In late 1996, When Victor and Sarah were kicked out of France for throwing illegal rave parties, they really had no choice but to move to Seattle. It was Sarah's hometown, an emerald city of rain, yummy food, and goofy times. The naughty kids bring nitrous oxide and GHB to the weekend parties and freak out while beautiful kids blow bubbles and groove on communal bowls of marijuana and precious ecstasy. Life is too short for anything else.

In Seattle they settled on Capital Hill, with latte carts and coffee shops around every corner. There are a lot of good things to be said about the hip part of the Emerald city. It may be the only place on Earth where people routinely spend a significant percentage of their daily wage on caffeine and reefer. Drugs are easy to score as any place on Earth. A grand hazelnut soy latte cost four bucks. An eighth of good British Colombia outdoor can cost $40.00. Taken together, they provide the Seattle buzz: speedy, spacey, and about as sexy as fucking on a Wookie on Endor.

Microbrew pubs abound as well, mostly for the come down from the daily coffee intake. The beer is not too pissy but not great either. A nice buzz always lived happily three or four pints away. 

Victor believed that nothing could beat Guiness in a fist fight or a taste test. Victor would go out and get loaded once a week and try to meet interesting people. He he found people uncontrollably nervous around him.

A good party is hard to find in Seattle. Most people just work and sleep. Seattle is no Utopia. The weather is always shit. And the housing is poor and expensive.   To Victor, Seattle was just a pit stop, not a destination. But compared to Evansville it was New York Fucking City.

Victor was unable to write the book that would save him from America, and possibly from the world. He could not write in Evansville. Nothing inspired him. Nothing inspired him but leaving. He could plan fuck all in Evansville except his suicide. He started reading voraciously (Homer, Freud, Bronte, Huncke, Plato, Pynchon, Miller, Neitzsche) and writing poetry about Sarah.

--- TIME PASSES ---

Victor hears the phone ring and picked it up.

- Hullo.

- What's up Victor?

- Gert-Jan!

- What's the deal with your reclusive behavior, man? Why didn’t you come visit me in Cassis for a few weeks? You know I would’ve spotted you a ticket through Madrid. We’re not banned from Spain, you know! I have a ton of tweek here I wanted to share with you!

- Why?

- Oh yeah, I remember, you're too good for that shit, right? Tired of it... don't touch it any more... 

- Any more? When did I ever? You on meth again? Why? Have you lost your head?

- Gunter sent it to me, the Kraut bastard. Alcohol is my main drug of preference right now, but I can't say no to the five day high, you know? Tweek sketches most motherfuckers out, but not me. It's like vitamins for me now. 

- Oh really, since when?

- Since I started doing it everyday, that’s when.

- So what's going on over there anyway?  

- Dead parents, wine, cheese, money, good conversation, the usual. But I've mostly just been stinking and thinking I guess.

- How's Donna? Did she pick your pockets clean?

- She's with me now in Amsterdam but she's gonna split and head to Vancouver to live with Sarah. Speaking of Sarah, what'd you do to her this time? She's all up in a row over something. Did you really call the police on her Vicky?

- I have no recollection. Absolutely none. No one will tell me. Oh Jesus. I am probably trying to repress it. I can't accept that this bad thing has happened to me, whatever it is. I am using my delusion to code my book. The Earth will feel no pain like it feels when they read my unholy diatribe.

- And how's it going so far, eh, your book?

-Smashing. I just finished my chapter on Richard Nixon's secret sexual fantasies. It seems he had a special perverse fantasy for stuffing pearls up his butt while being fellated by mad cows.

- Well don't we all... Donna is having sex again with this African princess girl we just met. Trust me, you would love to see this. They just shaved their beards off and now they look like little girls. That's so fucking rotique.  

Why don't you write fantasy instead of weird perverse shit that bugs people out? It's amazing how fleeting memories are. Vancouver can be so magical on a summer day...

- Yeah, I remember when life seemed interesting.

