I am a sheet white sweaty mess. Stupid Wyatt! Now I’m running several blocks to meet up with Jaime at the King Soopers. Drunk. This was a bad idea, but I was locked in to this nightmare and I had to ride it out. I don’t want to be late.
It's funny, you would think that arriving drunk and exhausted for our much anticipated date would deter me, on the contrary, it emboldens me.
Hey, not only do I have the dog mauling to talk about, but the Chloe mission as well. I've got some cool date convo to lay down if the normal listen-to-everything-she-says approach isn't working.
Jaime was waiting on the northwest corner of our King Soopers staring into the scene where the dog attack occurred. I spied her from a block away and stopped jogging so that I could catch my breath. She was just as breathtaking as she normally was, even from a block away, even in this failing blue evening light. She was a shimmery raven Japanese silhouette being caressed by a gentle wind, staring with purpose into the scene of man v. dog carnage.
It hadn't occurred to me for quite some time that the reason Jaime and I were meeting was because of the dog! The collar!
"Shhhhhhh..." I uttered, "...iiit! If she thinks she's gonna get me into some freaky Nancy Drew adventure, I am out."
"I mean, we're on a date, right?" I'm talking to myself and realizing that I might be over thinking this whole date/dog thing. Were we flirting, or was I just making a big thing about this? I could be mistaken about the whole interaction between her and I earlier today. I mean, how much do I truly know about this chick, anyway? Oh, the cold feet jitters. I'm probably going to play Wadsworth to her Sherlock all night.
On second thought...What the fuck, saying it like that doesn't make it sound half bad. I lit a cigarette and paused. She hadn't seen me yet, and I considered her. She could be stark raving mad, all this time, co-workers, and not really even a glimmer. Then, a little blood gets spilled, and now her panties are slippery? I chuckled out a little smoke and started walking towards her again.
"HEEEEYYY!!" She yelled. "GET OVER HERE!!" Jaime was motioning with both arms, like a flight attendant. Maybe she was more like one of those dudes with the flashlights that guide jet liners into their parking spots, anyway, she had great form.
I was about a half a block away, and I broke into a half-assed jog. She started walking into our loading dock.
"Oh here we go, Nancy Drew," I muttered to myself.
By the time I got to her, she was nosing around the dumpster where Dade had met his untimely disfigurement. I nudged at her waist with my hand to no avail. She said, "Damn, it looks as if they sprayed out most of the blood." She was right, I couldn't see anything. She got down on her hands and knees and started searching about like a CSI. Like a David Caruso and shit. Oh god, she even sniffed the ground. She got up and got close to me, and held up the dog collar and said,
"This is our lead, right here."
"Jaime, Hi, I, uh..."
"Shut up."
"Okey doke." She thoroughly inspected the dumpster, and as I protested, she shut me down at all points. Then she walked the scene, as if she was an expert. I sighed and grunted over a few minutes of true crime investigation. Then she said that she was through and that we should go to the bar. At least she didn't have me pick up some tissue and or blood which I could clearly see on the edge of the dumpster door. I decided to keep quiet. I could imagine Mona hosing the scene down with a big pressure washer.
So we went to the bar. It was a gay bar. I like gay bars, not because I'm gay, but you usually get good service. We sat at a table just outside the side door, near the bathrooms. I could smell urinal cake every time a flaming twink went into the men's room. There was exactly two women in the bar, and I walked in with one of them. I was already a little drunk, so I ordered a beer, and Jaime ordered a Long Island. At this point, I didn't know if this was a good sign, or not.
If it seems like I'm glazing over details of conversation at this point, I am, because there wasn't much. There was the point by point account of the dog mauling, and the somewhat less interesting, but funnier Chloe extraction, but I was starting to get antsy and my bed, and my apartment was looking sweet. Halfway in to her gigantic drink she said, "I've always liked you, what took you so long?" I was taken aback.
"I'm not sure, I've always liked you too."
"I mean, a year and a half..."
"I know, I don't know...It's weird for me, I mean, I haven't had a girlfriend, a proper one, since college."
"Weird."
"What do you mean by that?"
"It's just weird...that's all."
I was a little deflated, and I gave a little sigh and regarded her for a second. I was trying to figure out where this was all going. I wasn't sure and the fact that I was slightly drunk wasn't helping. I went for the gusto.
"So...you like me, huh? Are we going some where with this or are you just a fan of man on dog violence?" I was treated to that hearty Kathleen Turner type laugh. It was loud. It was long.
Then she said simply, "Yes, a little."
“A little of what?”
“A little of both.”
"Really? It's stupid, I've had a crush on you for, god knows, forever."
"Don't get crazy there, Red. We work together." I was squinching my eye brows together. I felt a headache coming on. I stared across the table from her, and took her in at this point. She looked like an old school film noir temptress. Hair black, skin white, lipstick red, BlackFlag tee shirt. I sighed and let out a secretive fart. It was odorless, thank god. Just to nullify the effect of the fart, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it. She looked at me and made two fingers in a peace sign and put them up to her lips. I gave her one of my American Spirits and lit it for her.
"Jaime, what kind of music do you play?" I asked. She smirked and blew out a plume of smoke. Now she regarded me for a second. It made me feel naked. She rolled her eyes and took a sip of her huge ass drink.
"Why do you care?"
"I like music, and I think you're funny." I meant to say interesting, but I let that ‘funny’ comment hang in the air like a bad fart.
"Funny?"
"Interesting, I meant interesting."
"You farted."
"Yep." Oh the horror.
