FANZINE

A 58-year-old air force veteran with an aggressive, untreatable form of penis cancer realized his final living wish today at a Reno dive bar when given the chance to reveal his astounding survival story to a journalist willing to investigate the man’s fantastic claims of sinister, criminal military conduct and his contentions that he maintained a consensual sexual relationship with an extraterrestrial female while imprisoned at an underground military base near Dulce, New Mexico, a place so secret the U.S. government denies its very existence.

The unspecified Staff Sergeant, who wishes to remain anonymous until he has passed away to protect his privacy for his final few weeks, is well into inoperable stage IV cancer.

The man was a security guard for the 81st Fighter Wing squadron at RAF Bentwaters, an English air base 80 miles northeast of London during Britain’s “Roswell,” a close encounter that occurred in the woods on December 26, 1980 and had hundreds of witnesses. A group of UFOs allegedly flew over the base and disabled the nuclear missiles, an incident confirmed by dozens of credible witnesses.

During the landing portion of the incident, the officer says he approached one of the ships and put his hand to the side of the craft, palm first. For the next few minutes, 300,000 pages of binary codes were downloaded into his brain. He spent the next six years confined to the base under Dulce, New Mexico clicking away line after line of code in the form of periods and Os, first on a Smith Corona, then on an HP 85 and later a series of PCs. He claims he worked with three other men, a tight-knit group who referred to themselves as the gigamonkeys, a reference to the cynical thought experiment of an infinite number of monkeys typing away at an infinite number of typewriters to write the Encyclopedia Britannica. “From simple deduction and a growing knowledge of binary we soon realized that what we were essentially typing out was a history of the entire universe” that had been downloaded to them by the aliens, starting more than 14 billion years ago. “But it was even more complex,” he says. “Since reality both exists and doesn’t exist in an infinite number of states and universes with their own physical laws.”

Some two or three weeks into the program, the veteran said that he began having very lucid dreams involving women who worked in his quarantined section of the building. “They were contaminated, like us,” he says. “That’s why they were in there with us, behind six inches of lead in the walls.” These women, he says, were humanoid extraterrestrials. “Shape-shifters with multiple genitals.” But when one of the men died suddenly after complaining of pissing blood and tissue for weeks before, suspicions began to build. Over the following years, a second man got the same disease and died. Then the third. They had all died of a rare form of penis cancer, and they had all been having sexual relationships with the extraterrestrial women. The officer himself got deathly sick in 1990 and was left for dead in the base crematorium. “Due to the humanity of a man who ran the place, I was taken to a private hospital in Las Vegas where I went into remission and stayed that way for the past 30 years.

“I mean, now what? What do you do with that?” said the Staff Sergeant. Over the next few years, he learned computer programming and rewrote and translated the 300,000 pages of text from the alien craft. He says these boxes of manuscripts are in a secure storage unit in California along with boxes of documentation proving everything he claims. His instructions: when he dies, retrieve the boxes and release everything to the media.

He had stage IV cock cancer and insisted on meeting me before he died. What sounded like a really off-prompter Make-A-Wish request was actually a man’s singular plea for somebody to listen to his story. Preferably somebody with journalistic merit.

Actually, according to Carey, the bartender at Shea’s, the word he had used was “needed.” He needed to talk to me.

At first, we used the nickname “Deadwood” to refer to him because we didn’t know his real name yet and because we’re dicks. We still used Deadwood once we knew his real name, but only behind his back, because we are still dicks. He wanted to dictate his life story to me and give me a bunch of documents to be published only after he died.

“Stage IV penis cancer,” snorted Carey. “Your mouth can has some magical curative powers.”

“You know why that’s funny?” I said. “Because you used a hilarious Internet cat meme to imply that I suck dick. Well-played, booze janitor.”

I grabbed his tip and wiped my ass with it. It picked up a lot more ass traction than I had imagined. It was like a damp paper towel. “Wanna live forever?” I said, making overt sniffing noises and flicking the buck back at him.

“This guy,” said Carey. “He’s obviously a fucknut. Maybe we should set him up with the woman who hangs out at McDonald’s  and accuses every guy who passes her on the sidewalk of having committed sodomy against her.”

“Sheila’s just trying to meet Mr. Right.”

Carey put the crap-smeared dollar in his tip jar. “Indian Mikey told me this guy’s story is real.”

“Indian Mikey says he got in a knife fight with Lee Majors.”

I shrugged and downed my shot.

“The problem with this particular point in world history is that it’s so hard to care about almost anything.”

***

I first met Deadwood, aka, Earl Stuart Perkins (which was also not his real name) that night at Shooter’s.

