Excerpt: Journey to the Center of a Black Whole Son

Gary lived in Los Angeles through the 1980's. All of it. He survived, coming out of it looking like the bastard love child of a circle jerk involving Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Keith Richards, and a reconstituted velociraptor egg. Having moved there from a small town somewhere in Colorado, he had learned how to party like one of the Los Angeles elite and never stopped.

His eyeliner smeared and his fried and teased black hair flattened on one side, he stood outside his back door with his morning coffee in one hand and the other reaching for a second cigarette. One got the impression that Gary no longer even knew that he smoked. His hands and mouth just automatically went through the motions for him. Some program that seeded in his brain and sent roots down deep to that ancient part of the brain, the R-complex. The old reptilian brain did this for him as automatically as it sought out sunlight and food and mates.