12...

The buzzing sound that emanates from Frank’s sleeping head vibrates the air and sets up waves forcing life where we cannot see it. The sound is absorbed by more brazen sounds of traffic and shouting and sirens, and yet it lives just beneath them and floats on. That buzzing is swallowed by the walls, and yet like a virus takes hold within and barely turns those walls to it’s simple vibration.
The sound breezes through the living room and just past Bryan, practically asleep himself. As Bryan expels heavy and dank smoke pulled from a pipe through the barely open window, the buzz makes a break to mix and mingle with the noises outside.
High above the Victorian house in the Upper Haight, the sound of Frank’s head, now thin and practically expended, floats. About to give up the ghost, that ephemeral buzz picks up on another, deeper more insectile buzz. This sound rides currents not seen nor heard, sometimes only felt. This noise frightens a sleeping dog into a bout of barking and then immediately shuts him up.
This sound has ridden hidden waves through the city, past dark houses where sleepers moan, past narrow streets where the awake shiver suddenly. This sound began it’s searching, probing life from somewhere in the downtown bus terminal where it shuffled past the seemingly unflappable denizens and left them unknowingly shaking for lack of humanity.
If Frank could see the person strolling out from the heart of the bus station, he wouldn’t understand. If he were told who this person was, he wouldn’t believe it. You see, as far as Frank knows at this point, this person was somebody that he and Alexis had made up as a bit, as a joke.
It should be impossible for Uncle Eddie to be walking the streets of the city.

11...

Girls! Girls! Girls! For all of that seemingly hot, pink flesh, for those well manicured nails that lingered seductively over the G-string, for all of that super glossy pink lipstick on wet and parted lips, Wank was kind of a bust. After turning that first cover page and feeling unreasonably embarrassed at that pulp paper rattle, Frank saw lots of little black squares covering all the good parts. And it wasn’t the first time he had felt that they were the bane of his existence, little black squares covering all the good parts...
Frank needed his pornography a little dirty, a little raunchy. Just plain naked women wasn’t enough even without black squares, he needed insertion. Frank might feel weird about this if he spent a lot of time in adult bookstores and maxing out what was left of his credit limit on spank books. Frank didn’t look at a lot of pornography. Even though the movies definitely gave him wood, he spent way too much time judging the ridiculous dialogue and awful acting.
He flipped through a few more pages, glancing at ads for Spanish Fly and Anal Lube. There were actual newspaper type articles going on here, and they even starred out “bad” words, even ass. When they pointed out that the fake v*gina slipped right on over your p*nis, Frank nearly laughed out loud. These were the proper names of parts of our anatomy for fuck’s sake.
About three pages in, the rest of the magazine was taken up by ads... Good time girls and hot Asian sluts, big t*ts and tight p*ssy, and almost all of them in Southern California area codes. He wondered what was up with that. Before he could come up with a scenario, he was remembering sex in the back seat of a Honda Prelude in Orange County. Those memories melted into those of a beach party where he later got busted by his mother for drinking wine coolers. Frank was beginning to realize that he was falling asleep and he let it roll. The Wank issue drifted to the floor, and as Frank was falling his last wakeful thought was a glimmer of recognition.

10...

He was beat. Frank had been up for at least thirty-six hours and was starting to feel overheated, starting to feel like his wiring was sparking. There was this odd sort of whine in his ears and he really couldn’t remember what he had been doing up for so long.
“Jesus Christ,” he said to himself. “Go to sleep then!”
He needed sleep but the problem was he knew that he wouldn’t get to sleep for some time, he was too wound up.
He began emptying his pockets, slamming the items down on the bedroom desk, as if it were his wallet’s fault that he wouldn’t drop off to sleep without a little work, as if his keys had kept him up for a day and a half. He brushed the breast pocket of his shirt not expecting to find anything. He felt resistance and suddenly remembering, gingerly withdrew the business card of the Wank guy with two fingers. As he tossed it onto the desk he saw the name Tad Winslow flutter through the air.
Frank undressed quickly and threw himself onto his bed. As always when he knew he couldn’t sleep, his old roommate Rafael came to mind. Rafael had left him with advice that he had never forgotten.
“Whenever you cannot sleep,” Rafael had said with a slightly theatrical Latin accent. “You need to rub one out. And then, this is the important part, if you don’t fall asleep immediately, rub one out a couple minutes later. You’ll pass right out.”
How can you argue with the wisdom of Rafael?
Frank began to run through the back catalogue of masturbation fantasies he had in his head. Each one of them was so detailed with a back story that he had to go through the reasons why he was where he was, and how he was going to run into the people there. Frank needed immediate help.
He suddenly smiled a slightly mischievous smile.
“Ah yes,” he said. “The Wank issue.”

9...

