Read Black Hole for Free Online

they burn those poor fuckers out until they drop dead. They’re pumped with the same drugs you would give an athlete, but crazy horse-powered versions for enormous hearts and a few extra miles of circulatory systems. But this crowd is made of the last people who would give a fuck about having drugs in their meat. Hell, they probably pay extra for it.
    In his office, Mighty Mouse cuts lines of a pale green powder I don’t recognize on his desk.
    What is this? I ask.
    Doesn’t have a name yet. It’s good though. Painkiller. Takes out the soreness in the muscles without making you tired. Want a bump?
    Always , I say.
    I lean over and snort half a line in each nostril. Feels good right away. Counters a raw feeling I didn’t notice I had. I can’t handle the wear and tear like I used to. I’m a senior citizen in drug years.
    You like danceclubs? he asks, thumbing and fingering his nose to get all the crumbs.
    I like the drugs at danceclubs. If the drugs are good enough, I like the music, too.
    Mighty Mouse takes us to Pumps. It’s a gay club where the bodybuilders dance on platforms. I’ve never been here. Middle-aged men wait to get in, a few old geezers mixed in.
    We skip the line, a hulking mass pulls the rope aside, and we walk in. The bass beats rattle my molars. Most of the clientele is slender gay men with a thing for huge men. Some like the cut bodybuilders; some want the biggest man possible. Some want them smooth and oiled; others want the hairy, pro-wrestler-looking guys. Big-screen TVs on the walls are showing Conan the Barbarian . We follow through the crowd up a flight of stairs and through a door, down a hallway, and through another door.
    There’s a whole bar upstairs no one’s in but one bartender. There’s no music up here, but we can still feel the vibrations of the bass beats. Life-size pictures of bodybuilders of days past adorn the walls: Arnold, Ferrigno, Dave Draper, Sergio Olivia, Serge Nubret, and even Eugen Sandow.
    Mighty Mouse leads us to a table and motions for us to take a seat. He waves at the bartender. Three vodkas and a Tupperware container arrive. He opens the container and slides it toward us. It’s a powder, looks like Tang.
    Check it out, fellas, he says . Our new proprietary club drug. Made exclusively for use at Pump. We call it Pump, of course.
    Proprietary drugs are the hot thing right now at clubs. You custom-order your own drug to match the mood of the club you run, and a Dutch chemist designs it for you and sends the formula to a lab in China, and then you get it discreetly shippedto you labeled as something else, like laundry detergent or some shit. You get a pallet of drugs—literally a ton of drugs dropped off for you at the docks.
    Anyone can get the same music at clubs, but you can only get Freakout at Club Freakout, Boogiewoogie at Get Down, and Yeah Baby at Shagadelix. It’s great for the club experience because everyone’s on the same shit, and it’s pretty much impossible to police as it’s hard for a cop to prove that a new mysterious substance is actually an illicit drug unless he takes it and starts tripping balls.
    So if you design the most popular drug, you have the most popular club. There’s no better draw to a club, if you ask me. Drugs and clubs go hand in hand. People need somewhere to get high and people to get high with. They need the anonymity of the darkness and the music to keep them from having to talk to people. You can pump in whatever smell you want. You can change the lighting. People taste what you have in the club. So you’re controlling every aspect of the experience, and if you control the drugs, you control the way all of those aspects are perceived.
    Mighty Mouse spoons a small amount in the vodkas. You don’t have to twist my arm. My favorite drugs are free drugs.
    What’s in it? I ask. Not that I care, really, just curious.
    The usual dance-club mix: a little bit