"I know, I smell it, it's not that bad, you smell like you have good digestion." She snickered slightly. I was deflated, literally. She continued, "It’s chick punk. Have you ever heard of 'The Donnas'? Well, we’re a lot like them, but better." She has the lightest bluest eyes. I'm about to kill myself with lust. I’m also thinking that maybe the reason for the odorless fart was because of my years of liver pickling good times. All right!
"I saw the Donnas at the Bluebird a few years ago, they weren't that good, but their newer album is fucking sweet," I said.
"We have a hip-hop producer that's taken an interest in us." I'm nodding like an idiot. She changes the subject, "Do you buy Q-Tips?" I blink at least seven times.
"Yes."
"How are your ears? Let me look at them." She grabs what little scrubble of hair I have and and cranks my head around from across the table. She inspects both of my ears and nods approvingly.
"You...you're good. You're good, you. I’ll bet you’re yummy.” She says in a low voice as she disconnects her fist from my hair with a push. I blush, blink again about four times. "You know your eyelashes are blonde?" I just nod. "Your eyebrows are too."
"I shaved them in seventh grade, and they haven't come back the same since," I shrugged.
"I've never really liked a red head, before."
"Who says you even like me?"
"Me."
"This could get interesting," I said.
"Oh, It's already interesting," she said. Then she produced the dog collar. "1238 Humboldt St."
"Oh no," I said. She tossed the rest of her drink...down her gullet.
"Oh yes," she stared at me without even wincing. "The dog's name is...Killer."
"Here we go, Nancy Drew." I sigh, she smirks and picks up her bag. I leave a twenty on the table.
"Where's your car?" Jaime asked.
"It's a long story."
"What?!"
"Hey, baby, if you want to get my car, we're up on 14th and Euclid style.
"Chevrolegs?" She asked. I just grunt in the affirmative. I smiled that she said 'Chevrolegs'.
We only had to walk several blocks, and I asked her why it was such a problem to do so. She was noncommittal in answering that question. I asked if she had a car, and she said no. At this point, I left it at that. We walked down through Cheesman Park and cut towards the city. We talked about music and life and ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends. She found it astonishing that I hadn't had a girlfriend in over three years. I didn't want to reveal the fact that I am a small time crook and that the business had its ups and downs. It's probably a little much for a first date to deal with. The fact that I am a full time alcoholic probably wouldn't be cool to admit either. She sensed this and said, "I drink a lot."
I said, "Me too," coolly.
After some silence, she said, "I do, because of me. I have a condition."
Oh, here we go. "Hmm?" I queried.
"I'm an epileptic; I can't drive, sometimes I even space out for a few seconds. I have small seizures."
"Oh," I was a little disappointed. I wanted some blood and guts stuff, a vehicular manslaughter charge or something like that. It switched my conversation just slightly because I was unsure what exactly this meant for me and her. I have a brother that's diabetic and a dead uncle that had epilepsy. When he had a seizure in front of me once, I thought he was joking. That was until the orange juice and blood came out of his mouth in a smooth and frothy foam as he wriggled around on the ground. We were eating breakfast at the time. I was twelve years old and I didn't know what to do. My brother had a seizure once because of low blood sugar and I was just as helpless. I took a Red Cross course in college, and now I know what to do, but I'm still not sure of what epilepsy does to people. Does it make them a little crazy? How does it work? I decided to pretend like I wasn’t completely ignorant.
"Yeah my uncle had epilepsy," I said.
"Hm," Jaime sighed.
"Why can't you drive?" I asked.
"Seizures. Even if I have a small one while I'm driving." She made a raspberry sound and clapped her hands together.
"Don't they put you on drugs?"
"Yeah, but certain ones, the good ones, mess with your fertility and stuff, so I take ones that are less powerful, and I drink."
"The old alcohol treatment, eh. I just drink because I’m bored, and Irish.
"Yeah," she said. "For me, it seems to calm it down a bit. Look, can we talk about something else?" I shrugged and we walked in silence for awhile. It was for a very long while, in that time, she took my arm and hugged it firmly to her side. I felt like I was the most pimp-style guy on the planet. I was just holding her arm as we walked street to street. There were amazing things that were about to happen to us, this was just the beginning, giving chase to the dead dog.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Chapter 12 "The Little Worms Day Academy"
Back to the Chloe mission:
After much of a Laurel and Hardy skit, we arrived at the daycare. There was much discussion after I revealed that I thought I knew where the place was, and perhaps I had been there once. A few U-turns involved. Stuff like that.
This place was called The Little Worms Day Academy. No joke. I assume that a daycare "ACADEMY" prepares you for...what? Preschool?! Anyhow, I have bad childhood memories of daycare. This place gave me the heeby jeebies.
We walk in. Me- Flashy-silver-shirted-redhead-glassy-eyed-pull on the push door-stumble over a three year old kid-douche bag.
Wyatt-Straw hat wearing-hipster style-gentleman-get's the door open for me-mildly amused at my douche baggery-constantly grinning-cool guy. Damned if I know where he got the toothpick from, but it stuck out the side of his cheek as if to highlight this easy going smile.
The woman at the counter, her name tag said...Daiquirisha. I'm not kidding. She even said, "Welcome to Little Worms, I am Daiquirisha, are you picking up? Or are you en-quire-en, about our services today?"
"Uhh, um." This is me.
"Ummhmm," Her eyes flashed and looked me up and down. She looked quizzically at me and kind of puckered her lips, and yet pursed them at the same time. I was at a loss. Some time must have elapsed because Wyatt was right behind me kind of jabbing his thumb into my ribs. She said, "Well, my name is Daiquirisha, if you decide you need HELP." She kind of stormed off as if she had better things to do. I snickered. I couldn't help it. She really said: Daiquiri- a rum and fruit and ice puree. And Sha -an African root word that means holy practitioner.