Sitting quietly in his room, phone on his lap, head in his history, Frank realized that thinking about Alexis was giving him a bit of a chub. This was a girl who was not afraid to bring leather into the bedroom, a girl who had taught Frank not to be afraid of leather in a bedroom. He could remember with a twinge in his stomach how she had managed to remove any kind of fear from sex and had infused an absolute abandon into him, making him a daredevil gymnast who gladly fell off the edge, mangling his memories into flickering super 8 snippets and bleary photographs so that he was forced to ask himself if he had really done those things. She managed to make sex feel like the beginnings of a bad habit; dashing, dangerous and feeling so fucking good, something that you knew full well may just end up tearing you apart. Sometimes the barely remembered moments of incredible sexual liberty was enough to make you change your life.
Frank lit another cigarette and watched the clouds float towards the cracked ceiling. He thought about going out and telling Bryan about Alexis disappearing. He hadn’t known her, but had heard lascivious stories about her. Plus he was a sucker for what could be a mystery. Frank listened for signs that Bryan was still up. He could hear a Tones On Tail album seeping in from the other bedroom, a little dark and narcotic.
He realized that he wanted a little time to himself, a little time to sit in hazy memory. Something lurched in his head, a malignant thought that detached itself from the history flow and attempted to surface. Frank shivered in spite of himself and catching the reflection of his pale face in the bedroom window closed his eyes.

8...

“And how’s Mike?” She asked with a tone that betrayed her disdain.
“He’s fine,” Frank said with a sigh and a cloud of smoke. “What did you need Mary?”
“Nothing really. I ran into Lou Deeds the other day. Remember he was that really nice guy with the Dalmatian puppy who lived downstairs from me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And remember his girlfriend Alexis?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Lou said she just up and left one day. Got in her car and never came back.”
Frank closed his eyes and tilted forward a little bit. He was dizzy with what felt like new fluid coursing through channels in his head. He was left grasping for whatever emotion would come floating by first, and wouldn’t you know it, here comes that typical feeling of annoyance.
“What does that have to do with me?” Frank asked with what felt like calm.
“Nothing. Isn’t it weird though?”
“Yeah, it’s fucking freaky.” He said with staged emotion.
Mary went silent and Frank took a surreptitious hit off of his cigarette. He remembered a time that he had walked into Mary’s room and found her standing in the center, staring at nothing and crying as Automatic For The People by R.E.M. played in her CD player. He felt bad for losing his cool.
“Alexis never really seemed too stable to me. Is Lou doing okay?”
“Yeah,” Mary sort of mumbled. “I guess it happened about five months ago, so he’s all right.”
She seemed mollified enough, and continued talking for about another forty-five minutes. Stories of shopping for clothes and what her old sorority sisters are up to issued out of the telephone receiver and Frank threw in a “yup” or a “you betcha’” when it seemed like it was needed. He went through four cigarettes and pantomimed an entire conversation with his roommate Bryan. Frank finally told her that he had to get up early tomorrow and that he needed some sleep, and after promising that he would call soon he hung up the phone.
He did sort of wonder about Alexis. She was, as he had said, not necessarily stable, but he hoped that she was at least doing okay. Frank had tried to listen to signs in Mary’s voice to see if she might know something, but he didn’t think she knew even now that about a year and a half ago Frank and Alexis had had a sordid little affair.

7...

He could hear the phone ringing on the other end and his heart was beating faster than it should be. He looked around to make sure his cigarettes were nearby and almost panicked when he didn’t see them at first in the desk drawer.
“Hello?”
Frank was busy lighting his smoke and missed the window of opportunity in answering quick enough.
“Yo, hello? Is anybody fucking there?”
“Hey Teresa, is Mary there?”
He could hear the phone drop to the table on the other end. Teresa couldn’t stand Frank, which was fine with him actually. When Frank used to stay over, Teresa would play a Heart’s greatest hits CD very loudly while he and Mary were having sex. She also had a habit of not cleaning up the crap that her pet ferret left all over the apartment.
“Hello?”
Mary acted like she didn’t know who was on the phone even though she did. He couldn’t explain why, but this drove Frank crazy.
“Hey Mary, Bryan said you called.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re ignoring me,” she said with that fucking baby voice. “It’s been like two weeks since I’ve heard from you.”
“Sorry, I’ve been running around like crazy lately.”
“Where were you at when I called earlier?”
It’s none of your business, we’re not together anymore; doing everything that drives you crazy; smoking, drinking and touching loose women in inappropriate places. Any of these answers would have been great, but...
“I went to see a movie with Mike.”
“Oh,” she said like she’d just touched something thick and sticky. She hated Mike and it made her crazy that Frank didn’t hate him too.
He smiled as he tapped ash into an empty Coke can.