Ch. 16 : Internet Explorers on an Internet Safari

The sweet sixteenth chapter of“Please Use Rear Exit”

is sponsored by:

The patriotism of girls with guns.

“Please don’t take this as an insult,” Mikhail said, “but what’s your name again?” “My arm is inside yours, mister, should I take that as a compliment?” He looked the tattooed girl in her eyes, careful to leave all glances at her distracting cleavage out of his vision. If he was going to deliver soft kisses across the emblazoned letter on her neck, he’d have to keep his sight above board. “Whatever,” he said, continuing their march towards the bar, “you called me mister, so you don’t know my name either.” “Whatever?” “This interaction is as much mine as it yours. So yeah, whatever.” “Did Katya find this lip of yours charming?” And so this girl with the S on her neck knew his ex’s name before his own. His supposed wingmen were oh-for-two when it came to getting his back. First Katya slipped through their

CHAPTER SIXTEEN(( internet explorers on

an internet safari ))

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cracks, then they talked about her to the first potential piece of ass they so triumphantly tried to present him. Challenges be damned, he wasn’t going to let their failed

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efforts piss pessimism into his glass of half-full. He’d just have to fight through. “She never found anything I said clever, never mind charming,” Mikhail lied. “Can I guess your name?” “It’s not that uncommon, so you probably could,” she said coyly. Thankfully, there wasn’t a hint of annoyance—or knowledge of his conversation with Bridget—in her response. “That my name is not all that rare is your one and only hint.” “Sarafin?” “Are you even trying? How is Sarafin anywhere close to common?” “Samantha?” “Two more tries.” “It has to start with S, right? That’s why you have the tattoo, no?” She nodded.

“Sky?” As she muttered “One more try,” Mikhail made weaseling efforts to get closer to the bar. After she let go of their elbow lock, he tried to lead her by the hand while fighting tooth and nail to get them ahead in the age-old fight for position. Their physical connection might’ve lessened with all the jockeying, but her fingers still felt silky on his grasp, however tenuous. “Sirah.”

Please Use Rear Exit

“You’re so close, I might just give you another crack at it,” she said. “Just one letter off, and only a second, depending on how you spell Sirah.” “Before I do, do you care about the difference between Patron and reasonably priced tequila?” “Only because I don’t drink it, no, I don’t care. Just get me a Grey Goose and Cran with a splash of OJ, no lime.” If she was ordering Grey Goose, then she probably knew the difference between Patron and well-tequila. And because

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Mikhail was already leaning on the bar, the $60 he planned to spend immediately bumped up to $90. “Can I get three Patron-sodas, a High Life—bottle if you got it—and a Grey Goose-Cran with a splash of OJ, no lime. Oh yeah, and a double Jameson-rocks. Sorry. Thanks.” He turned back away from the bartender and put just as much thought into the tattooed girl’s name as he his wrinkled forehead of a gesture suggested. “Can I get a drum roll, please?” “Da-da-da-da-dum,” she said, lacking all enthusiasm. The flash in her teal eyes revealed it all. “It’s Sara(h).” “You are so lucky I gave you another chance,” Sara(h)

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said. And Mikhail saw that the coin flips were continuing to work out in his favor. Whether it was five or fifteen flights of a quarter hardly mattered, he just hoped that he was moving up the scale of probability, that he’d be getting tail or at least some head at some point in the night. Mikhail tried to meet each speed bump with a wheelie. He was so ready to wager the world on his ability to land each jump that he didn’t even

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notice the 6’10” motherfucker in red and black stripes on his immediate right. “But does the gorgeous young woman spell her name with an H?” the large man asked. The man’s intimidating frame was standing uncomfortably close. The hair on Mikhail’s neck curled and his stomach pitted. It was Robert Horry.

“Pay for your drinks, Mikhail,” Horry said. “If you can’t spell a Biblical name then Internet Jesus himself can’t help you.” “Who’s this? With an H or not, it doesn’t matter, Mikhail,” Sara(h) said. She was entirely uncomfortable with the situation and Mikhail put all of his thoughts into making her feel at home. Instead of figuring out what to do, he put all his powers into her. “Mikhail and I are good friends, don’t worry about us,” Horry said. He then slid the $20+ in change back to the bartender and told him to keep the change. It was 200% more than Mikhail would ever think about tipping, even at his most generous. But what was about to follow was far more egregious. “Here’s a tray, Sara(h). Why don’t you take this back to your table and let me and Mik catch up.”

