Too Much Tequila, Too Little Sunscreen

Ring—Ring—Ring
Someone answer that damn phone.

Ring—Ring—Ring
Where am I? Damn it’s dark in here.

Finally the phone quits ringing. I sit up. I’m in a bed, a strange bed. There must be a lamp around here somewhere. I fumble around on what must be a night stand, find the base of a lamp, and move my hand up to a switch and presto I have light but where am I?

Just as my eyes adjust to the sudden light I see that Chui and Brenda are in bed with me. My movement and the light wakes them and they both stretch and yawn. Brenda looks like she’s just lost a fight and Chui is grinning between yawns and looking even more disheveled than normal. Maybe it’s his yuppie clothes or quite possibly it was his evening with Brenda that …

“Señor Bob, it’s good to see you’re awake. You were out for a long time. That big black chick put your lights out for … let’s see … ah … six hours. What a punch.”

“Did Boner ever complete his scenes with her … oh, and where is Boner?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what Boner did with her but he did an hour with my Brenda and she can’t sit down today. In fact she thinks she may require surgery to make her sweet little butt work right again. I’ve been taking care of her.”

“Where are we?”

“At the same place we were yesterday; the place where they shoot the movies.”

“Go look for Boner. He’s probably asleep in one of the rooms that they were filming in.”

“Si Señor Bob. Can Brenda lay here with you? She can’t sit down and she can’t walk too good either.”

“Sure, just hurry.”

I look around. This bedroom doesn’t have lighting equipment or any of the photography junk that we saw in the other rooms. Maybe they have a bedroom just for resting and sleeping or if what Sindy was telling me is true, this might be Jose’s private casting room.

“What time is it?” I ask the mute Brenda.

“I fon’t heth ah wafch.”

It doesn’t sound like she can talk either. Boner must have done a job on this little ah … ah; I don’t really know what to call her/him. Isn’t tranny red-neck slang for an automobile transmission? Ladyboy probably is least derogatory …

“Ma aff es beathy sorg.”

Maybe she can write out her thoughts if I can find some paper. Then again I read somewhere that they speak 175 languages in the Philippines and most Filipinos speak English, Spanish, their native Tagalog and one of their 175 local languages. What if she can only write in …

“Señor Bob. Boner is not here. In fact no one is here but us.”

Ring—Ring

That damn phone again.

“Hello.”

“Good morning Bob, I trust you slept well. I had an ice pack put on you chin last night and I had our makeup girl put a little makeup on that black and blue spot before she left.”

“Where’s Boner?”

“He went home with Shakeina. She was so impressed with his performance last night that she wanted to take him home and show him off to the girls in the projects. He’s probably shacked up with half of Watts and Compton by now.”

“You let that black Amazon take him home after she threw that shit-fit and after she punched me out. What were you thinking?”

“Shakeina promised me that she’d take care of him personally and bring him back by four this afternoon. But that’s not why I called. I’ve got really good news for you. You’ve been invited to dinner and an evening of fun at the Playboy Mansion. Hef actually called me himself. He said the news about Boner has traveled like wild fire and he and his bevy of beauties all want to see Boner perform. You guys are so lucky; I’ve never been invited to anything at the mansion.”

“The Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills with it’s famous game room and grotto and all of those babes … let’s see … does Hef still hold court in his big round bed …”

“I don’t know but you guys are about to find out. Oh, a limo with pick you up at the studio at seven this evening. You might want to go shopping for some clothes to wear tonight.”

“Who did he invite specifically? Did he invite Chui and me … and what about Brenda?”

“He wasn’t specific at all. He wants Boner so bad that he’ll take as big an entourage as it takes to get Boner there. Now that I think about it I’m going to go with you guys. I discovered Boner and deserve some of the credit. Okay, I’ll swing by this afternoon with my wardrobe girl and we’ll find something for each of you to wear. Do you like the Dracula cape for Boner?”

“Yeah, the cape is the thing; in fact I was going to ask you for it. It beats the shit out of his Humpty Dumpty outfit. That reminds me do you have that information that you promised you’d have for me?”

“I written it all down and I’ve made an appointment for you for tomorrow. It’s all arranged and I owe you some money that I’ll bring by later today. Adios my friend.”

