Sunny throws open reads 3-D.
Perfect. Where else would Sunny live?
Suddenly Iâm all clammy and slabby and crappy, and the ache of my pain screams: âDonât walk in 3-D!â
Then I have a moment of clarity. Iâve got no money, no place to sleep, and I donât think I can stay awake all night.
I walk in 3-D.
A fluorescent-orange couch crouches in the middle of the room, creaking like a rusty whore when Sunny plops down on it. I lower myself into a giant once-green once-overstuffed chair. Itâs like sitting atop an anorexic greyhound. I wonder why Sunny doesnât put plumbing and a bed in Moby Dick and live in there.
Sunny asks me if I want anything, says heâs got some chicken wings in the icebox.
âIf you make me look at one more piece of chicken today, I will have no choice but to kill you.â Iâm tired enough to actually be my real self for a second, and Sunny laughs. I breathe again.
Then he gets up and walks out of the room, leaving me alone with my worst enemy: myself.
Suddenly the savages creep in from the closets, crawl out fromunder the rug, and sneak in from the bathroom whispering how Sunnyâs gonna tie me up and make me squeal like a pig. I see me naked, my dead head resting on a pillow of my own blood.
  Â
A few weeks before Iâm due to fly to Hollywood to attend Immaculate Heart College and live with my brother, my sisters, my mother, and her new lover, I call my mother to make arrangements for pickup.
She sounds off balance. Tells me sheâs decided to stay up in Oregon because itâs so nice there. And since Iâm already enrolled in college, and tuition is paid, I should just go to college in Hollywood.
The beige phone is cold and hard in my hand as my heart sinks through the rug thatâs being pulled out from under me.
Good luck and Godspeed.
  Â
Sunny emerges in a long shiny teal satin boxing robe, and when he sinks into the loudly complaining orange couch, he looks like a twisted little Howard Johnsonâs.
He carries a two-foot hollow cylindrical plastic tube, three-quarters full of water, with tubes sticking out of it, and a small bowl from a pipe attached to the side. He pulls a Baggie from his imitation wood end table, removes some green leafy substance, stuffs it snugly into the pipe bowl, and lights it, while holding one finger over a hole in the back of the cylinder. He tokes it and stokes it, and when the cylinder fills thick with smoke, Sunny removes his finger from the hole, and sucks hard, the smoke shooting Old Faithful style into his mouth, disappears into him. Then he leans back and smacks his lips, like heâs savoring a fine wine, and holds his breath for a very very very very very very long time, then slowly lets the smoke roll out like tumbling dice, smiling contentedly as he passes me the smoking bazooka.
I take my suck, the smoke creeps into the cylinder, and when Iuncover the hole and pull in, it sledgehammers into me. It expands inside me, like someoneâs blowing up a balloon inside my lungs, and when I let it out Iâm totally relaxed and wildly invigorated: waterfalls, Popsicles, and plasticine porters with looking-glass ties floating right before my eyes, which go to half-mast as if the president has died inside my head. And with no effort at all a huge goofy grin blooms across my face.
âWhy donât you come over here, boy, Ah got somethinâ for yoâ ass â¦â drawls Sunny.
So here it is. I knew it was coming, and now itâs here. Heâs gonna try to do me.
âOkay, look â¦â I assume the chest-puffed fist-clenched bull-monkey position. âI appreciate the job and, you know ⦠everything, but ⦠if you try to ⦠you know ⦠Iâm gonna have to ⦠mess you up ⦠good â¦â
Iâm trying to get the tough to drown out the scared-shitless, but even as itâs coming out I know my attempt at