Rare Bird Books

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

  Los Angeles, CA 90013

  rarebirdbooks.com

  Copyright © 2017 by Jude Angelini

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:

  A Rare Bird Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department,

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

  Set in Minion

  epub isbn: 9781945572944

  Cover art by Sage Vaughn

  Illustrations by Ruby Roth

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Names: Angelini, Jude, author.

  Title: Hummingbird / by Jude Angelini.

  Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Genuine Rare Bird Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2017

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781945572593

  Subjects: LCSH Angelini, Jude. | Comedians—United States—Biography. | Disc jockeys—Biography. | American wit and humor. | BISAC BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Entertainment & Performing Arts

  Classification: LCC PN1992.4.A2 A75 2017 | DDC 791.45/028/0922—dc23

  For Thelma and Ev.

  For Roger and Laura.

  For the drive, for the thought, for the music, for the soul.

  Contents

  9 house calls

  17 quasimodo

  23 happy endings

  28 night moves

  34 brain games

  39 rocky

  44 the velveteen rabbit

  51 big shot

  55 the sedona

  59 the knockout

  68 last call

  72 monster

  83 rocky ii

  92 the odd couple

  103 heathen

  110 velveteen rabbit: the conclusion

  121 popeye

  127 fried

  132 customer service

  137 albatross

  141 job

  145 loops

  153 psalms

  159 chess

  162 blown

  168 come clean

  175 the mongol

  185 rocky iii

  189 abraham

  195 on some faraway beach

  201 tainted

  204 high hopes

  211 quitsville

  216 be your dog

  222 sadie hawkins

  228 last words

  235 st. jude

  239 thank you

  house calls

  I’m ’bout to take mushrooms ’cause the ketamine’s making me dumb. I thought for my new buzz I could just lay in bed, listen to music, and get gone. But when you do psychedelics you gotta make sure your shit’s tight—your room’s clean, your bills are paid.

  I thought I was good. I wasn’t.

  I’m in bed tripping, thinking about life.

  I’m pushin’ forty, living with my sister. It’s been four years since Julie’s been gone. I’m still single. I’m snorting a gram of K a day, popping pills, running through chicks, and the girl I see the most is a twenty-three-year-old hooker. Fifteen hundred a trick but she fucks me for free.

  I’m thinking to myself, You might wanna girl and a healthier life, but you are what you do. And I’m the fat guy shoveling cake in my mouth crying that I wanna be skinny.

  When I sober up, I flush the rest of my Vikes down the toilet and dump the K. I call up all my girls and end it. I’m changing; a new leaf. I even go get my own apartment.

  That lasts a year.

  I’m at the dining table with a hammer beating a bag of ketamine. I lost all my drug connects, now I’m stuck with some bullshit from Pakistan. It ain’t even flaky. It’s granulated, like salt. Hard to blow, thus the hammer.

  I pulverize it into a powder and snort it up. It’s bullshit. No visuals, just dizzy. It’s like I’m sniffing brain damage. I should probably do some more.

  The call girl texts me. I haven’t seen her in months. She’s coming over. I straighten up the place, put on some jazz.

  She shows up, her Benz dented and dirty. She’s about thirty pounds bigger than last time, hands shaking, sweating. We go inside. I pour her a drink; we’re sitting at the table.

  I’m concerned. “What’s up, girl? You okay?”

  She says, “I’m fine, it’s just hot in here.”

  I got all the windows open with the box fan blowing. I don’t say nothing. She’s looking into her drink, fanning herself with her hand.

  I ask, “You been doing dope or anything?”

  She says, “Nah. Not for a long time, but they still have me on methadone.”

  She started doing heroin when we stopped fucking—with her homegirl, full-blown with needles. She was on it for a few months, went to kick and they put her on methadone.

  I go to my room, I tell her to follow. I lie in my bed. She starts taking her clothes off.

  I say, “Leave ’em on and lie down, we’re not fucking.”

  She says, “It’s ’cause I got fat, huh?”

  I tell her, “That ain’t it, you still got ass. I’m just worried about you. You look sick.”

  We’re in bed. She’s clammy and trembling, crying in my arms. They got her on 100 mg of methadone a day. It’s been a year and they won’t wean her off. She can’t go nowhere. She’s tethered to the clinic. Every day she’s gotta come in for her dose or else she gets sick.

  She ain’t got no one to look out for her and the doc knows it, so she’s gutting her, hiding behind that degree.

  Her phone’s stopped ringing. She’s going broke. Nobody wants to fuck a fat call girl.

  I say to her, “Look man, you gotta pay rent and you ain’t got no other skills right now but fucking. You can’t afford to be on this shit no more. And you prolly was doing dope ’cause you’re miserable and shit, but you gotta get off this fucking methadone now. It’s killing you. Figure out why you’re sad later.”

  We come up with a plan: she’s kicking it tomorrow, by herself. I give her some Phenibut and kratom for the withdrawals. She’ll be alone in her apartment for the next month. She could use my help but this is as far as I go.

  She’s on her own. We all are.

  She leaves.

  That was heavy.

