Les Paul

Les Paul was listening to Deep Purple's "Sail Away," in which Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale share vocals, when the following thought occurred to him: "Fuck, I'm so fucking sick." Les Paul, along with Inglot and a few other characters in my stories, was one of the truly rare people in the world who could put his thoughts into words. Having concluded this, Inglot turned off the tape recorder and went to the kitchen for a drink of tap water. He'd had a splurge the previous day—to be fair, he was right.

Les Paul claimed he wasn't an alcoholic, but he was wrong about that. Generally, anyone who claims they're not something usually is. Take, for example, racists who claim they're not racists—if they weren't, why would they even mention it? Or faggots—they usually insist they're straight. Along those lines, if, for example, you ask a friend or even a complete stranger if she's a nymphomaniac and she replies she's not, you can easily try grabbing her breasts. I realize this is the reasoning of a five-year-old, but I'm not claiming to be older.

Les Paul was a drunk, and a pretty good one at that, though he wouldn't admit it, of course. It all started back in the hospital, in the maternity ward, when a drunken nurse fell asleep with her face close to Les Paul's and breathed the stench of moonshine into his lungs all night.

Despite being an alcoholic, Les Paul was also a very good man. He listened to hard rock, not some trash, read good books (including mine), watched movies with Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson, only looked at women worthy of him on the street, refused frozen pizza, and respected Tadeusz Kościuszko. Unfortunately, this didn't help him in life, because, as the old saying goes, the more valuable a person is, the more screwed up they are in life.

Les Paul was married twice. The first time, he divorced because his wife stopped loving him, and she stopped loving him because she met another man and fell in love with him. Les Paul wasn't an idiot—he understood that. The second time, he divorced for the exact opposite reason. Unfortunately, the woman he left his wife for turned out to be a common whore, which Les Paul accepted as a man and didn't grieve for long, but he decided not to marry again. Around the same time, he stopped spending his money.

Les Paul worked in a supermarket as a roller skater. At 37, it might not have been his dream job, but he wasn't picky, having the misfortune of being born and living in Poland, although their names might suggest otherwise. To make matters worse, Les Paul lived in the city of Łódź, which is a truly disgusting city and the mere mention of its name makes many people want to puke.

Les Paul had graduated from automotive technical school 15 years earlier, with a pretty good high school diploma, but it neither helped nor hurt him in any way.

Les Paul's birthday was on the day we'll be discussing, April 10th. He was an Aries, meaning he possessed a strong character and leadership qualities. This isn't important, though, especially since it's not true. Besides, he'd celebrated his birthday the day before, because it was a Friday, and Fridays are a very good day to celebrate birthdays, especially if you have Saturday off and work on Sunday.

After drinking tap water, Les Paul once again thought he was fucking crazy and decided to take a short nap. So he lay down on the couch and tried to fall asleep immediately—unfortunately, to no avail. After a few minutes, he gave up, got up, went to the phone, and dialed a friend who lived nearby, a Flying Five.

"Hi," Les Paul said, hearing his friend pick up the phone.

"Hi," Flying Five replied, and hung up.

Les Paul, until his friend arrived with a liter of vodka, decided to tidy up the apartment a bit. He mostly surveyed the apartment with his eyes, not even bothering to clear the ashtray from the table. Besides, the entire carpet was strewn with cigarette butts anyway. Anyway, it didn't matter. The countdown began.

Les Paul counted down from one thousand. Reaching 241, he heard "För Elise," the sound of the doorbell. He didn't pause the countdown in case he didn't find Flying Five at the door, or perhaps, God forbid, the postman. Les Paul wasn't fond of the Polish Post Office because he didn't correspond with anyone, so the only thing he could expect from the postman was a demand for payment of overdue bills. Luckily, it was Flying Five, so Les Paul said,

"Two hundred and thirty-nine," and let his friend in.

Les Paul closed the door, and the Flying Five immediately went into the room, sat down in a chair, and placed two half-liter bottles of the cheapest vodka on the table. Meanwhile, Les Paul went to the kitchen, where he brought two shot glasses, two glasses of tap water, and a lemon—he only had one, and who knows where he got it from. The friends started drinking. They got drunk around noon and started binge-watching movies.

