You see the heavy-set man dressed in worn black leather standing on the sidewalk next to a tiny door that has 301 stenciled on it. You know that you are in the right place. The party was advertised on pink and blue fliers in the hole-in-the-wall record store, Wizards. When you were selling back your Nirvana and Babes in Toyland CD's earlier today you saw that flier saying, "Good Intentions presents 'The Morgasms' 2-nite, November two, 199three, 301 High Street." The record store guy (the one with the blue hair, wallet chain, and braided goatee) told you that the band should be pretty good. "Good Intentions," a group of student artists and drop-out artists, got into a huge underground music scene about a year ago. They got to be known quite well for their inventive parties with condom distribution at the keg line. It was at a Good Intentions party, where two women where fighting over a French tickler, that you had met Mark.

The women were obviously drunk. Pulling out chunks of hair and spraying the floor with bloody body piercings they ripped from one another, they were just getting out of control when Mark jumped in to peel them off one another. You stood at the wayside, wondering if this kind of thing always happened in this town. It had been you first night out. You accidentally-on-purpose bumped into Mark just to ask him what the cat fight could possibly be about. Mark shrugged his shoulders then looked at you with a sort of inner innocence. It was this softness in his eyes that held you. You had suspected that he was on the intoxicated kick that night. In the warm September evening, you both left the party to sit on the sidewalk and get some air. The sidewalk sparkled that night with broken glass and bottle caps as the two of you talked until the early morning, watching the cars whiz by. He looked to you so strange at first. Wearing two black plastic beaded necklaces, a ripped gray T-shirt, cut off black jeans, and black jungle boots, he looked almost feminine. The Mardi Gras beads suggested a femininity, then his angular bony legs and arms extended a harshness to the exterior. He asked you to go see the movie "Fantasia" at the student union and dubbed the movie "The Next Best Thing To Tripping."

Tonight, JC is the doorman. He is standing at the entrance holding a stack of cups under his arm, and a black magic marker and a bunch of stickers in his hands that say "Hello, my name is... ." He is inexplicably attractive to you for being an obviously obese man. You feel a wetness creep between your thighs, soaking through your black pantyhose. Something about his warm brown eyes that are swimming so small in his sea-of-flesh face makes him appealing to you. For an instant, you envision sex with him. How it would feel to be buried in immense folds of his flesh, perhaps almost suffocating. You quickly dispel the thought. You walk across the street and are closer to the doorman. You can now see his stubby fingers coated with sterling silver rings embedded with black onyx. He is wearing a leather jacket with gray and white feathers pinned to it and he turns slightly to the side and you see the word "Wolf" hand painted in acrylic on the back. You stand at the entrance to 301 High Street.

"Three dollars." Stony and cold, JC pretends not to be amused. He is doing his best to be a stern bouncer and not fall into your sugary sweet feminine flytrap. You remember, though, how he couldn't keep his eyes off of you at the open mic last Wednesday at Maxwell's. Maybe you could get in for free, you think.

"Three dollars, JC? How about two, it's all I got." You smile to him and slowly pull your arms back to widen the jacket opening and reveal your C-cup breasts squashed together in a tiny black zip up halter. Men like it when women bite their lips, you think to yourself. So you bite the right side of your dark red bottom lip, curl it up just a bit, you look up to JC and give him an innocent "I know you'd like to fuck me look."

"Fine, two dollars." His fat filled cheeks flow upward. He takes the two dollars, stuffs it into his jeans pocket, hands out the plastic cup, writes "GI" for Good Intentions on your right hand, and fills out the "Hello, my name is..." tag with "Doomed." You leave a wake of powdery perfume and hear his voice behind you say, "Watch your step."

The stairway up to the Good Intentions loft studio is steep, narrow, and littered with malt liquor bottles left behind by those who began drinking early. From the amount of trash on the steps it looks like a lot of people began drinking early. Grabbing the railing, you make your way up the slope of brown bottles, spit, and dry urine. The railing helps the sober up and the intoxicated down. A song of the opening acoustic act is echoing through the stairwell. The singer is wailing on and on about his ex-girlfriend. How he'll never forget her, how he'll never stop loving her, you mock his whiny vocals and wipe imaginary tears from your cheeks. The local music scene is all complaining and singing about their ex-girlfriends and they have gone so far as to make up a T-shirt that reads "My ex-girlfriend Sucks."

