psychos i have known

interview with Dwayne Regis

by Felix F. Felix

1. Indian Reservation

Todd and I were deep into a month-long wilderness trip on the John Muir trail when a snow storm blew in and buried our tent in the night. We had to dig out of the snow and find the trail, and then hike back the way we’d come to get out of the mountains. On our way we met a ranger who told us a worse storm was coming, so we did a brutal fifteen-mile hike over Bishop Pass, snow to our chests at some points, and blundered down the other side to the road. Then we hitchhiked into Bishop, not knowing how we were going to get home.

Roger started cackling. "I couldn't believe it man! He just shot out the whole back of his head!"

At the Safeway in Bishop I bought a whole bag of bagels and four cubes of butter and sat down out front and ate them all in twenty minutes.

I was sitting there, with Todd still in Safeway, and this guy came up and started talking to me about how he loved to camp and stuff. His name was Roger and he was this tweaker meth head, one of those wiry types with greasy hair and a little goatee. Then this Indian lady came up to him and he introduced me to her. Her name was Kathy and she was his wife.

I was telling them, “Yeah, we’re going to find a place to stay the night. We wired for some money, and when it comes in we’ll take a bus out of town.”

Roger offered, “Why don’t you come to our place? We’ll cook you dinner and you can stay there if you want. You can take showers.”

I was saying I didn’t know how Todd was going to feel about that, because I could tell it was a bad situation brewing, when Todd showed up. Roger said to him immediately, “Oh you guys are comin’ over to our house for dinner and a shower!” And Todd looked at me with this face of total dread.

We got on this bus that took us out to the Indian reservation where they lived. Roger was a white guy, by the way, and he started telling us that he’d gotten beaten up a couple of times. He had a cast on his arm. I think it was Kathy’s brother had come in the night with a bat and just started whacking on him.

Their place was nasty. You could tell from the outside that it was gonna be friggin nasty. I was really enjoying myself because I was out of the woods and full-force into society. We walked in and there was a room full of rotten clothes piled to the ceiling with the worst dead body smell emanating from it. Roger proceeded to fling his cast across the dining table and shove Bud Ice, empty cans, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, everything onto the floor. “Take a seat, c’mon!”

Kathy said she had diabetes and had to eat right away. So she went into the kitchen and started preparing hot dogs. They brought in some Bud Ice for us. They had this little Chihuahua, and as it jumped up on my lap I looked over at the fireplace and saw that was obviously where the Chihuahua defecated. The whole fireplace was just brimming over with dog shit.

Roger started telling me again about how he got beat up and he pulled out this bat and was like “If they come back, I’m ready!” He was jumping up and down like a freak, swinging his arms all wild and crazy and Todd couldn’t take it. Todd said he was going back to town to get that money that had been wired, just made up an excuse, and took off.

“Hey man, want me to sharpen your knife?” Roger asked.

He sharpened my knife the best it was ever sharpened.

Kathy brought hot dogs to the table and we started eating. She said, “I used to have long hair but my other husband dragged me around with it so much I finally cut it off. He would just beat me so bad and then drag me around by my hair.”

It’s a huge symbol for a Native American to cut off her hair.

She was sweet. I have no idea what she was doing with that fucking freak Roger.

Roger asked, “Hey, do you think you could help us clean out the shed next door? Kathy’s uncle just shot himself in the head over there and we gotta move his stuff out.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Roger started cackling. “Yeah I went over there man his head was all over the place! I couldn’t believe it man! He just shot out the whole back of his head!”

When we walked in there were flies, and there was blood and brain magma all over the wall. I wanted to ignore it and get the business done. It was disgusting.

Afterwards I took a shower. When I got out of the shower I had trouble finding places to put my feet and hands where I wouldn’t get scum on them. I’m used to scum, but there were just layers of this black mildew scum.

