Is That Yo Bitch?
Parties in warehouses can mean anything from glow stick-waving ravers to cranked-out bikers, and Lex hadn't stopped to ask either of his roommates what was on the menu for the night. Not that it matters. The party is always in his head, and the five lines of coke he did ten minutes before would make anything at least amusing.
The kid in dreads getting up close and personal with roomie number 1, Mike, was sort of surprising but unnoteworthy in the way most things were when they were buried under a fuzz of powder.
"Is there a problem?" Lex slips one hand between the two posturing bodies and shoves Mike back slightly.
"You got some balls, rollin' up in here like you got the right. This is a private party, cracker." Bass loud enough to rock his teeth in his gums rumbles to life on the other side of a sea of bodies. Dread-boy likes red; his entire ensemble proclaims this affinity.
"Step off. These are my boys, and they ain't never even bothered you." Over his left shoulder, roomie number 2, David, bobs his shadow He's menacing if unknown, due to size and imperious expression and even scarier if recognized, being the son of a Senator.
"I don't know you, neither. Why you even trying to speak like you somebody?" Lex lets David try, but he knows what this situation demands.
"How about we call it a favor?" Lex magically materializes three hundreds between the index and middle finger of his left hand. Dread-boy decides not to be offended.
"A'ight, but if you get your asses kicked, just remember I ain't really doin' ya no favors." But Lex isn't listening anymore. He never does once the money comes out.
The base compels at least nodding along. Lex and his companions melt and flow into the cavalcade of street-thuggery and attempts at being as bad-assed as possible. Their standard college-wear almost blending, somehow slightly off. Lex thinks if his labels were on the outside of his clothes, declaring himself one with the consumerism and striving at decadence, he might be accepted. That's the last real, almost coherent thought for a long, long time.
"Hit this bump," Mike's clutching at his elbow, shoving his hand at Lex's face. He doesn't ask what it is, doesn't care. Figures on badly cut coke, as it turns out, he was very wrong.
How he ended up in a corner chewing on a unopened Pixiestick, he wouldn't have been able to say. His scalp itches, he can't stop gnashing his teeth, and he thinks he's gonna kill Mike for forgetting how much he doesn't do crystal well.
"Whatcha want, punkass?" Things like that had been going on around him for a while now, and Lex fails to respond. He's watching a girl in two strips of cloth covering her nipples and pubis grinding up against some guy who keeps shoving her away and laughing.
"I said, whatcha want, you freak?" Lex turns towards the voice since he's not too far gone to miss the fingers snapping in his face.
"Why would I want something?" The black guy staring back at him is large, wearing Fubu and glaring. Pretty standard from what he can piece together from the rest of the night. The platinum chain is a nice touch, though.
"You some kinda basehead?" Suspended on the chain is a diamond bedecked, monstrously huge pendant in the shape of the letter D and the number twelve.
"I'm some kind of something." D12 didn't seem to like that response. He turned away and addressed someone behind him.
"This punk's outta his head. Musta just lost his Jungle fever bitch or somethin'." For some reason, even though he's not sure what sort of insult he's being libeled with, Lex's pissed on principle.
"Even out of my head, I have more brain cells than you and your whole posse rolled into one blinging pile." Lex is impressed he could say so many words at once. He really needs a Snapple.
"Yo, don't be getting' fierce with people you don't know, bitch." D12's pet whiteboy steps out of the shadows and glares.
"Are you supposed to be scary?" Lex shifts his feet further apart, dips his knees slightly. His jeans are loose, and his shirt is tight but part lycra, so he's got freedom of movement if not control over his faculties.
"I'm about to pop your fucking mouth, faggot." And that sentence makes Lex laugh. Tiny pieces of glass seem to be coursing threw his veins, bouncing off the sides of the capillaries and making him itch inside his skin. He hasn't had bruises on his face in months.
"If you think you can, then try. Ice Ice Baby." Lex dodges without seeing a punch fly. He hears voices blending together "Oh, uh uh.", "Slim, you on probation!", "Lex, you moron!" His fingers wrap in a overly-baggy sweatshirt and pull. He lands two body shots before he gets an uppercut to the chin.
When the voices of reason finally become the shoulders, arms, and fists of reason, parting the two blazing tempers, Lex's lip is split wide-open from a piece of bling that connected without him realizing it. The bleach-blond gangsta-wannabe is rapidly blinking an already swollen eye. Their pissing match might have gone on forever if Lex hadn't turned his ears back on.
"Holy shit! That's Lex Luthor and Eminem!" Lex's bluzz is blown, and Slim Shady looks less ready to compare cock size.
