The Benny Poda Years
2 - Pittsburgh
Kevin McGowin
If there was one thing I liked about Nassir, it was that he knew how to drink.
Not that he wasn't an otherwise remarkable fellow with much to recommend him, but every time I saw him he was drunk, so I wouldn't know, especially since I was drunk, too. And to drink with me in those years you'd have to be such a fucking dipsomaniac that when the booze ran out you'd just casually reach over for the mouthwash and keep going, which me and Nassir did on more than one occasion, actually. I loved the man dearly. If I was a fag I would have fucked him. Nassir was a fag, though. But that's okay. All Iranians are fags, and if you won't admit it you know that deep down, that's what the fuck you think, anyhow.
It was Pittsburgh and we'd sit on my futon drinking and watching the great Super Mario Lemieux rack up goals and assists from impossible angles. I came to love hockey. I saw it as a metaphor for God.
Another thing about Nassir was that he wasn't out to cop the pussy I was getting. I didn't get out much, so most of it was coming from the Date Line in Friday's paper, but don't knock it 'till you've tried it: I liked my women lonely, desperate, and horny, because I've never felt that opposites attract.
But the love of my life was Harriet, and she and I never even so much as held hands. At that time, at least. She'd come over from Allentown on weekends and argue with Nassir about which of them was going to get to fuck Mario Lemieux that night while I packed the pipe and thought to myself, what a wonderful world.
The way to get it is to act like you don't really want it, and then to stop wanting it altogether, and then it happens and you got what you wanted and big whoop. Better than Kierkegaard. Let's see Kierkegaard win a face-off against Mario while I'm intoxicated and watching in real time. Point taken.
Well, all things must pass, and Nassir was badly injured in an altercation in a truck stop bathroom by a man named Macon Tate, and we didn't see much of him after that. But I still saw Harriet and told her about all the pussy I was getting from the paper, and one night she drained a full bottle of Andre Blush and put her legs over mine and I started sucking her toes.