Perkins had been going through local channels checking out my credentials––making sure I was who I said I was, even though I had never said I was anybody. He was terrified somebody was going to assassinate him before he got his story out.

Long ago, I was a general assignment reporter for a legitimate, mainstream daily paper. I quit one afternoon because I was too hungover, it was too hot, and the last thing I wanted to do was follow an Eagle Scout into the damned desert brush while he collected native seeds for replanting hillsides after a recent forest fire.

I vetted Earl Perkins as much as I could, too. There were, in fact, military records for an Earl Stuart Perkins born May 5, 1954 who was an air force veteran working base security for the 81st Fighter Wing squad at RAF Bentwaters around the time when the UFOs started showing up on December 26, 1980.

But then Perkins’ story began to get murky. He supposedly died in a high-speed motorcycle accident in early February 1981. The problem is there were two autopsies on file. One that said he shot himself with a service revolver and the other that he hit a parked car at eighty kilometers per hour. Either way, that should have been the end of Deadwood. But Indian Mikey grew up with this guy who he called Earl Perkins and was certain he was who he said he was. The rest of his story seemed as viable and as nonsensical as any other UFO claims. With the exception of the guy’s prick plague. How did one explain four dick cancer cluster like that?

I called information.
“What city?”
“Ducle, New Mexico.”
“What listing?”
“The secret underground military base.”
“I have a Subway sandwiches.”

I went to lunch with Indian Mikey. Why me? I was local and I had the greatest common factor in the equation linking sincere and legitimate journalism with somebody who would listen. I was a tiny percent notorious in local journalist circles.

“CNN,” said Indian Mikey, “don’t send out Dick Wolf to check on every crank who bangs a Moon person.”
“Wolf Blitzer.”
“Who’s Dick Wolf?”
“The dude whose name comes up at the end of every Law and Order. Like, Ice-T says: ‘I think that punk-ass got his jollies fingerbanging those little Chinese kids.’”
“Dick Wolf.”
“Why would a man have sex with a hole in a picnic table and then take an axe to it?”
“Dick Wolf.”

Indian Mikey took a ten-carat-sized rock of meth from a bag and began cut it up with his driver’s license until he had made three huge lines. He railed the first two and then looked up at me. “I haven’t slept in 16 days. Not since we did the annual Polar Bear swim up at Tahoe. You know we raised over $340 for kids with Progeria. It’s that genetic disease that makes them kids age really fast. Seriously. One of them came by the clubhouse for a picture with us. He looked 80. That poor fucking kid. I couldn’t help but stare at him. Nobody deserves to have to live like that––looking all wrinkled like a ball sack at age five. He either had a good sense of humor or some kind of advanced dementia. We cooked weenies for him and his family.”

“Dick Wolf.”

Indian Mikey, was an (alleged) enforcer for a local chapter of an iconic national motorcycle club. He had vouched for me because he used to supply a Cuban-born scumbag named Lazarus who used to run a shooting gallery out of his motel room.  Lazarus was obsessed with exotic birds. And then he got popped as I was coming out of the motel room. I swallowed my dope and refused to roll on the guy. Indian Mikey didn’t forget. Ironically, he did forget about that third thick line of speed he had set up. We left it there on the bright yellow table.

“I guarantee you somebody thinking about bringing a business to Reno will be the next to sit there and find your $40 line of speed and be appalled. You’re going to give Reno a bad reputation, you dirtbag. People are going to see the brothels, the 25% unemployment and that shit on the table at Subway and they’re going to think that we waste meth.”

“NPR don’t send Nina Totenberg out to confirm every story about a man with dick cancer he got after years of having sexual intercourse with ET.”

“Dick Wolf.”

***

I finally met Perkins in person that night at Shooter’s on Virginia, something of an ultralounge for tweakers and people walking around with bullets still in them. The Shooter’s logo was made in the same color and font as the Hooter’s logo, to capitalize on the brand. But instead of busty waitresses in tiny shorts and chicken wings, Shooter’s biggest draw was a 45-year-old blonde drink slinger so old it looked like her face might crack open at any moment and sand might come pouring out. Wednesdays was officially karaoke night, but unofficially it was bring your dog and get him drunk night. Shooter’s provided the tennis balls for the mutts to chase around. They’d start to get rowdy just like people and some of them would start to hump the speakers, the stage, bar stools.

Perkins looked just like any other weathered Reno drunk, wearing about a buck fifty worth of clothes with a face smooth like an old mitten. He wore a white beard, a black and yellow Caterpillar cap and jeans. He was sitting at a table with a buddy who showed me a shoulder-holstered gun. I imagined it was a Luger but I have no idea what one looks like.