“Adios Jose.”

I turn to Chui and Brenda and tell them the news. Chui looks scared to death but Brenda starts jumping up and down shouting, “Poohtay, poohtay, poohtay.”

I can’t believe I’m actually going to the Playboy Mansion and as a guest of honor. Well not really, I’m an associate of the guest of honor, but what the hell. Do you think one of those beautiful centerfold babes might actually jump my old bones? Hef has got to be in his mid eighties and if those babes can stomach that old bird they ought to …

“Imf go expipem wice goen do da mafston.” She yells as she jumps up and down like a cheerleader.

Brenda is getting louder. She might not talk so good but there’s nothing wrong with her volume or her schoolgirl jumping ability.

Chui finds some TV dinners in the freezer and beer in the fridge. Brenda goes looking for any of Jose’s “good shit” that might have been left behind. I’m looking forward to a day off and resting up for our big night at the mansion. I start rehearsing my chat with Hef.

“Ahh Hef, I remember when that Unitarian minister preached to his flock that Playboy was a religious magazine. He argued that the magazine told its readers how to get into heaven and it told them what was important in life, delineated an ethics for them, told them how to relate to others, told them what to lavish their attention and energy upon, and gave them a model of a kind of person to be. It expressed a consistent world view, a system of …”

“Señor Bob. Do you want the chicken pot pie or the macaroni and cheese. I think Brenda will want this garlic chicken, it looks kinda Asian.”

We are living large.

Brenda returns with a smile and the distant look in her eyes that tells me she did indeed find some of Jose’s “good shit”.

She utters, “E caund de goof sheet,” picks up the garlic chicken, rummages through a drawer for chopsticks, stands in the corner and begins eating.

I can’t wait for Boner to return and listen in on a conversation between these two.

I lounge on the couch and flick through TV channels. I’d rather watch anything on TV than the scene before me; Brenda and Chui standing belly to belly cooing like two teenagers in heat. I try to ignore these two but daytime TV programming is so bad that I find these two unlikely lovebirds more interesting than As the World Turns or even worse yet, Judge Judy.

If I keep looking I’m bound to find that Jerry Springer’s guests include a Filipino ladyboy, a Mexican drug trafficker, a Swahili speaking porn star and their dirty-old-man chaperone. No such luck. He has an overweight, hillbilly love triangle trio who only want to yell, pull hair and throw chairs. I try hard to figure out the issues in their disagreement so that I might empathize with each side in this trailer-park saga, but whatever the issues, they’re beyond me. It seems that these two large, trashy looking women are fighting over this balding, beer-bellied red-neck. Or maybe these two women are fighting to just fight and the red-neck is their referee. Or then again maybe one of these women is Mrs. Red-neck and the other is the other woman. Oh yeah, that must be it. But you can’t tell from the yelling or the body language which …

“Señor Bob, either Boner’s here or we’re about to be invaded by a gang of very large black women.”

I spring to the window to see this old lavender Cadillac Sedan de Ville followed by six or seven other cars pulling into the driveway and clogging up the street. I see five passengers and a driver in the Caddy; they’re all black and probably all women. The Caddy screeches to a halt and Shakeina jumps out followed by five other women of all ages and sizes. The front lawn soon swarms with large black women. They all have this grin on their faces, the same grin I saw on Deputy Shut-the-fuck-up and Trixie’s faces only they don’t have that distant stare that those two had. Maybe it’s a time thing. One hour with Boner and you develop that stupid grin, after two hours comes the thousand-yard stare and death occurs somewhere around three to four hours. But as we’ve seen with Brenda injuries can occur at any time.

The ladies all crowd around the Caddy and lean in through the back doors. Its then that I see six of them have Boner stretched out what looks like a surf board. They lift him gently and begin their pallbearer-like march to the door followed by 40 or so large, grinning women. I race to the door and greet these beaming women anxious to see the subject of their joy. They’ve got Boner laid out like a corpse with his arms across his chest in that unnatural funeral home pose. It’s then that I see they’ve left Boner’s boner uncovered in all of its glory. He looks like a cross between a cadaver and a flag pole.

“What have you done to Boner?” I yell as I yank open the door.