Cheap and easy.

No, I’m not describing my last few girlfriends.

No, this doesn’t describe me. (Although “reasonably priced and easy” is fair).

Cheap and easy certainly covers my blog lately, and I’m not even gonna apologize for it. In fact, how about a big “fuck you” instead?

I’m kidding of course. I’d never tell my readers to fuck off, even if I only have a dozen or so of them. But I just can’t write decent stuff all the time, so all the You Tube videos and Super Fun e-Mails and stuff like that, well…it’s just filler…you know?

Kinda like an old b-side.

I’d like to think my b-sides are at least worth a look. I also know my b-sides don’t stand up to the great ones — “Hound Dog”, “We Will Rock You”, “Revolution”, as well as some of Prince’s and The Smith’s immediately come to mind — but hey, they ain’t all that bad, right?

I’d like to think they’re almost as good as “We Will Rock You”…but certainly they’ll never be as good as anything the Beatles or Elvis ever pulled off.

I will tell you I took a whole week off from Porno Land, and during that time I went home (to Phoenix) and during my stay there I jumped on a plane and went to Dallas, where I hung out for a few days.

I used to live in Dallas a long time ago. I lived in a neighborhood called “Oak Lawn”, which was totally gay.

The neighborhood.

Not me.

Cause No Way Am I Gay.

Isn’t it funny how gay dudes have impeccable taste and can make their front yards sing like an Angel? I lived in a two story duplex above a gay couple who had two miniature greyhounds named Fendi and Fiat, and I loved having them as neighbors. My front yard was immaculate no matter what time of year, and often they’d have me down for dinner and drinks and not one time did they ever try to convert me.

How about that!

We became friendly enough to where they’d invite me out for drinks with all their gay pals, and all the gay men thought I was gay, too, and they’d sit around and talk about their lives, and I’d listen, mostly. I kinda felt like Undercover Hetero Spy on a secret mission to discover something about them: do they spit or swallow? Do they fight like we do? Is there a pitcher and a catcher? Do they split the bills 50/50, or is one of them The Bread Winner?

About the only thing I discovered is that most of them worked terribly long hours and never asked for overtime pay, cause if their workplace ever discovered they were gay, they might have a shot at keeping their jobs: Big Boss Man certainly wouldn’t fire a guy who clocked an average of 60 hours a week and never asked for a dime of overtime pay…even if he was a fucking faggot and sucked a bunch of dick, right?

While I was living about my gay pals I was dating a stripper named Serena. Serena was the very first sex worker I ever dated. Who knew then that someday all I’d ever date would be sex workers?

But that’s another blog.

Anyways, Serena danced at a place called “The Purple Orchid”, which was near S.M.U. and my gay neighborhood. I was working as a stock broker during this phase of my life, and I wasn’t a very good stock broker.

Not at all.

I think, looking back at it now, I wasn’t a very good stock broker cause I have a conscience, and in order to be great at that business you can’t give a fuck about anyone’s money except your own. All the time. I mean I’d sell 10,000 shares of some shitty OTC stock to some poor soul I cold called two weeks before, and then I’d have nightmares he was gonna lose all his money, which would have been my fault entirely.

Thankfully my best friend owned the firm. He threw me some accounts to service, and he’d give me some money when I was totally broke and couldn’t close a lead, and eventually he let me recruit new brokers for him — which paid a salary instead of commissions — and I taught them how to pass The Series 7 test, which is a super dumb, multi-choice exam our fine Government requires all brokers to pass…with a 70% or better.

No wonder we’re in the mess we’re in.

Anyways, all the brokers in my firm loved The Strip Joints in Dallas. Even the ones who were married. In fact, I think the married ones loved the strippers more than the single brokers. And isn’t it funny that most of the all stock brokers in Dallas loved strippers? Cause it seemed that stock brokers in general came swooping down into the strip joints after the market closed.

I can’t adequately describe the strip joint scene in Dallas except to say it’s totally different than any other city I’ve ever lived, which includes Phoenix, San Francisco, Chicago, and now, Los Angeles. I’ve traveled to other cities and frequented their strip joints, too, and again…nothing compares to Dallas.

