Randy Bracken rarely slept. He had no friends, so hence no one to confide in. He did however have associates; had always been involved with this group or that religion or some cult or company. He would inevitably be called to question about his avoidance of sleep, even when he had the opportunity to rest, which he usually allowed circumstances to deny him by way of purposeful over commitment. He would describe his ever-active life, to that hypothetical person who had not yet cared to inquire, as a compulsion to tinker and experiment; usually in customizing vehicles or firearms.

The fact was Randy could not sleep because he had a hard time living with himself. Instead of sleep he often eased most of his waking hours with the help of his good friends Eagle [marijuana] and Falcon [hashish]. He did not use pills or coffee—and absolutely avoided energy drinks at all costs. He had just finished customizing a Navy .36 and two Colt .45s, as well as building three derringers and pepperbox from scratch; all in five furious 24-hour days of non-stop work. He was exhausted and had to sleep—or start killing those many deserving people—so he knocked back a half pint of Bacardi 151 and passed out in the back of his van on his workbench among iron filings and…

…Two of his most common repeating dreams played across the Technicolor screen of his dreaming mind. The first and most innocent were the stock scenes of his early teens, when he had lived with Dad and That Woman and spent much of his time trying to be a big brother to his little half-brother Jay.

He was walking down the street past the Kreskin’s house while Jay walked along the top of the fence. Randy always carried a stick and would try to hit Jay’s ankles to teach him a lesson about the dangers of walking along fences, and the little freak would just bounce along avoiding the air-cutting switch and continue prancing along the fence carelessly like Spiderman on the ledge of some skyscraper…

The scenes got darker: making five-year-old Jay fight a scrap-yard cat to the death with a sharpened popsicle stick; tossing the little monkey into the pond above Mister Mike’s farm to teach him how to swim; making him run through the local drug-dealer’s yard and kick his pit bulls; waking the brat up with a leaf-blower; making him run through the woods while he hunted him with his pellet rifle; etc… and the stupid little yard-ape still hugged him every night and told him he loved him before he went to bed.

He was so jealous of that kid. If he would have tried to articulate his jealousy towards his little half-brother to someone who actually cared he would not have been able to make up his mind. Was it because he—Randy—somehow looked more like Dad then Jay did but Jay had the mother that stayed? Or was it because the stupid little grunt was such an amazing natural when it came to those measures of manhood that mattered so much to Randy: fighting; running; hunting; and, well, that one thing that was to keep Randy childless and haunt his dreams for the next 18 years.

…Randy was 24 and Jay had just turned 14. The time-honored manhood rituals of deer and bear hunting had already been taken care of by Dad. But getting one’s little brother laid had traditionally been the task of older brothers for as long as Wheeling West Virginia had been on the map. Or at least that’s what Randy had been told by the men he worked construction with. He hopped into his worn out ’78 Pinto and picked Jay up at Dad’s trailer on his 14th birthday. As he drove off That Woman waved to them as if Randy were also her son. That had always burned him up.

Despite the years of torture and insults Jay was all smiles when he got in and buckled up, “Where we to Bro? You takin’ me ta ged some chow fer my birthday?”

“No you dumb fuck, I’m takin’ you to get some pussy.”

“Really Bro?”

“Really!”

“Look Bro, I don’ know, I been movin’ furnacher aroun’ Misses Benson’s house all week long. I’s tired”

“Don’t talk like a Mooke around me boy!”

“Yessir Bro, sorry.”

They drove all day down to Romney to where Mom ran a whorehouse. She had never let him go there but he knew where it was. She had also never let him meet any of the whores, so they would not know not to service him. This would be a great way to get back at Mom for being a whore and not marrying Dad—and for being half-Korean.

Randy remembered spending many long hours looking into the bathroom mirror all through his teens hoping not to see any sign of Asian ancestry. He even began to shave his head to hide his thick black hair at age ten. He claimed it was in imitation of Pa Bracken, who had always shaved his head, and to make Jay feel normal, since the little freak had a bald head from birth.

Randy looked over at Jay looking out the window for critters and noticed all of the body hair. “Damn boy, you’re only fourteen and you are already as hairy as a Goddamn Wop or some type of Godforsaken Greek motherfucker.”

Jay looked at him self-consciously, “Yeah, iz bad down at da gym. Da parents don’ wan dey boys sparin’ whit me ‘cause I’m a hair-bear so I got’s ta spar men—beatin’ dem big ole asses dough Bro.”

“Good, good, mean little motherfucker you are! We’ll take you to Baltimore one day and have you crackin’ coconuts instead of beatin’ up on these poor soft-headed hillbillies.”

“Iz dat a big city Bro; you go dere?”

“Well, Mom lives there in the winter—bitch don’t like the cold. So I’ve done my time in that den of squalor. Oh yeah, we’re just about there boy. Did you put your deodorant on?”

“Yessir Bro, en brushed ma teeth like ya said.”

“And one more thing you little meathead, try to speak English. Honestly, if I closed my eyes I wouldn’t be able to tell if you were a full-blooded Mooke or a backwoods hillbilly. Keep the sentences short and pronounce each of the letters, okay?”

“Yez Bro.”

They went into the bar and he handed over two coasters he had gotten from Ed the concrete finisher. The bartender nodded to the back of the dining area where some big fat bearded half-Chinese monster sat on a stool in front of a door with a sign that read: STAFF ONLY. The man gave them the evil-eye as he pushed open the door and let them pass.