When I came out of the bathroom Roger started talking about the kids. They had his sister’s kids, and the kids were coming home soon from school and he was really, really mad at them for not cleaning their room. As the dog took a shit in the fireplace. Roger and Kathy told me that the girl, who was eleven years old, had stolen a dildo out of Kathy’s drawer, and had been using it, and had taken it to school. Roger started really scaring me about what he was going to do to the kids when they got home.

When they did come home, these white little German kids, little red fat Swedish kids or something, he screamed at them for a good half hour. If I wasn’t there he would have beaten the crap out of them. Apparently their mom and dad were in jail.

It was insane. Finally Todd got back, and I gave Kathy a little money and Todd and I took off.

We went to a restaurant where I proceeded to eat a huge burrito with beans and rice and two beers, and then dessert. I thought I was going to have to go to the hospital because my stomach was bursting, we hadn’t eaten in so long.

Then we were waiting at the bus stop at midnight and this huge drunk Indian named George came over and started talking to us. “I fuck a lot of white women,” he said, and “White people pretty much suck.”

We were sort of not knowing what to do except laugh with him and have some fun with him. Roger, man, that dude was cracked. Todd didn’t quite ever forgive me for that one I think. I was totally into it. I was like yeah this is so cool! I was laughing the whole time just having a good old time! I was so glad to be out of the treachery of the wilderness.

2. Stench of the Devil

I was at the Santa Cruz bus stop and I was feeling really weird. I knew something weird was going to happen. I knew somebody was going to fuck with me, so I started swinging on these rafters dramatically to say with my body language get the fuck away from me.

I made too big of a scene obviously, because when I got down this little hairy bear in poofed-out Guatemalan pants, Teva sandals and a tank top, with a pony tail sticking out of his cap said, “Oh I saw what you were doing on the rafters over there. It was so entrancing, it was so engaging, I, I just I really, you, you’re incredible, I can just tell, you’re incredible!”

He dove to get the tarot cards out of my hands. I knew I was definitely dealing with a psycho.

Then he asked, “So what are you up to? What are you doing here?”

I told him I’d just gotten back from driving my truck around the country.

“Wow, that’s great. What are you doing now?”

I told him I didn’t know where I was going now. I was just sort of passing through.

He told me he was a drug runner and he was looking for a partner with a truck.

I could tell he was pretty weird so I said I had to meet some friends for dinner.

“Well, hey if you’re interested in this meet me tomorrow at noon at this café.”

I said okay and went walking.

Of course the next morning out of some necessity to have some stupid fucking experience in my life I went to the café. He hugged me first thing and there was this overpowering smell, this sickly sweet stench that immediately made me feel like I was dealing with the devil or something. He explained to me further about the drug run he was planning: go to Mexico, pick up the drugs, come back up through L.A. and San Francisco, and then up to Seattle to drop off the goods. Maybe even cross the Canadian border.

He said, “I really feel like you’re the partner I’ve been looking for. You’re the one! I just feel your energy, and I know you’re coming from the right place. We were born to be together, man, I love you!”

I invited him to come down to my truck in this underground parking lot and talk some more. Stupidity. We got in the truck and he immediately bent over and hugged me again. Really tight, just squeezing the shit out of me.

“I love you, Dwayne!” he said.

I wasn’t going to tell him I loved him back because I didn’t. And anyways his disgusting stench was overwhelming. I said, “Well that’s about it, you know, give me your number, I’ll call you.”

“Oh no, no, you have to come to my place and try my cream cheese and honey mix!”

“What?”

“Oh yeah, it’s this great cream cheese and honey mixture I make. You’ve got to try it, it’s so sweet, it’s so good!”

I said okay. We went to a grocery store to get his cream cheese and honey, and we were in the fruit section when he told me to duck. We ducked behind a counter of fruit and I asked, “Why are we ducking here?”

“My Iranian landlord is in the store! He’s after me and he wants to kill me!”

“Your Iranian landlord doesn’t know me so I’m gonna get up and walk around, okay?”