The top of the stairs pours out into a foyer area. You hear the acoustic guitar louder now and that awful whiny wail. A slight acrid smell stings your nose then you see it, the cloud hovering above you, the mixture of cigarette and pot smoke. You step out of the way of the door and notice through the cigarette and pot fog that the Good Intentions crew has tacked an array of lost-and-found clothing on the walls. Walking over to a pair of blue lacy underwear, you read a small caption under the underwear. It says, "The 29th Day of Laura." A closer inspection reveals an amoeba-like menstruation blood stain seeping through the crotch of the panties. Fucking sickos, fucking pricks, you say to yourself.

You see on the far wall are a pair of American flag bell bottoms with another matted title. A long legged girl in striped tights is sitting on a dumpster-recovered hair salon chair wearing a name tag that says "Venus Fly Pussy." She notices you in disgust staring at the blue underwear.

"Aren't you the girl who's dating Mark?" She is rubbing her fingers over a small marble one-hitter pipe. You suspect she is an ex of Mark's. Most of the women in this crowd are attracted to Mark, he's that kind of guy who is so fucking attractive and he is an artist to boot. He compensates for that creative side of yourself that you suffocate nightly as you burn your brain trying to design heat exchangers for your heat transfer class. Mark is the guy who knows everything that's going on in town. If two people are getting together to do laundry and drink a beer, he knows about it. You figure this chick has slept with Mark because you see it in her eyes. Plain as day, she is jealous of you.

"Yes, but I prefer to be known as something other than `Mark's girlfriend'," you snap at her. You find that smart remarks and an extensive vocabulary scare the shit out of these stoner chicks. This thrills you to no end. The local fuck-up freak scene all thinks of you as an intelligent girl and wonders how Mark could have snagged you. You walk away shaking your ass just a bit to piss her off and look for the line for beer.

The Good Intentions crew have one of the rooms of the apartment blocked off to hold the kegs. A table is set in front of the door. They are checking name tags, hand markings and are happily sloshing watered-down beer into the thin plastic cups that JC distributed at the door outside. The line to the beer booth doesn't seem too long, so you take your place at the end.

As you reach for your cigarettes in the inner pocket of your plaid jacket, you see her. She is an older woman in her mid-thirties, hard-looking with long brown hair, straight and pulled back tight, so you can see her wide forehead and pointy cheekbones. She looks weathered, eroded. Her skin is like tanned leather with water spot stains. She reminds you of a ceramic bust your mother had of an American Indian with jet black hair tied back and dark reddish-brown skin that had trenches that lead from pore to pore. The Indian bust scared you as a child when mother told you that Indians were real, not just the fictitious squaws in the "One little, two little, three little Indians" song. Her name, you remember, is Mary Jane and she is wearing a black dress, long to the floor. Her pruney cleavage fans out of the low-cut neckline. Mary Jane is standing in front of you at the beer line. Your chest tightens and you feel your heart stretching the threads of your tight halter top. Pulling your plaid jacket together you hide your sprouting breasts and wipe crimson lipstick off your lips onto the back of your hand. Her hardness seems like a black hole sucking in the life around her that's getting too close. You feel yourself on the horizon line of Mary Jane's hole grip, ready to be ripped to fucking pieces by her infinitely strong gravitational attraction. Mary Jane and Mark are friends. You know they met two months ago. When Mark asked you to go to "Randy Fest" in the summer you declined. After hearing the stories about how fucked-up everyone got at "Randy Fest," how could you have gone? School and work are your main priorities and besides before you met Mark you hadn't ever tried pot before. And the time you did try it you got so screwed up in the head that everyone told you they liked you so much better sober and coming from people who loved to smoke pot and to share their pot, you guessed they really meant it. Besides, when you had tried smoking pot you couldn't tell whether or not you were actually speaking something or if you were only thinking it. You found it really hard to keep your mind clean of insults of people who were around, and finding that impossible you just decided not to smoke pot anymore rather than make a lot of enemies. But Mark had wanted to go to Randy Fest. It was at Randy Fest that Mark met Mary Jane and they spent the weekend together, sharing a tent at the infamous music and drug-o-rama in the mountains of West Virginia.