“They can kill me as soon as you’ve got the story,” said Perkins.
“Won’t they want to kill me next?”
“That’s why you have to publish everything. Get everything out. Then they can’t hurt you.”
“I’m not on the best terms with any of the local rags.”
“You’re the only person who will even talk to me. I’m the last of the gang of four, man. The last of the gigamonkeys. The fourth guy to contract inoperable penis cancer.”
“What kind of computer did you use to get all this stuff down?”
“Actually, at first I used a fucking typewriter. Eventually I used an AppleIIE.”
“Ever play Oregon Trail?”
“I had literally thousands of kids die of dysentery over the years.”

Our banter had made the guy a bit more comfortable. Perkins seemed to flick a switch and quickly began to soak up his pitcher of beer. He didn’t offer me a glass.

He seemed a bit spaced out. Then, his face became really lucid and he went right into it.
“I had only intended to stay one night,” he said, hunching over and making sure nobody could overhear him. “I found a porn store in the phonebook. Suzies. I went down there and looked around for something inflatable to fuck.”
“You’re not taping this?” he complained. “Indian Mikey said you were a pro.”
I showed him a reporter’s notebook and opened a pen.
“Anyhow, most of the fuckable items were really expensive. Then I found this blow-up sheep in the closeouts box. It was made by a company called California Exotics. Miss Eva, the Ewe, was her stage name. She’ll bring out the animal in you.” He laughed. “I’m quoting from the box. Don’t you want to write that down?”

I nodded and pretended to write it down. What the hell was he talking about?

“So on the box was a cartoon of a horny ewe lying wantonly on her back, black fishnet stockings and high heels pointed toward the ceiling like a porky little slut. They did have a porky little slut, Paulene Pig. She was eight bucks but she wasn’t in stock. Eva was on sale. The other sex toys were like $80 and they all looked like vaudeville death masks.”

Perkins said that back at the motel he locked the door carefully and began to blow the thing up and was disappointed when its four legs didn’t catch any of the air. “They just hung there,” he said.

Once fully blown up, the fuckable sheep was about the size of a house pet. There were two holes in the back. Included inside was a tiny “vinyl repair kit.”

“I was going to fuck this thing,” he said. “In a Comfort Inn.”
I raised my eyebrows to finish his question for him. Then I stopped.
“$39 bucks a night.”
You could get a four star room in a Reno casino with a hot tub and $20 worth of chip credits for like $7.
“So I lay down on top of Eva,” he said, as though I might have forgotten. “Poor thing collapsed under my weight. She just kind of made this horrible farting death rattle and started to deflate. So I stuck my dick inside one of the full-sized love passages and fucked that hot ass sheep quick and dirty.”
“Dick Wolf,” I said.
“Hot stuff, right?”
This little ewe likes it in the baaack!
She’s not looking for Farmer Right… she’s looking for Farmer Right Now!

Perkins finished up and fully deflated the thing. He was terrified that he would pass out when blowing the thing up and be discovered. He was even more afraid when he looked down and realized what he had just done. What he had spent his seed on. He wrapped up the broken body in two rolls of toilet paper, and put that in a box he found in the hallway by the vending machine. He went to a 7-11 and bought some duct tape and unwound the whole roll around the cardboard, mixing in layers of tissue every now and then.

“I was convinced I was going to be busted with the thing. I had just wanted to stick my dick inside something after the long hot drive from Grand Junction. But I had to get that thing out of the room and disposed of. I knew there was a dumpster outside. But as I walked by the front counter with the box, I swore the guy behind the counter mumbled ‘Ewe!’”

Perkins says he got scared and turned around and walked back down the corridor to his room and locked himself in for the night and ordered a pizza. He was certain the guy at the front desk knew all about the inflatable sex toy and was just waiting to call the cops.

“I knew it was going down that night,” he said. “So I ate the whole pizza.”

He felt even worse about himself after he had eaten. Then after a while, he got a tingle and began to get horny again. He started to undo the tape job on the sex sheep and eventually got it partially inflated and back into action again. But it wouldn’t hold any air. “So I went back down to Suzie’s and bought another sex sheep.”

“The second time I used the mouth entrance,” he said. “It was not unlike the anal or vaginal entry. But now I had to get rid of two sheeps.”

Perkins poured himself another beer, now refilling every time he took a sip.

“And so,” he said, pulling out a cigarette. He smoked menthols. “That’s the blow-up sheep story.”

I looked into his strange green eyes. “My penis hurts,” I said.

He sucked the foamy lip off the top of his cerveza and smirked. “You ever fuck a blow-up sheep?”

“Dick Wolf,” I said. I got up from the table and left.