  I’m rooting for her but I don’t know if she’ll make it.

  I’ll text her tomorrow.

  I got shit to do tomorrow. I’m selling a leather midcentury armchair. I thought it was Danish ’cause I bought it off an old dude with a Nazi accent. It’s not. It’s just old. Nathan’s coming over with his truck at eight in the morning to help me move it.

  I should go to bed, but I can’t get that booty call out my mind. That shit shook me, seeing her like that. All I wanted was some ass and I ended up with an intervention. I tell myself I deserve some more drugs because of what I just went through.

  I open up the drawer next to my bed, pull out a plate with the Pakistani K on it, chop two monster lines, and snort ’em through my left nostril ’cause my right one’s blown out.

  I’m such a good friend.

  It’s coming on, the tingle and the vacant feeling. What the hell, let’s do a couple more.

  I do a couple more lines. I put on Supertramp—Crime of the Century. I’m at the end of the “School” song when I’m like, I may have done too much.

  This happens a lot. I do too much a lot.
My head goes underwater. I leave myself. Every time, I don’t know if I’m gonna come back.

  It feels like when I ODed on PCP. That wrecked me for months. I’m still not the same. I can’t remember numbers, names are harder now, I can’t organize my thoughts.

  In the drawer next to my bed under the plate of ketamine are instructions of what to do with my writings if I cook myself. I wrote it while I was on K a couple years ago. Andrea’s in charge.

  Next to the instructions, there’s a list of traits that I’m looking for in a woman. I wrote it after the breakup. It’s my girlfriend wish list. It’s coffee-stained and soaked in lube.

  The song ends. And for a moment in the quiet of my room, I’m floating—blank, in the silence of my head. It’s lonely there. The next song begins and I don’t feel that anymore.

  Alex texts me, “Yo.”

  He’s going through a midlife crisis. He’s pushing forty and fucking this twenty-one-year-old chola named Bunny.

  I was at his place earlier. They were having a nice, quiet night in. Bunny baked homemade pizza. I’m over there talking up 2C-E and how awesome it is to fuck on. I run home. I front him four pills. He took ’em tonight.

  He prolly wants to thank me. I text him back, “What’s up?”

  He hits, “Have you done this batch of shit? We’re fucked up and not in a good way.”

  “Really? What’s going on?”

  He texts, “Yeah, it’s pretty bad.”

  I get outta bed. “Hold up, I got something for you.”

  I throw on a T-shirt and some basketball shorts. I grab some Xanax off my dresser and the bottle of G. I find my keys and wallet. I call a car. He’s there in three minutes. I do one more bump of K and leave.

  I’m staggering down the hallway making a racket. I get to the car and stumble in; wallet, keys, and GHB come out of my pockets.

  The driver’s Armenian. The drive over’s all EDM and cologne. I’m there in five minutes. He’s revving the engine while I collect my shit from off his seat.

  I get it. He peels off.

  I’m inside. Bunny’s curled up on the couch, rocking back and forth. She’s in a T-shirt with her pussy out, but I’m a gentleman and don’t notice. Alex is in a chair facing the door, shirt off, tatted up with a sumo ponytail. Wild-eyed, we look at each other and start laughing.

  He says, “We’re fucked.”

  I tell him, “You look awesome.”

  I take in the situation. Alex is freaking out and Bunny is freaking out too, which is making Alex freak out even more so that gets Bunny extra freaked.

  I look around. It’s like everything you could do to have a bad trip, they’re doing. The place is a mess. The lighting’s harsh. He’s got no music on, just the drone of an industrial fan and an air conditioner. And it looks like they got Me, Myself & Irene on the TV with the sound down.

  I start lighting candles and I turn off the floor lamp. I turn off the TV. I put on some Massive Attack to chill them the fuck out.

  Bunny’s hungry. I get her food. Bunny’s cold. I get her a blanket.

  She’s in the Eames chair now. She says, “You like some weird shit. I’m just a little girl from the barrio. I’m not used to all this.”

  Alex is laying on the floor right where I was when I ODed on PCP. He says, “For real, I’ve done mushrooms, ten hits of acid, coke…ain’t nothing like this, my nigga. This some white devil shit.”

  I say, “Nah, man, this just one of them science drugs. Just eat you some Xanax and chill.”

  Bunny piles on, “This shit is crazy. I don’t know about you white motherfuckers. I’m used to doing regular drugs, like weed and meth.”

  I ignore it. “Have some water, you’ll be okay.”

  I sit with them for an hour playing caregiver and DJ. They’re both laid out, damn near naked, and I’m feeling like the third wheel. Maybe they should fuck. Fucking makes me feel better. I should go.

  I tell ’em, “I’ma get.”

  Bunny protests. I insist. “Y’all should prolly just smash.”

  Alex tells Bunny to hit up his coke dealer. I’m trying to talk him out of it; I don’t want his heart to stop. But he ain’t listening to me, and I’m the one who got him here in the first place.

  Alex says, “I got work in the morning. Will I be cool by then?”

  “What time you work?” I ask.

  “Around nine.”