Mary Jane glances over her shoulder so calmly, so in control, and she looks back. Her black eye liner is smudged just under her right eye, how sexy she must think she looks.

She taps the back of a guy standing just in front of her. She points to you.

"Isn't she cute? Why don't you go up and kiss her?" She coaxes him, then takes a long drag off of her Camel filter.

He turns and looks at Mary Jane puzzled. "What?"

"If you don't do it, I will." Mary Jane exhales, blowing a stream of smoke into his eyes. He waves the smoke away from his face and tells her to fuck off. She must be joking, you think. But Mary Jane drops her cigarette to the floor, stomps it out, hands her plastic cup to the puzzled guy in line in front of her, and grabs you by the waist. You don't want to cause a scene so you don't say a word. What the hell is she doing? You can feel her hands squeezing tight through your plaid jacket. Mary Jane, the barmaid printmaker. Mary Jane, the woman who offered herself to your boyfriend, Mary Jane, who wants to fuck with you. She jerks you toward her and you come breast to breast.

"If I can't have Mark, maybe I can have you?" she says, craning to reach your ear. You notice a few people looking at you and Mary Jane. You wonder if anyone has mistaken you two for lovers. Your chest is in knots.

Mary Jane rears her head back and you see her tighten her lips. Her grip on your waist tightens. She hammers her mouth onto your lips. Your eyes are open, wildly straining to see if anyone sees Mary Jane kissing you so hard.

You feel your insides squirming like a fish in a net, flap, flap, flapping around. You feel her soften her lips a bit, enough to take her tongue and run it inside and over your mouth. This is not erotic, you try to convince yourself.

Mary_Jane lets you go. As quickly as she decided to force a kiss upon you, she turns her back around, pulls out a cigarette from her small carpet bag, lights it, and takes another long drag.

Pulling your jacket together, you forget about the fucking beer and quickly leave the beer line. Walking into the studio, you see the one side of the room is completely windowed overlooking an alley. White fluorescent street light beams into the smoky room as The Morgasms are setting up their equipment. You need to find Mark. What has he told Mary Jane? Did he tell her you know she offered her middle-aged shriveled body to him? Did he really decline her offer? Doubt creeps into your head. A couch is pushed up against the opposite wall and you see Mark with his skinny body wedged within old cushions with his dark brown curls hanging in his face. A tiny bit of his blue eyes peeks from beneath the mass of hair. The sight of him leaves you speechless and you watch as he tosses his head back, takes the last swig of beer from his cup, and pushes his curls behind his ears. He stares up at you with crescent stoned eyes.

"Dammit, Mark, you promised me you wouldn't get fucked up tonight!" You take his chin into your hand and look directly into his eyes. Fucking beautiful, you think. But his beer stenched breath reminds you of how you get phone calls at 4 AM.

Hello, you would say while picking sleepies out of your eyes to see what time the clock was saying. I need you to help me tonight, he would say stumbling upon syllables. Scraping frost and ice off the car. Driving across town. Breaking into his apartment with a Visa Card. Finding him on the floor of his room, the phone still in his hand, boots still on, body sweating alcohol. Undressing him and dragging him on to the bed. Setting the alarm for 9:30. The routine played over in your mind.

Mark looks up at you with sweet eyes, he pries himself from the couch, stands erect and hands you a Marlboro Medium. You take the cigarette and hold it between your lips. He snaps open his silver Zippo, grates his long thumb over the flint, and extends the flame toward you. You suck in hard, feel the smoke fill your lungs, exhale, and let the Marlboro buzz filter to your head.

"I'm sorry," Mark says trying to butter you up. He knows he's screwed things up, you think. He had promised. Broken promises.

It is his eyes that remind you of your father the most. Aqua blue eyes, your father had them, too, and the reddened pot tinge. Your father had offered you a joint when you were ten years old. You remember your father extending the roach clip toward you with its wooden beads and feathers blowing in a summer filtered breeze. You remember your father's friends laughing and thinking the gesture was so cute. Mark is the only guy you've dated that gets fucked up. Pot and broken promises walking hand-in-hand with the blue-eyed men in your life.

"No, you're not sorry," you say after all you've heard Mark say it a thousand times. Has it ever meant anything, you ask yourself.

