Happy Mutant Baby Pills by Jerry Stahl Page A

Shakespearean, maybe there was after-school special potential. Or at least a cocktail napkin, my favorite pre-Reddit content delivery engine.
    Harold must have been talking the whole time. But I tuned back in as we walked away from the enclave of protest and waded deeper into Skid Row. Now, he told us, he was part of the Bruckheimer team. JB maintained a phalanx of consultants, all, he sniffed, “suckling at the teat of show business.” At first his floral hard-guy style rang TV schizophrenic. But he made sense. “Ex-cops, ex-DEA agents, ex-coroner’s assistants, ex-you-name-its, these guys are all on the payroll. A writer has to write a kidnap-the-baby scene, you bring a guy in there who’s done baby kidnappings. Maybe you bring the baby. You have to understand movie and TV execs.” He went on, leading us from City Hall around the block, where he flagged over a squat Cholo, who looked right and left and plucked a few spit-sopping balloons out of his mouth. “Showbiz guys just want to be in a room with somebody who was once in a room with somebody real. Whole lot of law enforcement and military bag the government pay grade to come and be experts in Hollywood. Drink with the stars.”
    â€œWe don’t drink,” Nora announced. I’d only known her since Tulsa, and I could already tell when she didn’t like people by the sneer in her voice when she talked to them. And I heard that sneer when she talked to everybody. Including, half the time, me. We passed a soiled refrigerator box, caved in on one corner, with screams coming from it. No one seemed to care. Nora made as if to stop and I took her arm, not roughly, but not casually, either. Like I knew my way around. Like I was some kind of Skid Row pro.
    â€œOh, honey, are we protecting me from these dirty men?”
    I didn’t mind the insults from Nora. Like I say, I had feelings for her. Though not having had feelings for a while, I wasn’t sure, at first, what they were.

FIFTEEN
    The Usual Motel
    I should probably skip the part where we end up in a motel room for three days, shooting speedballs and watching MSNBC. Nora said she wanted to lick Lawrence O’Donnell’s forehead. To show him her respect. Harold explained his whole Chomsky “fuck jerky” thing as a way of keeping some levity in the proceedings. The trouble was, Occupy America didn’t have any Yippies.
    â€œSo,” I asked Harold, running bleach through the needle, rinsing it at the roachy motel sink, “you’re going to be the Jerry Rubin of your generation? You’re not even a ninety-nine percenter. Are you? You must have Bruckheimer money.”
    â€œI got a little Fuck You account. Nothing major. Only Bruckheimer has Bruckheimer money. Bruckheimer doesn’t ask about my politics, and I don’t tell him.”
    â€œThen basically you’re just being a dick out there. Fucking with other people who are struggling, willing to transcend trendy ironic hipsterism and be sincere.” Even gowed on smack I was disgusted. And junkies, let me tell you, aren’t disgusted by much. But Harold looked so hurt, I didn’t press it. A guy wants to put on a mask and be a douche bag to people trying to change the fucking world and stop corporations from screwing them, who am I to judge? Especially when he’s paying for the drugs.
    It’s not like I was lifting a finger to stop the foreclosure of human souls. Looking interested was part of the dynamic of free drugs. You learned all kinds of things you didn’t want to know that way. I once sat and listened to a legless Vietnam vet in a SF hotel sing new lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” for three hours, because he was giving me free speedballs. After the “Battle Hymn” he moved to “God Bless America,” which in his condition came out “Gommessamekka.” I had to listen, then sing along, then listen, then sing along some