"LITTLE LUTHOR AND SLIM SHADY TOE TO TOE" There are no pictures, Lex figures the Inquisitor couldn't float the hundreds of dollars to buy their way into a party they didn't know contained two newsworthy targets with more testosterone than sense.
The maid had left the paper as a gift. As a warning. Maria didn't like Lex's lifestyle and often left cards with the lives of saints in the drawer with his condoms or replaced all the pills in a bottle with aspirin. The stories were worth the annoyance.
"So, what's this beef with you and Lex Luthor?" Carson Daily smiles his fake, chipmunk grin, and Marshall's glad he had the forty before taping started. Even if he does have to piss so badly he's visibly squirming.
"Ain't nothing between us. We don't even know each other." Eminem squints his eyes and tries to think of anything but peeing, and yellow, and the water main that burst on his street last week.
"That's not what's going around in Gotham. Word on the street is that you and Luthor got into a fight at a party last weekend." Carson again amps up the smile and rubs his left eye. Marshall's not an idiot. He's seen the shiner on his own mug for days.
"What if we did? What if I popped his faggot mouth? Whatcha you got to say about it?" He stands up, pumps his arms once in Carson's direction, rips off the mike and storms off the set to take a leak.
"Eminem called you a fag, man. That guy has it out for you." Mike flips the channels on the television as Lex saunters through the room. He was due to get the stitches out of his lip and couldn't find his keys.
"He has it out for everyone. And his music is derivative." Lex drops to his knees and roots under the couch for his keychain.
"You've even heard it? I thought you just liked that crap alt-rock shit." On his way out the door, Lex flips him off to the back of his head.
Lex pulls out of the tollbooth and flips his cd player off. He's late to meet Victoria, but he isn't concerned about that. She'd been tossing Mt Everest sized hints that he was her third line nowadays anyway.
"We're back on WGTM with Slim Shady himself. So what's the feud between you and Lex Luthor about, man? He's got quite the rep."
Lex glances down at the dial, then turns up the volume.
"Why don't y'all shut the *bleep* up about that?"
Laughing, he fishes his cell out his pocket to call Mike.
"He's a local celebrity. We like the Lifestyles of the Rich and Stupid in Gotham."
"He ain't even stupid, he's retarded or somethin'. His head's all wrong."
Lex hits speed dial on the phone, but voice mail clicks over immediately.
"You seen it close up, then?"
"What if I did kick his bitch ass? He begged for it. For a college boy, he ain't got no brains."
Lex was starting to not think this was simply amusing anymore. "Mike, your bestfriend's on the radio talking shit about me. You're missing it. Tell Heidi I said hi." He hits end on the phone but instead of putting it away, he just holds it in his hand.
"A'ight Slim, I hear ya. You got somethin' to say to Eminem? Give us a call at..."
"Not if it's Kim. Don't be callin' me at no radio stations no more, *bleep*"
"So if you're anyone but Mrs. Mathers, call us, baby. 212 555 KGTM."
Lex has it dialed before the bumper music begins.
"This is Lex Luthor."
"Don't play with me, dawg." Lex wonders if he's talking to some kid from Harvard doing an internship putting on the ghetto.
"I'm not playing with you. I want to talk to Mr. Mathers." Lex sometimes has trouble telling what convinces people to do what he demands. He knows it's in the voice, but not how.
"This is Benny Boy back with Eminem, and, you ain't gonna believe this one, Lex Luthor's on the phone."
"Oh hell no." Lex turns the radio off to cut off the echo when Eminem's annoyed voice barks in his ear and then through the speakers.
"Lex, you there?" Lex shifts off the Wayne Expressway and onto 3rd Ave.
"Yeah, I'm here. I just wanted to set something straight."
"You do that then."
"The poster boy for the White Trash Nation did not kick my ass. I don't think I have to add the part about not being retarded, but people can think what they want about that."
"You ain't nothing without your daddy, you spoiled *bleeeeeeeeeep*. A day's work would kill your scrawny ass. Don't get in my face."
"I already did, and you've been wearing tenderizer on your face ever since." Lex hears some muffled mumbling through the phone, when he turns the radio back up, some guy's singing about his pimpin' expertise.
"Who ended up with stitches, you faggot?" An increasingly high-pitched voice thunders at him.
"You seem obsessed with homosexuality. Did you want to share something with me?"
"Fuck you, you motherfucking bald cocksucker. I'm gonna slit your throat and ...." Lex disconnects the line and considers what it means to have such a loudmouthed enemy. It definitely means strategy is in order.
Lex lets David set the agenda for the evening. That's the only subtle part of his plan. The rest is pure, over-cooked been-there-done-that Kids' style bullshit. Sometimes the oldest trick is the best one.