Les Paul woke up that evening and realized the Flying Five had already left. What's more, he also realized that he himself must have gone somewhere, because he definitely wasn't at home. This was reinforced by the fact that he was lying on the sidewalk with his head on the curb, and he didn't recall having a sidewalk, let alone a curb, in his home. Les Paul rubbed his eyes and looked down at himself. He was dressed in loungewear—sweatpants and a stretched-out Led Zeppelin T-shirt. However, he didn't see any slippers on his dirty feet, which worried him a bit, as he was fond of his slippers. Les Paul raised his head and looked north. The imposing UN Secretariat building came into view, separated from the street by a circular plaza with a currently inactive fountain.

"Damn it," thought Les Paul, as usual, putting his thoughts into words, "it looks like I'm in New York."

Les Paul got up from the sidewalk, not wanting to deal with the police, just as a two-man patrol was approaching. Mustachioed officers in mirrored glasses were approaching rapidly, and unfortunately, Les Paul didn't have time to dodge to the side. Imagine his surprise when the patrol calmly passed him by without so much as a glance. If he remembered correctly, he hadn't been able to turn invisible until now. He examined his hands and realized he could see them. The same was true for his legs and other body parts a person could see. It was a good sign, though it didn't explain much. Les Paul glanced after the retreating officers and was about to shout after them and ask what was going on when he thought maybe that wasn't the best idea after all. He hadn't liked law enforcement since he'd been clubbed in the kidneys as a teenager for sitting on a bench, and besides, he didn't speak the language. He walked away.

Les Paul walked a few dozen meters and stopped in front of a hot dog stand. The burly vendor paid him no attention. Les Paul waved his hand in front of his eyes. Nothing.

"Hey, fat guy," Les Paul said, but the salesperson was clearly deaf.

Les Paul decided to nudge him, but decided against it at the last minute. The guy was too big to be nudged. Without thinking, Les Paul trudged on. His feet were cold, despite the pleasant weather in New York that spring.

Les Paul entered a women's clothing store and pointed at a pair of tights. He wasn't wearing tights, and besides, he had no money on him, but he was simply hoping for some kind of reaction from the otherwise quite handsome saleswoman. He miscalculated—she ignored him completely.

"Ma'am," Les Paul said to her, and when she didn't react to that either, he corrected himself, recalling the few English words that had somehow somehow been preserved in the recesses of his mind. "Hey, mister!"

Les Paul decided his English was too weak to hold a meaningful conversation, so he decided to stop using it. He also mentally cursed the communist regime for introducing him to Russian and East German instead of anything more useful. So instead of speaking, he simply leaned toward the counter and grabbed the saleswoman's hand. "Grabbing" might have been too strong a word, though, because Les Paul didn't quite pull it off. His hand went through the woman's and touched the counter.

"Oh fuck," Les Paul said, but no one paid any attention.

Les Paul ran out of the store and, shaking, lunged at a random passerby. He flew through him like a cloud and landed on the sidewalk. He immediately got up and tried again, this time on a passing black man, even though he wasn't a racist by nature. The result was the same—a solid thud on the pavement.

"Oh my God," Les Paul thought after a moment, sitting on the sidewalk and massaging his aching knee, "I think I'm fucking dead."

Les Paul, having realized this, buried his head in his hands and wept bitterly. He didn't want to die yet. As if anyone did (well, maybe except the terminally ill and the terminally in love, which is about the same thing).

Les Paul was crying, remembering his own childhood, when he heard a familiar voice:

"Les Paul! What are you doing in New York?"

Les Paul turned around, disoriented, and saw SG, a school friend he hadn't seen in years. He wasn't alone; he was accompanied by a pretty blonde with quite a large bust. Both were wearing pajamas. Les Paul opened his mouth in astonishment, closed it after a moment, and then opened it again to reply:

"I don't know, I guess I'm dead."

Les Paul had to admit that both SG and his companion had a resonant laugh. They were so amused by his answer that they almost cried with joy.

"Good," SG choked.

"Perhaps you could introduce us?" the blonde asked SG, having finished laughing.

"Of course, excuse me. My wife, Zofia. And this is Les Paul, we've known each other since school. "

Les Paul rose from the sidewalk and bowed politely.

"Very nice to meet you," he said, for he was well-mannered. Then he began to recount what had happened to him and express his dismay at having become invisible.

"Hmm," SG cleared his throat. "I'll explain it to you in a moment. You're only invisible to your physical bodies, but perfectly visible to all your astral bodies.