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As she trailed off into the distance, the basketball humiliations and tragedies of Mikhail’s pubescence—almost all of them spearheaded by Robert Horry—were suddenly sucked of all their intimacy. Nothing hits as close as a cock done blocked. The times he cried because the Suns lost at the hands of the asshole in front of him seemed so minuscule, especially with the added perspective of Horry’s tightly wound fist, which was only slightly smaller than Mikhail’s torso. How did a six-foot-ten man sneak up on Mikhail like that? Horry came out of nowhere, knocking Mikhail back on his heels. He couldn’t even speak, he was so shocked and unsure of flight or fight. This was not how he imagined his encounter with “Big Shot Bob.” Mikhail had planned for the moment when their paths would cross since he was 15 years old. The plan got more complex and angry, especially after he discovered drinking, but it always revolved around the element of surprise. Mostly, it involved Mikhail sucker-punching Robert Horry, preferably with a running start, and continuing out the nearest exit. Horry wasn’t supposed to have both the tactical and physical advantage. Yet, Mikhail was face-to-chest with Horry, starring deep into a thick black stripe bookended by red stripes the same size, all on a polo that’d go past Mikhail’s knees if it rested on his suddenly slumping shoulders.

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Please Use Rear Exit “Hey Mik, you ever hear the story about the white boy from Compton’s Circle who wanted to be the first person on the sun?” Horry laughed. He then faked a punch down towards Mikhail’s direction, but stopped a few inches short of impact. “It’s rhetorical, I don’t give a fuck if you have...don’t even talk. Anyway, this young man who’d always dreamed of being the first person on the sun, he trained and trained, studied and studied...even as he never had a chance at entering a government program because he was that fucking stupid. Los Angeles has higher standards than this fuck-up. Regardless, he found some other faggot who believed in his dream, and in between the ass-fucking, they came up with a plan. Holding hands, singing songs from High School Musical 47, they were going to conquer The Internet’s mainframe, bypass all the binary code, and head straight towards a sun that hasn’t set on LA in hundreds, if not thousands of years. While readying their rocket, salvaging for parts in dumpsters outside

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one of the factories on the #4, they ran into some real deal Internet Explorers. These true heroes were tipped off by an anonymous tip that a couple of fudgepackers were stealing from the route’s trash. So one of the real fucking Explorers said, ‘What are you douchebags doing?’ “That boy from the Circle—his partner having gone blind, deaf and dumb from all that ass-fucking—spoke up, saying, ‘We’re just digging for scraps, a little project we’re working on.’ “The other Internet Explorer then asks, ‘Oh yeah, what’s that?’ “Quivering a little, the little boy Mik goes, ‘We’re building a rocket and we’re going to the

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sun, thank you very much.’ The real Internet Explorers don’t know whether to laugh or cry, and one of them says, ‘Even if you could build a rocket from the #4’s scraps and get past Gmail’s SPAM protection and then find your way to the sun, assuming it even exists, you queers would burn up the minute you got close, flamers or not.’ “And at this, that white boy from Compton’s Circle named Mikhail gets incredibly indignant, mortifiably pissed. He’s about to huff and puff and give his reasoning in the manliest way he can muster when all of a sudden, his fuck-buddy speaks for the first time in almost 20 years. Apparently, the anger in his faggot-ass lover cured him of his deaf, dumb and blindness. But he’s still got something of a stutter when he relays their plan: ‘No, no, no, no, n-n-n-n-no, no, you id-id-id-idiots, you’re the mo-mo-mo-mo-morons. We-we-we-we-we’re going a-a-a-a-a-at night.’”

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Horr y ’s joke was as long as it was horrifically homophobic, and Mikhail impatiently waited throughout for the punchline. Unnable to hide the look of dumbfoundment, he nodded until the half-lull that would present itself has his lone opportunity for surprise. Mikhail was just taking a few breaths till the right moment to strike. During that dreadful stor y, Mikhail sipped his double-Jameson rocks that he was so graciously allowed to keep and mapped out his exit plan. Against all odds, he’d wait for the punchline and then knock loose a few of Horr y ’s Will Smith-perfect teeth—then immediately run through Something’s doors and into the #720’s perennial clusterfuck. But when the punchline came, right when Horry finished his despicable impression of a stuttering man, Armstrong slammed Mikhail’s face on the bar and then pinned his arms behind his back. “Pastor Shakur wants to see you,” Armstrong said. “Before you go to the sun, faggot,” Horry gloated. The pillar of a bouncer looked over Horry’s shoulder. He was scowling shamefully, both at his security FAIL and probably Mikhail’s lack of fight. As disappointed as the

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TSABDD was with the pillar, he was just as disappointed in Mikhail. “Holy fuck, I’m smaller than you guys. Relax a bit. I obviously need to talk to management,” Mikhail said, beginning to walk back to the VIP section where he last saw Tupac. “You gotta be smarter than a rock to see a way past the rules.” That’s when Robert Horry socked Mikhail hard across the cheek with an open-palmed left hook. Horry’s fingers seemed to wrap around Mikhail’s head and bitchslap both ears. It took everything he had left to remain on his feet. “The Pastor is already upstairs. He’s past you peons, so get the fuck up, cream puff, and follow the Pillar before his dumb-ass gets fired.”

Please Use Rear Exit

Only one promise about Chapter 17, aka “From Boys to Dogs to men”...this guy isn’t in it. Unless you look at him and think, “Wow, that reminds me of Robert Horry.”