“A Slacker’s Guide to the Galaxy/Let Me Leave a Quick Note/a Sugar-Daddy Searches for Sugar”

I jotted, “…and also, don’t worry about what was in the shack — have that — you always did have a nose for things;” shack, meaning safe; safe, meaning what most people spend 35 years building as a fucking nest egg. Empty, meaning I always saw this day coming.

Her nose was clean, until she met me. Her, being Cherise; and me, I’m just some guy. I’m a lifestyle arranger, of sorts; so those who do know me, they know me for a reason; or, they know me because we share in the life that I direct. Cherise came from a line of partiers, Prohibition hustlers and Juke Joint runners; to the seventies club life, disco; into punk rock and then the shoulder-pads and teased hair eighties. She knew her way around a kitchen, and not just on Thanksgiving. She developed a bit of a habit; decades of breaking and breeding are how things change, but stay the same.

Cherise didn’t care about your money. If she could show you all of her teeth — which are still beautiful, as cocaine won’t kill them — and party with you; you may win a prize at the end. She had a reputation that anyone that travelled within these smaller towns, in a tucked away place, would know. Not a man who was just starting to win, and couldn’t afford to take a loss.