Man, do I even have to tell you what Daiquirisha looks like? She's a big beautiful woman, that likes to get her nails done and knows how to apply make-up, maybe too well. She probably drives her husband and/or boyfriend crazy and probably also mothers him/them to death. She has probably had a few children, and is a good mother, and probably doesn't put up with much. Especially from white guys who smell like Vodka. I turn to Wyatt quickly. "This probably wasn't the best idea in the world, man." Wyatt scowled and shook his head and brushed me off.
He started to walk past me and then flipped around and put his hand on my shoulder and asked, "What's Chloe’s last name, buddy?"
"Simpson."
"Okay." Then Wyatt affixed me with the "It's All Good" smile and then walked towards the daycare's, no, Academy’s raised counter where the holy woman of daiquiris was pacing back and forth.
I can remember being quite confident in Wyatt's abilities to deal with the queen of daiquiri. I was having a problem keeping a straight face.
Wyatt: Ms. (said like: Mzzzzzz.) Daiquirisha? May I have a moment?
Daiquirisha: What's it look like, I got somethin else to do?
W: (Polite) Excuse me?
D: (Mock polite, confused) Excuse me, I'm sorry, I didn't know...
W: Well it's just that...
D: (Composing herself) Are you picking up, sir?
W: Chloe Simpson, please.
(She looks him up and down again, and makes somewhat of a dubious face, but speaks into the small PA microphone below her.)
D: (Deadpan) Chloe Simpson going home, Chloe Simpson GOING HOME.
(She gets close to Wyatt's face over the raised counter and raises an eyebrow and nods)
D: I suppose you're her uncle? (Sarcasm was dripping from her mouth.)
W: Nope.
(Wyatt just grins; she starts thumbing through some papers and not very subtly, speaks into the PA again.)
D: Adam to the front.
My heart went a little icy at that point. Code Adam is a well known code at any retail chain. If there is a code Adam at any retail store it means a child is missing and that all employees should cover all exits, until the child is reunited with the parent. This means that any child, even if it is with a grown-up that claims to be the child's parent must be stopped and detained for ID purposes. I've never actually had to do this at King Soopers, but if I did, I'd find it hard to explain. I'd still do it though.
The code Adam, is named after Adam Walsh. This was a kid that was taken back in the 80's at some retail store, right under his dad's nose. He was taken, and tortured, and killed, if memory serves correct. It was a big message, back then, in the 80s, not to talk to strangers. The guy who made that statement as much as he could back then, was John Walsh, Adam's father. John Walsh, now, is the America's Most Wanted host. Talk about a life changing thing...
Well, now I'm thinking I could be wrong, because most places these days have a code Amber, the same as Amber Alert System, but it means the same thing. I could only hope that it's not as grisly a story that inspired the code Amber as the one that inspired the code Adam.
Crap. I was right. She had called to raise the guard. Code Adam, means what it means. Several jittery women came into the front with their handbags and made at some busy work, but kept an eye on us. They were waiting for something to go down. I could only squint, smiley-eyed and wordless at the whole scene.
(Daiquirisha is popping her gum and staring right at Wyatt. Wyatt is returning her gaze with ease and shifting his toothpick around.)
W: Girl, where you get your nails done like that?
D: (Snapping her gum with an eye roll) Why do you care?
W: (Taken aback) Damn, I'm just asking.
D: What?
W: Pshhhh, what? What did I just ask you? Damn.
D: (Eye roll.)
W: (Smiling the whole time) I just asked you, 'Where..you..get..your..nails..done..like..DAT?!' I didn't ask for a side of attitude. YOU know what I'm saying! Damn.
D: Down the street.
W: Is it Hahn's House o' Fashion?
D: Nuh U'h?
W: Uh Hu'h. (He looked proud of himself.)
D: How'd you know that shit? Oooops. (She covers her mouth and sniggles into her hands and looks around)
W: Shhh, the children.
D: Dude, I know...How'd you know that?! (She switches to a whisper.) How'd you know DAT?!
W: My old lady's got a similar style, you know, and she swears by these two little Korean babes.
D&W: (Together) Pik and Cho!
W: They're almost like family. I have to give them a Christmas gift every year. Well, I don't even know them, but my woman does.
D: Mmmmhmmm, I do that to, but I wonder sometimes
D&W: (Together) If they even celiBRATE CHRISTMAS!! YEAH ME TOO!
(Silence)
D: I don't care, look at this job. (Wyatt grabs her fingers and inspects, and proclaims his satisfaction by nodding.)
W: They have a gift.
D: Don't they, though? (There is a long pause while Wyatt inspects every inch-long cuved nail. There is a break only as Wyatt says..)
W: What's this?!
D: It's like a Chinese Kanji symbol for truthful water.
W: It's soooo intricate.
D: I get that every time.
W: Same finger?
D: Mmmmhmmm. I’m a Pieces. It’s a water sign.
W: My woman gets a snake every time. It has little triangles on it's back.
D: Yeah I've seen that one.
(I think I'm about to puke.)
D: (Quickly) You can't pick her up.
W: Pardon?
D: (In a hush) I'd be surprised if you don't get escorted out of here by police. We know who picks up Chloe, and you're not the guy, so what are you doin here, handsome, if it's not to stir up trouble? (She laughs at the end.)
W: I'm afraid you don't understand. Dade got his face chewed off by a dog at work. He's in the hospital, my associate and I came to pick Chloe up to get her to her Auntie's house.
D: You're sayin this on the level?
W: Do I look like the type of man that would lie about something like that?