First stop of the night: upper-eastside, a view, 'the' crowd, everyone toying with snorting heroin, and about as unimpressed with his crew as possible since Mike's last name (Astor) might be Social Register, but they're all Mayflower.
Lex downs three fingers of vodka and waits for David and Mike to make the rounds, for someone to approach him. He doesn't wait long.
"I saw your name in the paper." Glitter on eyelid and cheeks, bruised looking mouth that might actually be real.
"You too. The o.d." Lex doesn't believe in luck, but sometimes he understands why people do.
She rolls her eyes and pulls out a smoke. "What's the story on you and Bigmouth?"
"Nothing really. That got all blown up. He's not like that in private." He pushes off the wall and lets her wonder. Which she will. Out loud.
One a.m. finds David and Lex sans Mike in the Theatre District giving a password to some brick-faced doorman standing sentry over the VIP lounge. Very Important People. Whatever. The same crap as out front, just more money, better drugs, no one calls the cops when you fuck in public. But they like to know, to think they know, what's really happening in the world. The elite club of inside information. That suits him.
"If he gets crabs again, that's it, man." David gestures across his neck with his index finger. Lex has to concur with that sentiment, even though one of the benefits of his 'condition' is fewer applications of RidX when your roommate forgets to mention his VD before you use the same towel. Lex sort of doubts Mike's going to be conscious long enough to catch anything.
David veers off to harangue his ex whom he spots immediately upon walking in the room, and Lex wanders over to a wall and pulls his flask out of his pocket.
"They have a bar here, you know." Lex is almost surprised. Almost.
"If I wanted a drink, I would be at it, Grayson." He uncaps the stainless steel and taps the open mouth on the back of his hand.
"You know that's like fifteen years right there." Dick keeps on babbling about 'intent to distribute' and other boring topics while Lex does two more bumps.
"Do you want some of this, or do you want to drive me to suicide with your voice?" He holds out the flask and Dick snatches it with a glare.
"If I thought that would work, I would try it." Dick fixes himself up and passes the container back. They snort and swallow for a few seconds, and then Dick offers Lex a sip of his half-drunk beer.
"Back to your old, shitkicking way, huh, Luthor?" Dick waves his glass around jerkily.
"Old? Was there a rumor I'd joined a monastery?" Since this was about through, Lex scanned the crowd for David. He was still in mid-scuffle, so making a hasty retreat might be shortly in order.
"Nah, just hadn't seen you in the papers in a century. Thought you'd reformed." Dick turned to watch David and his girl as well.
"Reformed? Like you? It was just a lover's spat that got out of hand. Too public. I've got to get David out of here before he starts crying. Until next time, hopefully a long, long time from now." He doesn't blow it all by looking over his shoulder to see the look he's being thrown. Just cuts directly to David, snatches his arm and hauls him out the door.
Grayson on coke with a secret was one of those parts a plan that is so perfect you could never have forced it.
Three days. For the rumors to swell, for it to hit the papers, the discussion groups, radio talk shows. For Marshall Mathers to get his phone number.
"Dude, there is some maniac on the phone for you." Mike looms over his bed with the phone in his hand.
Lex's hangover might actually be Ebola, and he's not in the mood. "Take a message."
"Uh. No." And the phone lands with a smack on Lex's bare stomach.
"Dad?" He tries not to sound pathetic but fails with all the style he gives everything.
"No, but I'm about to sue him, you, your dog, your dead granny and Jesus, motherfucker." Lex manages not to laugh into the receiver.
"Who is this?" This time he has to press his palm against the mouthpiece to keep the snickers silent.
"Yeah, keep on laughin'. You're a dead man. You think I'm playin'?" Since he's busted, Lex just let's the peels roll out.
"Playin' what? Dress up?" His head's about to split open, but triumph is triumph.
"Fuck you!" And the line goes dead.
"If you would have asked me, I would have told you that was a bad plan." Mike's voice drifts towards him from the doorway. "Didn't he go to jail on some gun charge?"
Lex doesn't mention his own history with firearms at that point. But he's hardly scared of one more person in his life with an inflated sense of self-worth and no filter for his words.
Lionel's never been to Princeton to visit. That's a small blessing, because Lex can just imagine the condescending tone that would issue from his mouth if he ever had occasion to come into the basement.
What use is a chemistry degree if you can't cut out the middlemen and synthesize whatever craving might strike you yourself? Lex has pipettes, beakers, tubing, burners, enough supplies covered in various substances to get him so busted he'd have to surrender his passport to get bail. Not that it would matter. Money means not going through customs.