"I'm not that bad, really. I only had five beers."

"And?" you ask. "And what else, Mark, five beers and what else?" You only wanted to hang out with him after the party, to make love, and have him able to remember it. To get early breakfast at the 24 hour Eat-n-Park, to talk to him in a sober conversation. You can't let his sweet eyes con you into forgiving him as you had many times before. You can't remember the last time Mark was sober with you.

"Do you know what Mary Jane just did? " you ask, beginning to feel resentment.

"No."

"She just kissed me, Mark. Why is she fucking with me like this?"

"I don't know."

He doesn't know. You find it hard to believe. How could things could ever work out with Mark? It doesn't feel like he's fighting for you, but has he ever? He has the look of your father, the internal struggle that you see wrestling in his eyes, your father who loved his drugs more than his family. You can't change him. Tears slide to the corners of your eyes. You can't even get him to stay sober for one night out of the week.

"I won't help you out tonight, you know, if you need me." You fight the feeling to be motherly again to feel weak. To forgive and to forget, you can't do it anymore. The fucking break-point has been reached. The catalyst has been spent and the reaction has stopped. You've been fucking your father. Fucking your father all this time, one whole year. Trying to win him back, through this idea of love conquering all.

He needs a fucked-up girl. Someone to drink with, to get high with, to have drunken sex.

You are not his mother to take care of him. You are his lover. You share a single bed together four nights of the week. You let him sleep with his crotch pressed up against your ass and his hand over your breast. You are the woman who helped him cut out a compartment in his book "The Road of Man" to stash condoms to hide from his roommate and visiting super-Catholic mother.

Letting go of his china-skinned chin you turn away.

The band is getting ready to begin their set. They are winding their amp knobs and poking around on their guitar strings with their picks. The manic drummer starts to ting, ting, ting on his cymbals. The crowd is gathering in the center of the room, spilling cigarette butts and beer, making a thin ashy soup on the hardwood floor. As the guitarist touches his first note, the crowd plows its way in the studio.

Elbows in leather begin to swing. The studio is packed. Bodies begin to pry in between you and Mark. His body becomes one with the crowd, lurching forward, reeling backward. Mark waves you to come up front. You don't have the strength to fight against the moshing tonight. What do you have to fight for? A romantic 3 AM designated driver cab service? You are pushed to the back against the wall and you don't care. You slide down the wall and sit in ashes and look at everyone's shoes. Through the many pairs of stomping feet, you see Mark's black jungle boots holding his bony hairy legs. A stray cup of beer is sitting beside you. You pick it up and toss the flat brew past your tonsils and listen to the grinding music. You stare at the empty plastic and decide to try out the beer line.

Between trips to refill your beer, you see her long black dress slip its way through the crowd. Your head begins to numb out the hard guitar feedback and drum rolls, spreading the sound out into one long monotone moan. The black dress weaves through the rumbling crowd with ease. You know where she is going, but you don't jump up to stop her. Mary Jane parts the writhing Red Fucking Sea and she walks the ashy cigarette sea bottom toward Mark. You sit on the floor, shackled to the wall, and let Mary Jane perform miracles.

The lights have lost their abrasiveness; the white fluorescent street lamp in the alleyway is out. You hear them talking about Mark's latest litho print. Printmaking. They are both printmakers. She says she has some work Mark should look at, color litho prints. This reminds you of visiting Mark on campus at the art building.

It was late at night and you were at the engineering building working on a chemical plant design. You knew Mark was working on his end of the semester art projects, so you decided to walk to the art building since it was only down the hill. He was taking an intaglio class and was getting ready to run the press. The art building was crawling with students rushing to finish their sketches, paintings, and installations. Mark taught you how to run the printmaking press that night and you helped him crank out 10 editions of his print "The Resting Place of the King." Your void was filled for a while after that night.

You catch a profile of Mary Jane, softened a bit, her hard edges are shaded out, like she is a charcoal drawing that has just been smudged to even out the harsh edges. She is smiling and her hair is down. A wisp falls soft on the bridge of her nose. She wipes the wisp away and she looks strangely beautiful. You cannot pull yourself away from looking at these two beautiful creatures. Looking into your cup, it's empty again.