D: (Krinkling her nose) You could be the white devil himself. I had a dream that I saw the devil once, and he looked just like the KFC guy!
W: Col. Sanders?
D: Yep.
W: I hardly look like him now, do I?
D: I don’t know. You look like you may have seven secret different herbs and spices.
W: Ha! Ha! Ha.
D: Ha! Ha! Ha.
(I really will throw up.)
D: What's the family password?
W: I don't know shit about that. They should have called it in. (Wyatt sighs.) If they didn't, well, we'll just leave her here. We don't want to cause an uproar. (He glances at the ladies who are eying him. They all have their hands in their purses, no doubt clutching mace, tazers, hand grenades. ) Daiquirisha thinks for a second and walks into the back room with a...)
D: Hold on a sec, hon.
I'm all cold sweat prickles and Chinese eyes, but I manage to get a handle around myself under the glare of these harsh fluorescent lights and several middle age purse clutching accusers to walk sensibly up next to Wyatt. I'm not quite sure what the goddess of pina colada is doing, but it could be our asses if she is calling the cops from the back office.
She came back rather quickly and motioned to me. Wyatt grimaced. She pointed a long manicured fingernail at a small piece of paper.
"Is this you?" I went to the counter and squinted at a small piece of official looking paper that had my name and number on it. I squinted unnecessarily. (I have 20/10 vision, in both eyes, I have since high school.)
"Yeah, that's me."
"Well why didn't you say so?" said Daiquirisha. I'm reeling at this point. She goes, "Mmhm," as if to size me up yet again. I confide in her as best I can.
"My friend’s lookin to upgrade his girlfriend," Wyatt elbows me hard in the ribs. "He likes good lookin black ladies," I wheeze and laugh.
We had already been cleared by Dade himself, and were completely confirmed by Auntie Laura. The heavily armed day care workers sheepishly brought Chloe out to see us and stepped her down from the raised countertop to meet two of the most retarded and wrong men she will ever meet until she reaches drinking age.
She recognized me for some reason. Chloe ran at me with her arms up in the air and yelled, “Orange man! Orange man!” I was a little surprised as Chloe had seen me only a handful of times in her scant existence on this planet, and yet she called me, Orange Man?”
I was surprised and embraced her and picked her up as she ran to me. Her little arms wrapped around my neck, and I felt a strange elation. It was unconditional love and trust, happiness and faith. It killed me emotionally. I was “Orange Man”. Chloe clung to me and yelled into my face, “IS DADDY O.K.!?” I crunched her head back into my neck for a second and glowered over at Daquirisha. She shrugged at me, and winked at Wyatt who was eyeballing me with his mouth open.
I thought quickly, and let Chloe look at me again. I said, “Daddy looks like a mummy!”
“Daddy looks like Mommy?!”
“No. He looks like a mummy!” She frowned at me while I said this and shook her little head. I felt as if I had just been a bad actor and was panned by the most influential critic playing a bit part that I was never meant to play. It broke my heart. I was holding this little thing in my arms and felt I like the child.
Chloe wailed, “Nooooooooo!” The ladies in the room clenched at their purses again.
I sputtered, “No! It’s okay!” She calmed, and creased her eyebrows at me. I said, “I’m going to tell you the story of the baddest doggy ever. Your daddy stopped him. He was a baaaaad doggy.” She nodded. “The worst doggy ever.” She looked at me again with suspicion.
Wyatt had hooked his foot against my foot and had shoved a finger into my waist, in an awesome and subtle attempt to get us the fuck out of the Little Worms Day Academy, but I must have felt like a piece of stone. I couldn’t move until little Chloe was OK to do so. I couldn’t believe it. “Daddy can’t wait to see you, but the doggy bit him.” Her eyes got so wide.
“Bit?”
“Yep, but he’s OK, and he’s waiting to see you, but the doctor wanted to make sure that the doggy didn’t hurt him.”
“Why?” She started to break down and cry a little.
“No. No. Shhhhhh. Your daddy beat the doggy. Daddy is okay, but you know how doctors are,” and I nodded my head.
She thought for a second and nodded her head too and said, “Are we going?”
I said, “Uh huh,” and put a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder, waved to Daiquirisha and I led our way out of the daycare. Chloe clung to me for reasons that I can’t explain, but I felt like I was one of the few people that could feel this way about her. Perhaps Dade had known that. He had discerned that once I was touched by his baby girl who had this unknown affinity for me, she had even had a nickname for me, that I would actually die before letting her meet any harm. It was a warm, orange feeling that took me over like a manly tsunami. This steady steam of protectiveness bolstered me as we talked while I carried her to Wyatt’s car.
She pointed to Wyatt, “Is he a cowboy?”
“Yes. He’s definitely a cowboy.”
She was asking me, “Why are you so orange?”
I said, “I’m not all orange!” I put her in the backseat behind Wyatt and continued, “Why are you pink?” I strapped her in the backseat and was indicating a shock of Chloe’s hair which had a little pink stripe in the bangs of her kid-like, ultra-blonde hair.
Wyatt had already sat in the driver’s seat and wordlessly passed me a small bag of Cheetos over his shoulder. I smirked and Chloe’s eyes lit up.
I opened the bag carefully and passed them to her. She grabbed them and settled back into the Volvo’s back seat. She said, “ Mommy gave me pink hair.”
“It’s very pretty.”
“No it’s not.” She said, looking very serious with her Cheetos in a big girl seat. I smiled at her.
“I think it’s just lovely.” I made sure that she was secure in her seat and she still regarded me with some suspicion.
She said, “Hm.” And crunched on some Cheetos.