They walked down the long dark hallway to the stairs and then ascended to the second story. At the top of this flight of stairs was a skinny White guy with a leg-strapped nine-millimeter. He took Randy’s I.D. and looked disapprovingly at Jay. So Randy spoke up, “Look boss, it’s his sixteenth birthday; a family tradition.”

The man gave them a nod and they stepped into the forbidden paradise that he had long fantasized about. A place where a woman would know what a man needs, not the backseat of a ’78 Pinto with bad shocks on the side of a dirt road with some prissy girl squealing in your ear.

They were greeted by a pretty White lady with red hair who took a hundred dollars for each of them and then motioned to an assortment of small Asian beauties sitting on couches lining the walls on either side of this long corridor-like room. Between each three-person loveseat was a beaded and curtained doorway. Small ledges protruded from the wall above each loveseat so that the girls and their patrons could set their drinks out of the way while they got to know each other.

The lady introduced herself, “Hello boys, I’m Connie. We’re not busy so take your sweet time making your choice.”

Randy had no desire to get to know any of these whores, so he went to the most experienced looking one and nodded for her to lead him to her room. She yawned and led him through the first curtained doorway. He turned and winked at Jay, who stood with his hands in his jean pockets gazing wide-eyed at the girls like he used to do in front of the doughnut case at Kreskin’s bakery in town.

The woman casually got undressed and did not say a word before she lay back against a big pile of cushions. She spread her legs to reveal an off-used and well-worn vagina. Randy had a small penis and a big ego and decided he was going to give this old hooker an oral sex experience that would set him apart from all of the fat hillbillies that normally flopped down on top of her.

After perhaps an hour, his tongue numb and jaw nearly locked, he looked up to see what kind of effect his work was having on this jaded woman, and, to his horror she was actually filing her finger nails! She looked down at him and said, “Just stand up next to my pillows here and I’ll take care of this, okay honey.”

H…U…M…I…L…I…A…T…I…O…N…!

After about another two minutes Randy was back out in the waiting room sitting next to the hookers as he put his shoes and socks back on. They had apparently all gotten to reading magazines, but had put them down as they listened to the moaning, thumping, slapping and screeching coming from the curtained doorway at the end of the long room. He noticed then that the short fat Korean girl was missing.

All of the Chinese, Filipino and Korean hookers looked at him accusingly and then began discussing the goings on in the chamber beyond in Korean, which was apparently their language of business, probably because Mom spoke it fluently.

After one final screech there was the sound of a small woman cursing in Korean and the rattle of beads down the hall. Within seconds Jay came walking out into the hall with his clothes in his arms and a huge lethal erection bouncing before him as the naked hooker slapped and pushed him from behind and yelled in English, “You get out! Get out you!”

Jay looked about embarrassed and then slinked down the hallway as the vicious hookers all began acting like snake charmers in a Thai freak show. As Jay passed each hooker she would glide down onto one knee and hiss at and slap his penis; from which hung the remnants of a shredded condom that had not been up to the task. By the time Jay got to him he was dancing on tiptoe like someone walking on hot coals. The boy then dressed in less than a minute and just jammed his shoes in his back pockets as the doorman looked inside.

When the doorman saw the fat agitated hooker crying he began to draw his gun but Jay was on him like a pit bull, biting halfway through two of the man’s fingers before shoving him down the stairs. The sound of the man falling end-over-end down thirty hardwood stairs was exhilarating, as it was seeing Jay—all 130 pound of him—jumping up and down on the mangled man’s head and slapping his unconscious face with his sneakers. Randy managed to pull Jay off the twitching body just ahead of the huge bouncer who was lumbering down the hall with a bat. They bolted through the rear exit and were tearing down the road in his rattling Pinto within seconds.

The most shocking part of the day was yet to come. As they rode out of town Randy could not help himself, “You are packing some heat there little Bro—must run in the family.”

“Why didn’t you have mercy on that whore and just spray it in her face?”

Jay seemed self-conscious. “She akshally aksed me ta do dat, which I thought was gross. But really Bro, iz juz dat I couldn’ cum. Misses Benson been workin’ me a lot lately. Her ole man been workin’ all kine a overtime.”

“Woah, woah, boy—are you trying to tell me that you’re nailing Mrs. Benson, that tall blonde big-boned broad across the way?”

“Well Bro, iz more like she nailin’ me. I thought it were juz gonna be movin’ furni—ture.”

“Okay boy, this is just between you and me. But Mister Benson will shoot you so be careful.”

“Yez Bro.”

“If he does shoot you, even though you deserve it, I will kill him. You will be avenged Little Bro.”

“Tanks Bro.”

He had never admitted his inadequacy to Jay so they had a real bonding experience on the way back. But after Mom called him and cussed him out and disowned him for this supposed ‘raid’ on her whorehouse and the crippling of her boyfriend, he had never again been able to have intercourse with a woman. He also never saw or heard from Mom again.

As usual he woke up in a cold sweat with a hangover mumbling to his self. Unless he wanted to get drunk again he wouldn’t get back to sleep. Thankfully, when he turned to look at his cell—his clock really, because no one ever called—he could see that it was 4:00 a.m. and he had gotten six whole hours of sleep.