(I’d like to briefly mention Tampa Bay’s own “Mons Venus” which was, hands down, the filthiest, nastiest, greatest place God ever invented in the whole wide Universe, and certainly worth a cross-country plane flight to visit).

(While I’m at it, how about The Champagne Room Gloryhole I’ve recently discovered in a strip joint in Southern California!?! The picture I took is Tricia Oaks, right in the middle of it, ready to do the nasty).

The strip joints in Dallas were more of an earned rite than a Lonely Hearts Club, which is really what all strip joints are…but damn, Dallas strip joints were fucking fun. After a hard day cold calling and closing leads we’d haul ass to Caligula’s (mostly) and drink and eat (yep…we’d eat, and the food was good) and we’d pay for each other’s lap dances and then we’d treat ourselves to some, too.

The first porn star I ever met I met at Caligula’s. It was Keisha, and I was so excited to meet a girl whose movies I’d pleasure myself to that I (gladly) paid $10 for a Polaroid of her in my lap, as well as buying a whole bunch of lap dances, too. I think it was a Saturday night, cause I distinctly remember having her sign the bill of my ball cap — “to Billy, I’d love to eat your cum!” — cause I would never have worn a ball cap during the week, cause all we ever wore during the week was our custom-made business suits and limited-edition ties and polished black Johnson & Murphy’s, and if you didn’t have a limited edition Mont Blanc pen in your front pocket then you really weren’t much of a broker.

If you bought your suit off the rack, you weren’t much of a broker, either.

If you didn’t buy limited-edition ties, you weren’t much of a broker, either.

My boss/pal bought me a Mont Blanc as a present; I could never bring myself to spend $300 on a pen. Besides, I’d much rather give a stripper $300 to dance an hour in my lap while enjoying a Shiner Bock. He also gave me a lot of his old suits, and since we were the same size, mine were kinda custom made, too.

I always hated the limited-edition ties they’d wear; I’d get The Beatles ties or the Jerry Garcia ones, even though I hate hippies very much, although I like listening to the Grateful Dead…but you would have never caught me at a Dead show, cause every single hippie ever to don tie-dye and sandals and dropped acid at a “show” sucks a whole bunch of Donkey Dick. I hate everything a Dead Show stands for, even though I’ll listen to “…from The Mars Hotel” or maybe “Greatest Hits” at my apartment.

Last week, as I drove through Dallas with a friend, all these memories dusted themselves off and ran through my brain in one fell swoop, and I never really mentioned any of them to her while we drove around.

Serena. My old place. And the porch I used to sit on while suffering through the very first anxiety attacks of my life.

Such fond memories!

I couldn’t fuck Serena hard enough, and that’s when I was at the height of my fucking skillz. My fucking skillz weren’t as strong as my Numchuck skillz, or my bow hunting skillz, or my computer hacking skillz…cause we all know girls only want boyfriends who have great skillz.

Which is to say I was never really a great fucker. But I’d try, and after blasting twice (or, on a good night, three times) Serena would always want more, and I just couldn’t deliver.

“Billy, are you gay?” she asked one night, very frustrated I wasn’t good for Round 4.

“No way!” I said. “Why?”

“Cause I wanna fuck again and you don’t!”

“Yea, well…you’ve drained my balls, Honey Bunny. I’m all done for right now.”

She looked at me and didn’t say anything for a second or two, and then she asked, “Honestly, Billy, I think you’re gay cause you hang out with those fags who live below you! Sure you aren’t!?”

I thought about it for a second, and then I said something like, “well, I like my neighbors cause they’re very well-read, they have great taste, they’re great conversationalists, and they decorate their house really well, and they can cook way better than me. And they always have expensive beer in the fridge.”

Serena just looked at me and laughed. We broke up soon after that, and I did run into her, almost ten years later, while I was living in San Francisco and trying to be a writer. We rode the cable cars and I showed her City Lights (we went in) and Adam & Eve’s (we didn’t go in) and China Town and North Beach and we ate and drank and caught up on our lives.

And we didn’t fuck.

And that’s the last time I ever saw her.