I walked around the Volvo, and settled in next to Wyatt. Behind us, a din of crunching fried corn matter and orange cheese dust.
I let out a secretive giggle, and turned to Wyatt and was like, “Nice call on the Cheetos.”
He snorted and pulled out a cigarette and hissed, “Where to now, fuckbag?” I sombered a bit.
“Let me use your cell for a sec,” I said. Wyatt curled his lip and sighed with disgust and pulled it from the center console and handed it over. I pulled my pager out of my pocket and surfed for an important number. Wyatt started to pull the car from the parking lot and I was trying to find the callback number that would help me out. There was one and only one.Wyatt keyed his old-school CD player and the song "Runnin Down a Dream" wrang out.
We headed north, into Denver.
At some point after trying two other numbers, Johnny answered.
“WEEEEEEOOOOOOOH! What’s up lettucehead!?”
“This is Red!”
“OOOOOOHHHH! What do ya know, fuck-o! Where’s Wyatt?”
“Are you drunk?”
“FFFFFFuck you…”
“So you are….You at home, J-Boy?
“Sure am, are you guys comin by?”
“Uh…maybe. Can you help us? I’m looking for a phone number…”
After much of a Laurel and Hardy skit, we arrived at the daycare. There was much discussion after I revealed that I thought I knew where the place was, and perhaps I had been there once. A few U-turns involved. Stuff like that.
This place was called The Little Worms Day Academy. No joke. I assume that a daycare "ACADEMY" prepares you for...what? Preschool?! Anyhow, I have bad childhood memories of daycare. This place gave me the heeby jeebies.
We walk in. Me- Flashy-silver-shirted-redhead-glassy-eyed-pull on the push door-stumble over a three year old kid-douche bag.
Wyatt-Straw hat wearing-hipster style-gentleman-get's the door open for me-mildly amused at my douche baggery-constantly grinning-cool guy. Damned if I know where he got the toothpick from, but it stuck out the side of his cheek as if to highlight this easy going smile.
The woman at the counter, her name tag said...Daiquirisha. I'm not kidding. She even said, "Welcome to Little Worms, I am Daiquirisha, are you picking up? Or are you en-quire-en, about our services today?"
"Uhh, um." This is me.
"Ummhmm," Her eyes flashed and looked me up and down. She looked quizzically at me and kind of puckered her lips, and yet pursed them at the same time. I was at a loss. Some time must have elapsed because Wyatt was right behind me kind of jabbing his thumb into my ribs. She said, "Well, my name is Daiquirisha, if you decide you need HELP." She kind of stormed off as if she had better things to do. I snickered. I couldn't help it. She really said: Daiquiri- a rum and fruit and ice puree. And Sha -an African root word that means holy practitioner.
Man, do I even have to tell you what Daiquirisha looks like? She's a big beautiful woman, that likes to get her nails done and knows how to apply make-up, maybe too well. She probably drives her husband and/or boyfriend crazy and probably also mothers him/them to death. She has probably had a few children, and is a good mother, and probably doesn't put up with much. Especially from white guys who smell like Vodka. I turn to Wyatt quickly. "This probably wasn't the best idea in the world, man." Wyatt scowled and shook his head and brushed me off.
He started to walk past me and then flipped around and put his hand on my shoulder and asked, "What's Chloe’s last name, buddy?"
"Simpson."
"Okay." Then Wyatt affixed me with the "It's All Good" smile and then walked towards the daycare's, no, Academy’s raised counter where the holy woman of daiquiris was pacing back and forth.
I can remember being quite confident in Wyatt's abilities to deal with the queen of daiquiri. I was having a problem keeping a straight face.
Wyatt: Ms. (said like: Mzzzzzz.) Daiquirisha? May I have a moment?
Daiquirisha: What's it look like, I got somethin else to do?
W: (Polite) Excuse me?
D: (Mock polite, confused) Excuse me, I'm sorry, I didn't know...
W: Well it's just that...
D: (Composing herself) Are you picking up, sir?
W: Chloe Simpson, please.
(She looks him up and down again, and makes somewhat of a dubious face, but speaks into the small PA microphone below her.)
D: (Deadpan) Chloe Simpson going home, Chloe Simpson GOING HOME.
(She gets close to Wyatt's face over the raised counter and raises an eyebrow and nods)
D: I suppose you're her uncle? (Sarcasm was dripping from her mouth.)
W: Nope.
(Wyatt just grins; she starts thumbing through some papers and not very subtly, speaks into the PA again.)
D: Adam to the front.
My heart went a little icy at that point. Code Adam is a well known code at any retail chain. If there is a code Adam at any retail store it means a child is missing and that all employees should cover all exits, until the child is reunited with the parent. This means that any child, even if it is with a grown-up that claims to be the child's parent must be stopped and detained for ID purposes. I've never actually had to do this at King Soopers, but if I did, I'd find it hard to explain. I'd still do it though.
The code Adam, is named after Adam Walsh. This was a kid that was taken back in the 80's at some retail store, right under his dad's nose. He was taken, and tortured, and killed, if memory serves correct. It was a big message, back then, in the 80s, not to talk to strangers. The guy who made that statement as much as he could back then, was John Walsh, Adam's father. John Walsh, now, is the America's Most Wanted host. Talk about a life changing thing...
Well, now I'm thinking I could be wrong, because most places these days have a code Amber, the same as Amber Alert System, but it means the same thing. I could only hope that it's not as grisly a story that inspired the code Amber as the one that inspired the code Adam.
Crap. I was right. She had called to raise the guard. Code Adam, means what it means. Several jittery women came into the front with their handbags and made at some busy work, but kept an eye on us. They were waiting for something to go down. I could only squint, smiley-eyed and wordless at the whole scene.
