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May 05, 2005 12:42

Chapter 1 of my new book, A Ho's Honeymoon

Candy awoke with a cigarette in her mouth, slumped over a table in a Vegas casino with a hangover the size of the Grand Canyon.
“What am I doing here?” she asked, the smell of gin on her breath.
“Oh yeah, I live here.”
Candy had been living in a room at The Golden Giblet Hotel and Casino for as long as she wanted to remember. She leaned up to look at the clock. It was three in the morning and the casino was alive as usual. No one had noticed that Candy had been passed out for the last four hours, the only thing they gave a damn about was the almighty dollar.
“I wish someone cared more about me then coin,” she thought as she lit another cigarette, took three shots of gin and fell to the floor.
“Why doesn’t someone love me?” she asked.
She was answered by the sound of slot machines.
“Hey Candy, what are you doing on the floor like that?” said someone. Too coherent to be a cough, too horrifying to be anything else, the voice sounded like it was blown from lungs made entirely of ashtrays through a throat bought from a thrift store.
She looked up.
‘What?” she asked, looking for the owner of the strange voice.
It was Leery, the Golden Giblet’s chief of security.
“I’m drunk Leery.”
“Candy, we need to get you back to your room.”
“But my show starts in an hour.”
“You need to sleep this off, I’ll tell Dirk some drunk costumer from the poker table beat you and the bruises you got made you look too ugly to go out on stage.”
“But that’s already happened six times today, do you think he’ll buy that?”
“Honey, that fat ass will buy anything.”
“Alright Leery,” Candy said with a sigh. “Carry me upstairs.”
Leery took Candy in his big muscular arms. They were hairy like a bear but meaty like a man.
“Leery,” said Candy. “Can I ask you something?”
“Go for it toots.”
“Do you think that a guy with arms like yours could ever love me?”
“Honey,” he said, putting her down for a moment so that he could look into her eyes. “Someone with arms like mine already does.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Mine. I mean me.”
“Yeah, but you love all the girls.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“I mean, could someone just love me? Only me?”
“Not in Vegas, honey,” said Leery. “No one gets love like that in Vegas.” And picking her back up he took her to her room.

After Leery left Candy couldn’t go to sleep. People always told her that she had a lot of crazy ideas in her head, but tonight they didn’t seem that crazy. Like her dreams of becoming the mayor’s girlfriend, or her plans to write her own epitaph. She was full of life, she just needed to let it out. Suddenly the phone rang.
“Hello?” she said.
“Its me.”
“Tony, where are you?”
“I’m in Reno and I need to get out quick. Some local Mexican payed me to kick his bitch. I took his money and agreed to meet him at a gas station the next morning to do the kicking, but a few hours later the beer cloud lifted and I got my head screwed back on straight and all, and I remembered my number one rule: I don’t kick bitches. Problem is I already spent his money on some playing cards and a pack of ass wax.”
“But you kicked me once, Tony. Remember, on our third honeymoon?”
“Candy,” Tony said seriously. “I’ll tell you what I’ve always told you, you ain’t no bitch.”
“But you said I was a bitch. In fact you said it right before you kicked me.”
“That was the cigs talking, Candy. That wasn’t me and you know it.”
“I always wanted you to quit.”
“I know you did.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Can you wire me five dollars? It would be for bus money and enough change to buy some extra ass wax. I might be on the road for awhile and that stuff goes fast when you want to maintain an ass like mine.”
“Tony I don’t know...”
“Come on Candy, if not for mine then for my ass’s sake. He shouldn’t have to suffer for what we put each other through.”
“You’re probably right Tony. But I don’t have enough money to wire you. I’ve been missing a lot of my shows lately because I keep getting drunk, so they cut my pay.”
“You’re still dancing? Candy I thought you were going to quit that, I hate to picture all those guys watching what I once had.”
“You’re too jealous, Tony.”
“Oh shit, the Mexican’s here. I gotta hide.”
Tony hung up.
Suddenly the door opened.
“You’re on in ten minutes,” said Lance, the show’s host.
“But didn’t Leery tell you that I couldn’t go on?”
“Yeah, but I said with all those dancers up there to look at it ain’t gonna matter if a few of them look a little manhandled. If no one wants to look at you they can look at the pair of legs next to you, you’ll just be there to fill up space. Besides, if someone notices they’ll probably just fantasize about being the one who manhandled you.”
“Alright.”

The bright lights always made Candy feel better. They made her feel like a star.
“I can’t see her ass!” yelled someone from the audience. He didn’t specify whose ass he couldn’t see. They never did.
“What the hell is this, some sort of damn crap?”
The audience was always rowdy, but tonight they seemed a little too rowdy.
“Candy, Nancy, Drancy, Cloud, Creme, Lucy, Coffee, your bit is on next so you better get all the fake lace you can find and stuff it you know where,” said Gent, the show’s director
They knew where. Especially Candy. She had been doing the Rainbow of Lace bit for as long as she had been doing anything in Vegas.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” boomed Lance’s voice across the crowd. “I have heard it said that gold is found at the end of a rainbow. But do you know what? I believe that there is something better to be found at the end of a rainbow, and that is love. And here in Vegas we make that happen.”
“Coffee, stuff some of that silk shit further down. Its all bunchy. You look like a fucking shovel. Drancy, why the- hello!”
Suddenly Candy was staring Gent right in the face.
“Hello, what’s this?”
“I think you need to know something,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“You better thank me tomorrow for this. I wasn’t supposed to go on.”
“All right all right, I’ll do something special for you.”
“And what I mean by love, ladies and gentlemen,” said Lance, “is of course the kind only the dames of the Golden Giblet know how to give. And since they are about to give it to you, please show them your appreciation and,” he paused for dramatic effect, “love.”
This was fallowed by twenty minutes of stripping and hooting.
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