Sometimes he gets a little enthusiastic with the sampling of the newest batch of whatever he's working on. Like now. He already scared David into fleeing down the street when he started reciting Euripides, in greek, to a tune, while flicking glass marbles across the room. Mike hadn't been seen in days, not since the first batch of this same concoction went live.
Lex hadn't even known they had too much food before he'd pulled every single item out of the cabinets to line it up alphabetically on the floor.
"You should lock your door, bitch." Lex stared up from his position on the floor to find a very angry man waving a gun at him.
"We can replace anything that gets stolen." He decides to start the sorting over, but this time by size.
"I can buy my own Cracker Jacks. Get up, fucker." Standing is something of a production, since his knees seem to be locked, so it takes a couple tries. But the edge of the counter keeps him up the last time.
"What the fuck is wrong with you? You really are retarded, damn!" At this point, Lex decides to look instead of listen. The blond man keeps right on blabbing away, though. His eyes are narrowed, and behind the slits, Lex can see bright blue irises.
Baggy jeans, a sweatshirt with a hood, baseball cap, chrome pistol cutting trails through the air and punctuating points. Yes, this is what a criminal looks like on TV.
"Fucked up my career...think I'm a faggot...bitch...bitch..." Lex listens and then doesn't, listens then doesn't. He remembers this is part of some game.
"I'm sorry I didn't call you, but I don't even remember fucking you." Yes, that seems like the right sort of words to string together. He starts to laugh at his own wit.
Blond guy looks less pleased. But then he shuts his mouth and tucks the gun in his pants. He knocks over several boxes as he stomps over to Lex, which is extremely annoying until he's slapping Lex in the face over and over. That's far more pressing.
"You high? How much you take? All I need is your stupid, fucking, bald ass to die with me in the fucking room. That goddamned 911 call would get more air time than Nicole and OJ." Smack.
"Can you hear me, motherfucker?" Smack.
"Fuck this! Your eyes better not be rollin' up in that ugly head." Smack.
And it occurs to Lex that perhaps he should comment.
"Why are you hitting me?" Which gets him a reprieve. The criminal steps back, drops his hands and cocks his head to the side.
"Could you tell me what's goin' on here? Do you like to be smacked around like Pam Anderson?" He takes the cap off and rubs a hand against the crown of his head, tucks the hat in his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. "Was the talking a one time event?"
"Is this real?" Lex watches the smoke spiral up from the orange ember as the talkative burglar smokes.
"Whatcha on, anyway?" Holding the cigarette between clenched lips, he digs in his pocket and retrieves a pair of glasses. The squinting stops when he puts them on.
"Mike calls it Worsethan." Lex crosses to the fridge and pulls out a Pink Lemonade Snapple.
"I don't know who Mike is, and worse than what?" The maybe-not-a-robber reaches around him and snags a beer.
"Everything. It's supposed to be a joke, except it's not funny." They drink their beverages and stare at each other from about two feet apart, and Lex wonders if this guy will let him shoot something with that gun.
"Yeah. I got that already. You got anymore of this shit?" The cigarette flies from ink-stained fingertips in a beautiful arc into the sink.
But Lex doesn't remember any of this later. Marshall tells him that's what happened when he's finally semi-rational, and he can't figure out how he ended up in Detroit with bruises and hickies all over him.
Lex and Marshall's Lost Weekend
"Where the hell am I?" Lex's been wandering around a cookie-cutter mansion for about fifteen minutes. He's run into four thugs who just nodded and called him 'Lunatic Lex' with what might have been affection, tripped over a piece of carpet that was partially demolished, discovered his groin is pulled in a awkward moment on the stairs, and decided the Adidas pants couldn't possibly be his own.
So, here he stands in what appears to be some sort of studio, trying to piece together why Eminem is just laughing his ass off instead of threatening him. "You really need to relax, dawg. You look like you just got sentenced to twenty to life." He goes back to flipping through a notebook and tapping his pen against the mixing board.
"Did I get hit in the head when you kidnapped me? Was I in your trunk for some length of time?" Lex's inner thigh is killing him, and he collapses in a free chair next to his skeptical companion.
"How often you black out, punkass? Damn that must get old. Not that I remember everything, not that I want to." He leans forward and inspects Lex with a curious expression. "You remember callin' that wacked doctor with the nappy hair? For your lip."
Come to think of it, his lip was hurting again. A lot. Along with his entire body.
"If you didn't lock me in your trunk and beat me with the butt of a gun, why do I feel like it?" When he licked the lip he felt new stitches. Lovely.