(Daiquirisha is popping her gum and staring right at Wyatt. Wyatt is returning her gaze with ease and shifting his toothpick around.)
W: Girl, where you get your nails done like that?
D: (Snapping her gum with an eye roll) Why do you care?
W: (Taken aback) Damn, I'm just asking.
D: What?
W: Pshhhh, what? What did I just ask you? Damn.
D: (Eye roll.)
W: (Smiling the whole time) I just asked you, 'Where..you..get..your..nails..done..like..DAT?!' I didn't ask for a side of attitude. YOU know what I'm saying! Damn.
D: Down the street.
W: Is it Hahn's House o' Fashion?
D: Nuh U'h?
W: Uh Hu'h. (He looked proud of himself.)
D: How'd you know that shit? Oooops. (She covers her mouth and sniggles into her hands and looks around)
W: Shhh, the children.
D: Dude, I know...How'd you know that?! (She switches to a whisper.) How'd you know DAT?!
W: My old lady's got a similar style, you know, and she swears by these two little Korean babes.
D&W: (Together) Pik and Cho!
W: They're almost like family. I have to give them a Christmas gift every year. Well, I don't even know them, but my woman does.
D: Mmmmhmmm, I do that to, but I wonder sometimes
D&W: (Together) If they even celiBRATE CHRISTMAS!! YEAH ME TOO!
(Silence)
D: I don't care, look at this job. (Wyatt grabs her fingers and inspects, and proclaims his satisfaction by nodding.)
W: They have a gift.
D: Don't they, though? (There is a long pause while Wyatt inspects every inch-long cuved nail. There is a break only as Wyatt says..)
W: What's this?!
D: It's like a Chinese Kanji symbol for truthful water.
W: It's soooo intricate.
D: I get that every time.
W: Same finger?
D: Mmmmhmmm. I’m a Pieces. It’s a water sign.
W: My woman gets a snake every time. It has little triangles on it's back.
D: Yeah I've seen that one.
(I think I'm about to puke.)
D: (Quickly) You can't pick her up.
W: Pardon?
D: (In a hush) I'd be surprised if you don't get escorted out of here by police. We know who picks up Chloe, and you're not the guy, so what are you doin here, handsome, if it's not to stir up trouble? (She laughs at the end.)
W: I'm afraid you don't understand. Dade got his face chewed off by a dog at work. He's in the hospital, my associate and I came to pick Chloe up to get her to her Auntie's house.
D: You're sayin this on the level?
W: Do I look like the type of man that would lie about something like that?
D: (Krinkling her nose) You could be the white devil himself. I had a dream that I saw the devil once, and he looked just like the KFC guy!
W: Col. Sanders?
D: Yep.
W: I hardly look like him now, do I?
D: I don’t know. You look like you may have seven secret different herbs and spices.
W: Ha! Ha! Ha.
D: Ha! Ha! Ha.
(I really will throw up.)
D: What's the family password?
W: I don't know shit about that. They should have called it in. (Wyatt sighs.) If they didn't, well, we'll just leave her here. We don't want to cause an uproar. (He glances at the ladies who are eying him. They all have their hands in their purses, no doubt clutching mace, tazers, hand grenades. ) Daiquirisha thinks for a second and walks into the back room with a...)
D: Hold on a sec, hon.
I'm all cold sweat prickles and Chinese eyes, but I manage to get a handle around myself under the glare of these harsh fluorescent lights and several middle age purse clutching accusers to walk sensibly up next to Wyatt. I'm not quite sure what the goddess of pina colada is doing, but it could be our asses if she is calling the cops from the back office.
She came back rather quickly and motioned to me. Wyatt grimaced. She pointed a long manicured fingernail at a small piece of paper.
"Is this you?" I went to the counter and squinted at a small piece of official looking paper that had my name and number on it. I squinted unnecessarily. (I have 20/10 vision, in both eyes, I have since high school.)
"Yeah, that's me."
"Well why didn't you say so?" said Daiquirisha. I'm reeling at this point. She goes, "Mmhm," as if to size me up yet again. I confide in her as best I can.
"My friend’s lookin to upgrade his girlfriend," Wyatt elbows me hard in the ribs. "He likes good lookin black ladies," I wheeze and laugh.
We had already been cleared by Dade himself, and were completely confirmed by Auntie Laura. The heavily armed day care workers sheepishly brought Chloe out to see us and stepped her down from the raised countertop to meet two of the most retarded and wrong men she will ever meet until she reaches drinking age.
She recognized me for some reason. Chloe ran at me with her arms up in the air and yelled, “Orange man! Orange man!” I was a little surprised as Chloe had seen me only a handful of times in her scant existence on this planet, and yet she called me, Orange Man?”
I was surprised and embraced her and picked her up as she ran to me. Her little arms wrapped around my neck, and I felt a strange elation. It was unconditional love and trust, happiness and faith. It killed me emotionally. I was “Orange Man”. Chloe clung to me and yelled into my face, “IS DADDY O.K.!?” I crunched her head back into my neck for a second and glowered over at Daquirisha. She shrugged at me, and winked at Wyatt who was eyeballing me with his mouth open.
I thought quickly, and let Chloe look at me again. I said, “Daddy looks like a mummy!”
“Daddy looks like Mommy?!”
“No. He looks like a mummy!” She frowned at me while I said this and shook her little head. I felt as if I had just been a bad actor and was panned by the most influential critic playing a bit part that I was never meant to play. It broke my heart. I was holding this little thing in my arms and felt I like the child.
Chloe wailed, “Nooooooooo!” The ladies in the room clenched at their purses again.