  I look at my phone: it’s four thirty-five.

  He’s stretched out, panting, trembling. He’s bloated, looking like a dead animal on the side of the road. I’ve never seen nobody this fucked-up off of 2C-E.

  I lie to him, “You’ll be alright…”

  He says, “I hope so.”

  I say, “And, uh, don’t worry about paying for the pills. They’re on me.”

  quasimodo

  I’m at this bar called Satellite. It used to be Spaceland. It used to be cool. Used to be you could smoke there.

  Now every time I’m here I end up seeing some late-thirties, never-gonna-make-it musician on stage, wearing a mall-kiosk fedora playing some shitty number.

  I see my friend I’m s’posed to meet. It’s her get-together. She’s in town for the night. She’s got five people around her, playing on their phones. Nobody’s talking. I go speak. She says hi, tells me her friend’s s’posed to play next.

  Great.

  I get the feeling this is less about her catching up with friends and more about getting people to a show.

  It’s bullshit. It gives these bad-singing mother-

  fuckers false hope. Some dreams are meant to be crushed. If they saw nobody liked them, they might stop wasting their money on studio time.

  Now she’s talking to a gay couple. I try and make conversation with the sassy one in lavender. But I don’t think he understands me. He smiles politely then gives me his back.

  I’ve been boxed out. I pivot. I pull out my phone and start drinking G.

  I’m fucking around with this dating app. You look at pictures of chicks and like ’em or pass. And if both of y’all like each other you can holler.

  At first, I was real earnest with my approach. I read their “About Me” section, weighed out the pros and cons, tried to project how it was gonna work out in six months, then made my choice.

  It took an hour to like five girls. I’d go to bed feeling hopeful then wake up the next day and none of the chicks liked me back. And I’d head to work feeling rejected.

  Now I just like ’em all and only holler at the cute ones. I got about forty chicks in my queue. But I’ve been slowing down lately ’cause I keep fucking these girls off here with herpes and not knowing it.

  I’ve gotten away unscathed but there’ve been a lot of close calls. And I’m too old to be having that “I got something to tell you…” conversation with every new woman I’m ’bout to fuck.

  Fifteen minutes into the set and the guy onstage finally starts singing a song I like.

  I lean over to the purple gay dude. “Alright, this one jams.”

  He nods. “Yeah, it’s an Oasis cover.”

  My phone buzzes. It’s an alert from the dating app. This corny-looking white girl posing next to a dolphin hits me. We matched a week ago, but I haven’t hollered yet ’cause I usually don’t fuck with chicks posing with animals or on top of hills.

  This is our first message.

  I open it. It says, “Come over.”

  Late-night booty call from a young republican? I look up from the phone and mull it over. Jazz Hat’s hittin’ a guitar solo.

  I write back, “Okay.”

  She shoots me her address.

  I make a plan­—I’ma run over there, eat that shit, beat the pussy up for like a half hour, get a cab back, catch the end of the show, pretend like I saw the whole thing, and tell ’em his last song was my favorite.
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  I leave the club. I got a nice little body buzz going but the G’s got my head swimming. I’m dizzy. I may be too fucked up to bang. I sure would hate to hit some stranger’s house with a limp dick, looking up from her crotch, mouth full of pussy and apologies, blaming the drugs.

  I hit the 7-Eleven next door and pick up this fake-ass Viagra called Stallion or some shit. The dose is one pill. I pop two, then call a car and I’m on my way.

  He drops me off in front of some fifties apartment building in Silver Lake. I dial her number. She buzzes me in. The hall’s dreary. The carpet’s stained. I walk up a flight of steps and down another hall to find her door. I knock.

  I hear movement on the other side, she opens, she’s backlit.

  “Come on in,” she says.

  I step inside. My eyes adjust and I see her for the first time.

  It’s the girl from the pics, but she ain’t rosy-cheeked next to a dolphin. This chick’s rail thin, scabbed-up face, pissy skin. It’s like she’s been on a year-long meth bender. She looks like the Holocaust.

  She says, “I see you found it okay. Safe and sound.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  I breathe in. It smells like stale smoke and failure.

  I look around. It’s a studio apartment. The only furniture she has is a bed and lamp. The lamp’s not on. The overhead light is. It’s fluorescent and flickering. Fast-food wrappers and pizza boxes are everywhere. There’s a pile of clothes and mismatched shoes in the middle of the floor; next to that is a half-empty bottle of Coke with cigarette butts in it.

  I look over at the bed. There’s a piled-up pink comforter hanging off it, no sheets, and at the head of it, laying on the pillow, there’s a warm bottle of orange juice.

  She says, “You got here in no time.”

  I stop looking at the juice and glance back at her. It’s like I’m ’bout to fuck Gollum.

  “Yeah, I called a car…” I say.

  “Get comfy,” she says as she’s shutting the door and locking the dead bolt.

  I take another step in. I see on the other side of the room the closet door is cracked open. I wonder if her boyfriend’s in there waiting to slice me with a box cutter. This is bad, I’m either gonna get robbed or get AIDS from this one.