" "What the fuck does that mean?" Les Paul asked resolutely.

"That means you left your physical body while you were asleep. It's only strange that you'd end up as an astral body all the way to New York, considering that, from what you're saying, this is the first time you've done it.

" "I don't understand any of this," Les Paul said. "So you're, like, astral too?

" "That's right. During sleep, we leave our physical bodies and visit any place in the world. Astral bodies can move at incredible speeds. For example, we could be in Beijing in five minutes.

" "Beijing? And why?

" "We retain our appearance," SG continued, "because when we leave our bodies, astral gravity begins to affect us, placing other particles, drawn from elsewhere, in the temporarily empty space. When we return to our bodies, the particles are removed.

" "I see you're on the subject," Les Paul remarked.

"That's true," SG smiled. "Zofia and I have been perfecting astral travel for years. That's why I admit I'm a bit surprised—have you really never done this before?"

"I don't remember."

Les Paul scratched his head and instinctively glanced at Zofia's breasts, which were just begging to be looked at.

"So, could I, for example, go and watch Sharon Stone take a bath now?

" "For example," SG laughed. "Of course, as long as you know where she lives.

" "And if she's taking a bath," Zofia added, but her husband scowled at her, so she fell silent.

Les Paul woke up at that moment. He was drenched in sweat. "What the fuck was that?" he thought, referring to his strange dream. He glanced at his watch—it was almost 8 p.m. Les Paul got up, drank some tap water, used the toilet both ways, and went back to his room to fall asleep again—he had to work the next day, after all, and he wasn't about to crash in front of people roller-skating because he was sleep-deprived and hungover. Thank God, he fell asleep quickly and didn't experience any astral travel.

Les Paul, besides being an alcoholic and a valuable man, also suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. The dream from a few days earlier was haunting him. He even shared it with Flying Five, but Flying Five, not used to talking nonsense, simply said,

"Call the Secret Service."

Les Paul couldn't deny his friend's point—calling the Secret Service would dispel all doubts. Without thinking, he opened the phone book and found the right number. A moment later, he had the receiver in his hand.

"Yes, I'm listening?" he heard a woman's voice that sounded familiar, so he panicked and hung up.

"So?" Flying Five asked.

"Let's have a drink," Les Paul replied.

"Aren't you going to work tomorrow?" his friend asked, surprised, even though it was neither his business nor particularly his concern, as he was also an alcoholic. He'd just started off as if reflexively.

"I'm going."

Les Paul was out of sorts for the next few days. Flying Five noticed this, as did the customers of the hypermarket where he worked, and, worst of all, the shift manager, who reported Les Paul to the manager, who fired him. Les Paul had only himself to blame – not only had he been constantly falling over on his roller skates for the past few days, but he'd also been lost in thought, failing to hear the customers' questions, and when he did, he'd reply absentmindedly, "How the fuck should I know?"

Les Paul and Flying Five, who had been unemployed for a year and supported by his mother, drank for two weeks. They would have drank longer, but Les Paul's modest savings quickly ran dry, and Flying Five's mother flatly refused when he, drunk as hell, asked her for a loan. So the Flying Five returned home, and Les Paul was lost in tragic thoughts – he knew he would soon starve to death.

Les Paul didn't starve to death. One day, he called SG again. A woman answered again:

"Yes, sir?

" "Hello," Les Paul said uncertainly. "My name is Les Paul, and...

" "Les Paul!" the woman shouted. "SG has been wanting to call you for a long time, but you're not in the phone book. Why did you disappear so suddenly?"

Les Paul became a frequent guest at SG and Zofia's house – it must be admitted that the three of them had become quite friendly. While Les Paul occasionally liked to glance at Zofia's breasts, which SG didn't particularly appreciate, their shared astral journeys compensated for this small blemish in their friendship. Under the tutelage of his friends, Les Paul quickly became proficient at leaving his physical body and visited Paris, Moscow, Sydney, Stonehenge, and other wonders of the world whose names I can't remember. He also went on little trips himself from time to time—sometimes to spy on that pretty little girl across the street, some to eavesdrop on which team was selling the league match... Speaking of which, Les Paul currently supports himself by playing the football lottery and is doing quite well—he even moved into a house with a garden, which he had previously purchased.

And what did the Flying Five say about all this? Nothing, in the meantime, he'd lost his mind.