I sputtered, “No! It’s okay!” She calmed, and creased her eyebrows at me. I said, “I’m going to tell you the story of the baddest doggy ever. Your daddy stopped him. He was a baaaaad doggy.” She nodded. “The worst doggy ever.” She looked at me again with suspicion.
Wyatt had hooked his foot against my foot and had shoved a finger into my waist, in an awesome and subtle attempt to get us the fuck out of the Little Worms Day Academy, but I must have felt like a piece of stone. I couldn’t move until little Chloe was OK to do so. I couldn’t believe it. “Daddy can’t wait to see you, but the doggy bit him.” Her eyes got so wide.
“Bit?”
“Yep, but he’s OK, and he’s waiting to see you, but the doctor wanted to make sure that the doggy didn’t hurt him.”
“Why?” She started to break down and cry a little.
“No. No. Shhhhhh. Your daddy beat the doggy. Daddy is okay, but you know how doctors are,” and I nodded my head.
She thought for a second and nodded her head too and said, “Are we going?”
I said, “Uh huh,” and put a hand on Wyatt’s shoulder, waved to Daiquirisha and I led our way out of the daycare. Chloe clung to me for reasons that I can’t explain, but I felt like I was one of the few people that could feel this way about her. Perhaps Dade had known that. He had discerned that once I was touched by his baby girl who had this unknown affinity for me, she had even had a nickname for me, that I would actually die before letting her meet any harm. It was a warm, orange feeling that took me over like a manly tsunami. This steady steam of protectiveness bolstered me as we talked while I carried her to Wyatt’s car.
She pointed to Wyatt, “Is he a cowboy?”
“Yes. He’s definitely a cowboy.”
She was asking me, “Why are you so orange?”
I said, “I’m not all orange!” I put her in the backseat behind Wyatt and continued, “Why are you pink?” I strapped her in the backseat and was indicating a shock of Chloe’s hair which had a little pink stripe in the bangs of her kid-like, ultra-blonde hair.
Wyatt had already sat in the driver’s seat and wordlessly passed me a small bag of Cheetos over his shoulder. I smirked and Chloe’s eyes lit up.
I opened the bag carefully and passed them to her. She grabbed them and settled back into the Volvo’s back seat. She said, “ Mommy gave me pink hair.”
“It’s very pretty.”
“No it’s not.” She said, looking very serious with her Cheetos in a big girl seat. I smiled at her.
“I think it’s just lovely.” I made sure that she was secure in her seat and she still regarded me with some suspicion.
She said, “Hm.” And crunched on some Cheetos.
I walked around the Volvo, and settled in next to Wyatt. Behind us, a din of crunching fried corn matter and orange cheese dust.
I let out a secretive giggle, and turned to Wyatt and was like, “Nice call on the Cheetos.”
He snorted and pulled out a cigarette and hissed, “Where to now, fuckbag?” I sombered a bit.
“Let me use your cell for a sec,” I said. Wyatt curled his lip and sighed with disgust and pulled it from the center console and handed it over. I pulled my pager out of my pocket and surfed for an important number. Wyatt started to pull the car from the parking lot and I was trying to find the callback number that would help me out. There was one and only one.Wyatt keyed his old-school CD player and the song "Runnin Down a Dream" wrang out.
We headed north, into Denver.
At some point after trying two other numbers, Johnny answered.
“WEEEEEEOOOOOOOH! What’s up lettucehead!?”
“This is Red!”
“OOOOOOHHHH! What do ya know, fuck-o! Where’s Wyatt?”
“Are you drunk?”
“FFFFFFuck you…”
“So you are….You at home, J-Boy?
“Sure am, are you guys comin by?”
“Uh…maybe. Can you help us? I’m looking for a phone number…”
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Chapter 11 "The Greeley Vampire"
Wyatt was looking at me every now and then on the way over to the daycare. I wasn't saying much. I think he wanted me talk, but I was full of booze and trying to think of a viable situation in which we could pick up Chloe. He was playing 'The Best of Tom Petty' on his car CD player which was a CD Walkman hooked into his tape player with one of those tape hook-up dealies. In a world of MP3 players, it looked like a giant square dinosaur of a device. He was playing it loud. I was thankful he wasn't saying anything, because I didn't have one single idea. Wyatt and I were partners in crime, he knew that mind was mulling over the situation and was cool to let me think out the problem of getting Dade's daughter, but at this point, I would be grateful to hear him say anything.
"This is ridiculous," I sighed. There was silence, Wyatt was smoking a cigarette and gravely nodding to the beat of "Don't Come Around". "We have to be the legal guardian..."
"Hmph," said Wyatt as he smirked into a cloud of smoke.
"I'm serious, man. Officer Mayhew, the lesser one, he said...."
"Hey, chill, if that's the case, why would Dade send you?" Tom Petty was singing the opening licks of 'I Won't Back Down'. "Just finish the job and go see your beautiful meat mistress," Wyatt was emboldened. I looked at him critically for a moment and realized his demeanor wasn't quite normal. What could it be? He's fired up about something. "You know I hate driving drunk," he sucked his breath through his clenched teeth into the dwindling sunlight. "We'll get her."
I nodded, and lit a cigarette and opened the passenger window of the car. I stuck my arm and half of my head out of the window. I let the beautiful red and orange light of the fading sun in. There was an approaching storm from the west. The sun hit my face intermittently as the long shadows of buildings and trees buffeted the outlines of the city streets.
