Don't huff!

Damn, I just was downtown pickin' up these new pillows for my media center couch (the old ones were completely squashed and stank like a nightclub), and I saw these two "huffers." You know — two dudes who live kind of in a bad mis-planned alley behind a gas station, like one that backs up against a creek, and cops can never drive back there and scare them away. They sit back there all day spraying spray paint into paper bags and then huffing the fumes, and all their teeth are gone, and they have "crazy-look" eyes, with that smile like a Hanna-Barbera dog who has *just* been smashed on the head with a shovel. I don't know how these dudes get by, but they seem to operate in pairs, like a couple of old modems that are constantly shooting streams of either exclamation points or question marks at each other, and somehow they find a balance.

Well, you know me, curious old Ray. I am always fascinated by the real gone ones, the souls who looked in the gutter and said, "let's do this." Maybe you remember my old story about drinkin' with Punch Man. Anyhow, I picked up a half-rack of Molson from the gas station, and plonked on down with the Huffs. They ain't violent types, I didn't have to worry.

The main huffer, who I'll call Joël, pushed his hand playfully around the base of my shoe as I sat there sipping on my Molson and trying to offer him one. He was like a chimp, playfully exploring my personal space. It was as though he had shaved about five million years off his mental evolution. His support huffer, who I'll call Pfiggin, in kind of an elf-sense, watched us both for signs of change (for example, when I would offer Joël a Molson, Pfiggin would notice, and then he would look at me).

Joël never really got that he was supposed to take the Molson, which confused Pfiggin, who got upset and stayed silent. Joël got tired of my shoe after a few minutes and real rudely stood up, only he didn't really do it right, so he staggered to the left for about twenty feet. I wrote off the Molson and rolled. It was sad, man. Two guys long gone on solvents. Ain't no comin' back, ain't no helpin'. Man, this is like doubly depressin' after all that crap with Leo, to see actual *livin'* dead. What is goin' on here? Why am I so tormented? This crap is, like, German.