Tammy worked as managing "editrix" at Modern Motherfuckin' Magazine and was crazier than a bat in a bottle of amyl nitrate. I guess I knew that already when she asked me out to the MoMoFo Year-End Prom, but what the hell. I am a notorious loser and hadn't been anywhere with a woman since that picture-perfect divorce every gal dreams of as a boy. Besides, she paid for the tux.

Well, not a tux exactly. It was more of a formal thong with black satin suspenders and a top hat with little horns, Viking-style. You've probably seen one in a Rorschach test. She said I could keep the suspenders. Anyway, I picked her up around six and instantly remembered the off-the-beaten-track quality of her mind. I began to feel my body chemistry switch from low-level sexual anticipation to a discreetly suppressed mental defense panic. We got about four blocks from the club... The Nervous Tweezer... when she made me park in a red zone and covered the car with a kind of giant nylon diaper emblazoned with biohazard symbols that she had brought along for the occasion. From out of the darkened nowhere a rickshaw pulled up, "...with a real coolie!" she squealed, staring into my eyes quite a bit longer than I thought civil. Then she snapped her head around, whiplike, to bark out something she must have thought sounded like Cantonese, startling the guy in straw clothes pawing the ground with his feet like he couldn't wait to pee. Prom Night at the Not OK Corral had begun.

Of course, we were somewhat early yet, so she got bladder boy to jog us around the block eleven or twelve times. There were a number of other guests loitering stylishly in front of the club who recognized Tammy and greeted her with the same shouts and gestures every time around, like a Roman general returning from Gaul in triumph. The General, for her part, was beaming and waving at passersby the entire circuit, the frozen rictus of a Rose Parade mayor's daughter. Once per round she softly muttered something, a number, which at first I ignored until I realized she was counting down from one hundred. I don't usually punch a girl in the shoulder on the first date, but it just felt appropriate. Seemed like it was going to be either me or our coolie, who in fact took advantage of her surprise to run down an alley, never to be seen in this town again, as I understand it.

The bad news, of course, was that this made me the new coolie. I hadn't expected to see a riding crop this early in the evening, and why she had spared PeeWee the rod I do not know, but I had some pretty nice welts on my backside when I dragged the rickshaw to the front of the Tweezer, whose entrance was now abandoned but for a jaded doorman. It was hard to tell if Tammy was elated or furious, such is her mien, but she was excited, certainly. She hopped up the stairs singing, "Take care of the goddamned rickshaw, honey!" I picked up the riding crop and handed it to the doorman. "Take this up to Governor Crenshaw's room, he will tip you handsomely," I said. He handed me back the crop. "You will need this, later, lad," and pulled from the folds of his overcoat a small can of kerosene and some matches. I ran up the steps without looking back.

Inside there was a small crowd of weirdly elegant people milling about with drinks. "Oh, Muffin!" Tammy cried from her roost at the top of a grand stair above the foyer. Looking up I noticed discreetly that her underwear was clearly in view. This was not hard to see as she was performing a handstand and her short plaid schoolgirl skirt simply could not withstand the gravitational field of our planet. For a moment I was not sure if she was addressing me, personally or simply celebrating one of her finer attributes, but I decided to respond. "Yes, Sugar-beetle... I am here." Quite adroitly she swung out of that position and slid a foot or so on her stockinged knees in front of the crotch of an enormously broad man in nineteenth century coattails. "Come meet the boss!"

As I climbed the stair to join them one of the horns of my top hat caught a passing lady's boa and a brief tug-of-war ensued. The woman, mid-thirties and not at all bad-looking at six foot nine, pulled me close for a moment. "She's going to eat you alive, you know," she whispered. I stretched on my toes to find her ear. "I'm counting on it, ma'am." We parted amidst a peal of laughter from the next room and I reached the top of the stair in a slight sweat. Tammy, still kneeling, reached through the large man's legs and proffered her palm by way of introduction. "Boss, this is my 'du jour'. Baby," she pointed upward into his inseam. "...the boss."

"Nice to meet you." I said, offering my hand. He leaned further forward than I'd have thought a man of his heft could manage without trapeze cables, attempting to kiss my hand. I pulled it back at the last moment and he slowly rose to a relatively normal angle, maintaining something like dignity. He wore a monocle in one eye socket, which popped out when he smiled. Somehow the smile took up far too much of his face, permitting me to imagine for a moment that he was actually a robot, like those mechanical bears at Disneyland. At last he spoke:

"Weeping underground marmoset catastrophe."

"Sorry?" I replied.

"Pony armageddon a cashew virgin."

Tammy was suddenly upright and peering over the boss' shoulder, "He practically invented modern motherfuckin', honey," then mouthed the words you'd better kiss his ass, making an exaggerated puckering gesture with her lips. Afraid she meant it literally I looked about to buy a few seconds but when I turned back I could only see the tails of his coat disappearing behind a secret panel in the wall. Tammy was likewise missing. Suddenly everyone had gone missing. I found myself completely alone in a stone-silent club.

Don't get me wrong; I think of myself as a kind of amateur connoisseur of paranoia. but I was willing at that moment to believe that I had simply spaced out and missed some important social cue to gather the party in another part of the building. I went to each of a few closed doors but found them all locked. It occurred to me then that I ought to find the secret passage. I walked over to where I thought I had seen the portly mechanical lunatic disappear but I could find no seam in the wallpaper, only a tall and tarnished mirror in an antique frame.

I stood before it trying to regain my composure, taking stock. Viking tophat; check. Suspenders; check. Shiny black thong; check. Ass-welts and riding crop; check... yes, I was all there. For a moment I stared blankly at this image. 'The things we do for love,' I thought. Or sex. Or merely the possibility of sex, really, with insane persons. The original thrill of subservience to Mistress Tammy's odd terms suddenly faded and I turned to walk back down the stairs and out the door when a thought welled up out of my brain, fusing an already compromised will to a singular curiosity... of course! I could open the secret door by uttering the password.

"Weeping underground marmoset catastrophe pony armageddon a cashew virgin." I said confidently.

"I beg your pardon?" said a man's rich voice from behind me. As I jumped at the sound I caught a flash of him in the mirror, a tall man with a handlebar mustache in a full bobby's uniform, but entirely bright red. He held a baton in his left hand and gently patted his right palm with the end. I turned to face him, speechless.

"Are you Swedish?" he asked, eyeing the tophat.

"Ahh, no. It's just..." I paused and shrugged, not really knowing what it was, actually.

"Too bad. They have a very good mental healthcare system."

"No, you see, there was a party here just a moment ago and..."

"What was that you were just saying about a Jewish virgin, son?"

"A cashew virgin, actually." I was admiring the graceful arch of his eyebrow, wondering what kind of trouble I might be getting myself into. Being interrogated by a skeptical cop would be bad enough, but an interview with someone pretending quite ridiculously to be a skeptical cop might be downright dangerous. I decided to assert myself. "Look, what do you know about this party, anyway."