"I can only tell you what I remember and wanna repeat. Which ain't a lot." Marshall, Lex remembers that, the name and the amused facial expression. And peppermint for some reason.
"A'ight, remember I busted up in your crib and you was doing some wacked out shit with all your groceries?" Lex notices that Marshall's pants match his, except the color; black for Lex, blue for Marshall.
"Vaguely. I remember you smoking in the lab. Or was that a dream?"
"Fuck no that wasn't a dream. I thought you were gonna jack my gun and blow me away." And he laughs again. Lex can get behind that sort of humor at narrowly maintained existence.
"Sounds about right." Because he could have done that, shot him and blamed it on the drugs, maybe shot himself too to save everyone the trouble.
Marshall's laughter cuts off abruptly, he tosses the notebook on the console and leans his elbows on his knees. "If I was anyone else but me, I'd be tellin' you to get some help. But, you know, fuck it. I came over there to kill you."
"That's why I was asking about the trunk thing before."
"I thought it was 'cause of my song." Marshall seems to move with some pain as well, his right arm stays close to his side.
"I hate to break it to you, but you're not my style. And before you say it, fuck you too." They both pause, and then smile in an oddly easy way.
"Like I was sayin' before your bitch ass interrupted me, we were in your lab, and you're one set up supplier..." Marshall began to recount what he remembered of the rest of their adventures, with willful omissions, and genuine blank spots.
The story Lex hears is very different from this:
Two tweaked-out whiteboys stumbling up the stairs from the basement. One slips in his frenzied yammering and wild gesticulation. The other steadies him with a hand to the ass.
"Fuck off."
"No, you fuck off."
"Why?"
"What?"
They continue on their merry way glued together at hip, shoulder, sometimes arms locked, sometimes fingers shoved into chests to make a point.
They wander New Jersey on foot, in the cold, bitching and comparing half-told life histories. Until one calls a car service. Then they have warmth and suddenly runny noses, and leathers seats and booze.
"I'm fucked up," says one.
"I can barely figure out how to talk," says the other while swaying forward. He sprawls on top of his new best friend out of a lack of motor control.
His lips seem to work all right, though. His tongue and teeth, too, and they bite at an adorned earlobe, lick along a close-cropped hairline.
"Horny," says the one underneath. Then the squirming begins. Snaps and buttons and material are quite the gauntlet when you don't remember your own name.
Four hands inside two pairs of pants, and frantic, sloppy kisses. Desperation over loss of sensation, numb tongues and cocks that refuse to give relief.
"I can't get off!" A usually sonorous voice turned cracked and sharp.
"No shit," the reply comes as fingers continue to squeeze and glide. Two sets of moaning gasps turn to angry groans.
"Airport!" Barks one seriously high man with no particular place to get to but orgasm.
The driver had heard the rumors, but he never thought he'd get a free show.
There's a scuffle in the airport bar. Fists and tumblers flying, peppermint schnapps in someone's hair and soaking someone else's shirt.
Then they are in a small jet. Music blares, rattles rivets, covers the sounds of two men making another go. This time with fewer clothes and mouth sucking instead of kissing. Hand simply assisting, not baring the brunt of the work.
"Metropolis!" The word flows out, over, through and the syllables are divided into a bizarre, stuttered scream of climax METttttrawwpolissssss.
They land sometime later. When more alcohol and other drugs have been distributed and shared.
"You have enough tattoos." Neon is unwelcome when even the dark spirals with color.
"Don't tell me what to do." Hands shove a reluctant participant into a disturbing chair. "Take off your pants."
Why he complies, he isn't sure at the time, and when he's President, sometimes he'll look at the two cursive S's on his hip bone and wish for things he can't really name.
Marshall picks the tale back up at a safe point."And you called that man a bitch. Not that he wasn't, but you can't go around callin' people out like that." Marshall sounds extremely impressed, though.
"So, this pimp guy punched me?"
"Nah, it was his woman. But don't worry, she's was fierce. No shame in bein' smacked down by a ho like that. I been there." Marshall's nursing a beer, and making sure Lex's doing the same.
"A girl opened my lip back up?" It's not the first time some chick's laid him out, but in public was maybe not so great.
"A ho. Girls don't let they asses hang out and shove they tits up in your face." Lex marks that down in his mental inventory.
"Do you know how I pulled my groin?" Lex runs his fingers tentatively over the area in question. Marshall's expression withdraws, and Lex knows immediately that he knows exactly what happened but would rather have bamboo stuck under his nails that tell.
"Nah. Prolly fell. We were pretty lit up." He swings around and picks up his notebook.
"Yeah, you're probably right." Lex really wishes he could selectively black out.