- You sound depressed. Like you've not been getting any. Have you been getting any?

- No, I'm not getting any. It’s been 7 months to the best of my memory, which admittedly is rather poor.

- Twenty-four year-old’s need to get it every day. Try to get yourself laid, please. Oh, and Tobias says hello. He wants us all to move to Paris together and make art films.

- As if that were possible.

- Write your stupid book already!  I’ll translate it and get it published. Paris will be at your feet. So what are you doing for cash nowadays, delivering pizzas?

- I need to go re-apply. The regional manager fired me. He said I always looked stoned. I replied that I always  was stoned. He said okay and was cool with it. But then he told me I had to take a piss test. So I quit. Bastard was looking for a reason to can me, so he investigated and found out I smoked reefer. I hate that shit. It happens all the time, every day in the shit country.

- Did you protest?

- I vehemently protested on behalf of my constitutional right to "pursue happiness", which failed miserably. Why is it that everybody takes the Constitution so seriously except when it pertains to the rights of people with no money?

- Constitutions are for freaks anyway, Vicky, when are you gonna learn that? 

- You know, Gert-Jan, It was like one of those things. Inevitable, like the dawn or the sunset or some shit like that. Apparently the regional manager is being transferred to Pizza Hut HQ and I can get my job back next week. I wish I could spike his urine sample with coke or heroin.

- Now why would the store manager hire you back if you were fired by a superior?

- Because he has a soul, that’s why. And I told him I would get him some Ecstasy. They don’t test for it and it’s more fun than acid.

- That’s what I don’t understand about Americans. You guys have everything and yet you do nothing with it. As if people really care what cunt is on that brings them their fucking pizza. It’s just a job, mate, hardly a career.

- Yeah, Gert-Jan, sure. What you don't know is that delivering for Pizza Hut is a cherished job in Indiana. It’s a slacker’s dream come true.

- Sounds like nothing much has changed in you life. It doesn't matter. I'm depressed and going insane as well, so I will get off my high horse. Oh my God I just made a pun in English! Get it? High horse? Anyway, I just called to tell you I was taking Donna to see the Chemical Brothers spin in Amsterdam to make you intensely jealous. Did it work? I tried to call you in Seattle but that’s when I found out about your little episode. You are alright, aren’t you? I was a little worried when I heard the story.

- Amsterdam? Chemical Brothers? Are you insane? I AM IN FUCKING INDIANA!!

- I only came here to chill out and say goodbye to the loyal fans before heading to my final destination in Alaska. I'm gonna stop in Chicago and drive down to say hello in case I never come back.

- Alaska? Why the fuck Alaska, Gert-Jan?

- They say they found Vurt, you know. They found him frozen solid in a block of ice in Prudhoe Bay. Him among other things…

- Vurt Vlassic? That’s impossible. He drowned in Seattle. Anyway, how do you know about Vurt? From Sarah?

- Yes and no. We met this guy, this Artist-looking guy with bad burns. He told us he knew you from the Seventh Heaven. He said you sold him some wicked 2-CB and he found a portal into another dimension. He was horrific, really. He looked like a chemical fire victim. He says you are going to die in a fire too... look, never mind. I will explain more when I come over there in two weeks. It's inexplicable from across an ocean like the Atlantic. 

- You are seriously telling me that you think Vurt Vlassic is in Alaska?

- They are trying to thaw him out, Victor.

- Thaw him out? Can they do that?

- I don’t know. I’m no doctor. I’m just and aging confused boy with turntables.

- Well bring me some decent hash, and a couple cans of Red Bull, okay buddy?

- Okay mate. See you in two weeks.

Victor hung up the phone, shook his head, and grabbed his bottle of Jim Beam which was still 3/4 full. He then mixed up a 32 oz. serving of his favorite brain-busting concoction, red creme soda and Jim Beam. Even America has its cultural treasures.  His last sober thought of consciousness was...

I must continue to code the book or I will be rendered irrelevant.