We met back at the counter and got his cream cheese and honey. Then we went back to his place and it smelled the same way he did, just fucking disgusting. He went to the kitchen to make his mixture and told me to make myself at home.

Looking around his place, I saw his deck of tarot cards. I picked them up, saying “Check out your tarot cards!”

He completely freaked. “Don’t touch my tarot cards! Your energy will get into them!” He dove across the bed to get the tarot cards out of my hands. I knew it was getting weird now and I was definitely dealing with a psycho.

He said, “Okay, okay, we need to relax. Why don’t you lay on the bed and I’ll give you a massage?”

I laid down on the bed and he started massaging and within thirty seconds he was all over my ass. Massaging my ass cheeks to perfection, just giving it a good college try on my ass cheeks, right? I sprang up and said, “I gotta go meet some friends!”

“Oh no no, you can’t! You haven’t tried my cream cheese and honey mix!”

I said okay. He got his cream cheese and honey mix, spread it on a piece of toast, and reached over and put it in my mouth. It tasted just like he smelled. It was so disgusting I wanted to puke. At that point he grabbed me and hugged me again. “I love you, Dwayne! I love you! This is so, this is so right!”

He was squeezing me so tight and he wouldn’t let go. I just smelled his sickly sweetness all over me, taking over my whole world, and I shoved him off and said, “Don’t ever fucking talk to me again.” He tried to grab me as I walked out the door but I kicked him. And that was that. Never saw him again.

3. Market Street

I used to walk downtown late at night and just look for something. I think I was looking for sex. Pretty stupid idea in itself, but I was never known for thinking out things before I did them. I’d try and meet people who were walking the street too.

This one night I met this guy, this black kid probably nineteen or twenty years old. We started talking and he was talking to me about girls, bitches as he called them. Different ways you could fuck girls and the ways he liked to fuck girls. Then he pulled out a porn mag, and was showing me different shots and how this bitch was fine and all that. But I could tell he was making it up as a front. He was actually gay, and he wanted to have sex with me. He was using women as a way to initiate the subject. Eventually he asked, “Do you want me to suck your cock?”

He kept mentioning that to me, like, would you be into fucking me up the ass, really hard?

“Yeah, sure.”

He said he knew this porno shop on south Mission where we could use the booths. As we walked over there he told me how when he was in grade school he went to summer camp, and a couple of white counselors took him into the woods and fucked him up the ass. And how he just really liked it, you know. He liked getting really rammed up the ass really hard and really tough. He kept mentioning that to me, like, would you be into that, would you be into fucking me up the ass, really hard?

I said I didn’t know if I was ready for that. Then I had to take a piss, so we went behind a Greyhound bus. I was taking a piss, and he went, “Let me just lick the piss off your dick.”

I said, okay man, whatever. He licked the piss off my cock, and I was like, I don’t know if I can do this! But I was up for anything, whatever. It was pretty fun.

We went into this porno shop where he knew the guy at the counter, and he got us a booth. As we walked back there all these guys stared at us with these hungry eyes, like ooh two young studs, black and white, going in there to get it on! It was pretty lecherous.

We went into this cum-splattered booth, and put on some gay porn. He sucked my cock, and then he spread baby oil between his thighs, so I fucked his thighs for a while. He closed his legs really tight, like he was a girl almost. I jacked him off and then we went out and walked more.

He told me more of his camp stories, and how he really wanted to get a hot tub and have me fuck him up the ass. That was his main goal. The little cock licking was fine but he was in for the big fucking bang.

I was like you know what man, I did my thing, I’m through, I’m not ready for all that. I went out on the street looking for girls, mostly, and I’d never even fucked a girl up the ass. It was weird enough being in that booth with him doing that shit.

He kept following me and I kept having to tell him why don’t you stop and turn around, go back the other way. He followed me for blocks. Finally I yelled at him to go home. When I turned around a block later he was still trailing me. He was going to see where I lived. I screamed at him from down the street to go away. Then I took a couple detours and he didn’t follow me after that.