It is times like this when the framed space of trees and buildings allow me to see the movie of my life in slow motion. It's where I get my power to alter the perception of time. Regression. Every flash of dark and light are a new or an old image of horror and deliverance from myself. This story. My eyes register the landscape and the people, but I am reliving the pains and pleasures of my life through graphic hallucinations spurned by the tiny patterns that my eyes perceive as miles slam through them. It's as if you're sitting next to a giant piece of film as it rolls through a projector at 24 frames a second. It's as if you're so close to it that you can only make out certain pieces of it. It's like a Monet painting too close. You can make any swirl of color a beast of your imagination. It is a truly special time of the day, the sunset, or the gloaming. Wyatt's words were of comfort, and true. If Dade didn't set up the appointment for the Chloe pick up, it wasn't my deal, now was it?
As we drove east, I was lost in my thoughts.
This one time when I was in college, up in Greeley, I used to drink quite a bit. I drink quite a bit now, but I was younger and more resilient, therefore went at it with more gusto. I did something that literally scarred me for life. Those were good times, but this time in particular, I wonder if I was sane. A little legend grew up around this incident that went something like this:
I was thrown through a plate glass window once and I lived to tell the tale.
I went to a party on Halloween, apparently, and I don't remember this very much, I was abusive to a male member of the party. Now, I know I don't get abusive for inappropriate reasons, even when I'm completely hammered. Maybe he didn't like my costume. That year, I was a vampire. I had dressed nicely, because vampires are pimps. I had a black overcoat on. It was over a dark blue pin-striped suit that I had bought from the Salvation Army the day before. I wore no make up. I did, however have a set of fangs custom made by my father. He is a dentist. It was a cool, if not subtle, costume. I had no problems getting into parties all night. Once I bared my custom fangs and acted the part, my costume was one of the best at any party, but there was this last one.
The last party we went to that night was a party thrown by some assholes that told me at the door that I wasn't wearing a costume and that I had to buy a mask from them for ten dollars to enter. All attempts by me to show my custom made fangs fell on deaf ears. I was quite drunk and far from fighting over ten bucks, so I purchased a Strawberry Shortcake mask and went in. The party was beautiful. Drinks, and beautiful women, and Tara, my girlfriend, dancing, drinking, did I mention drinking, because there was drinking.
At some point, I don't remember certain things; I had to be filled in later by my friends that were also at the party. It went like this:
I got in a tussle with a gentleman in the kitchen. I vaguely remember getting him into a chokehold and ramming his head into the refrigerator. Apparently, I knocked him out. He was the cousin of some guy that was throwing the party. I got summarily ejected by several large gentleman, that chased me down the muddy alley after some fisticuffs. I remember falling down while running down the alley. Apparently there was a guy chasing after me after all his friends had stopped and he tried to tackle me. He only succeeded in head-butting my knee and passed out or was knocked out, but I fell down anyway. After getting up, I was covered in mud and remember thinking, "Tara's not going to like this at all."
I remember taking off my overcoat and covering my would-be attacker with it. Then I walked back to the front of the house to re-enter the party. This is where it gets hazy. Supposedly, this guy befriended me. For the whole rest of the night I called him simply, "Mexican." I've never seen him before or have since. Sometimes I think he might be a dream, but since my friends have recollections of him, he had to be real. Tangible, and true, although I remember nothing of him except for a friendly presence over my shoulder during the ensuing moments. Ah, Mexican, where ever you are, call me!
There are stories as if he was kicked out of the party a little before I was. There are also stories as if I did some bumps of crystal meth with him before we came back to the party. There were stories as if I just pulled this guy from the street as I came back. None of these stories surprised me, but the truth is probably stranger.
Apparently, we came back in force. We started shit with everybody. I was ejected head first through a large screen door with a plate glass window front. No screen, just a plate glass window. I remember this part very well. It took three or four large gentlemen to heave me through it. Someone had torn my Salvation Army suit jacket off during the tussle and I remember tucking and rolling into a cannonball to save my face and everything else.
As I went through, the screen door crumpled and shattered and I heard the crowd go, "OooooH!"
When I got up I remember feeling okay. I walked back towards the house. People moved away from me in horror. I grabbed what was left of the screen door, and by then I felt warm trickles all over my body. I must have been cut in a million places. My hands and forearms were dripping with rage. One of the guys that threw my through the door tried to stop me from coming in. I could only think about finding Tara and going home. When he tried to stop me it was like trying to stop a train. I over came him in two swipes of blood drenched, adrenaline raged, alcohol induced, haymakers. Bless Tara. She found me quickly and drove me to our home in her friend's Jeep Wrangler. It didn't have its top on and I remember shivering deeply the few blocks of the ride home.
What happened next is the weirdest thing ever. Tara threw me into the shower and hosed me off with cold water. She closed my wounds with super-glue. I'm talking gaping wounds on my back, my forearms, knees and hands. She quietly closed all of them.
Then she did something weirder. To this day, I have nothing that matches it. After I was all closed up, and she had stopped bleeding, she laid me down on our bed and fucked me so sweetly. She took care. She made sure. She didn't want to injure all of these new wounds. We came together. Fuck, it was amazing.
After that there was a stupid legend that ran rampant upon the UNC campus. "The Vampire" or the “Greeley Vampire” as the story had come to be known, he got his revenge that night. I was both too afraid and too mortified to fess up that it was me. Everyone who new it was me came up with a convenient story about where they were at the time. It was easily forgotten, and I was thankful for it. My wounds were closed and my blood was forgotten, to this day, I have little pink, raised scars all over. After that day I made a solemn oath, mostly to myself, to never come in contact with plate glass again. And tequila and or meth.
"This is ridiculous," I sighed. There was silence, Wyatt was smoking a cigarette and gravely nodding to the beat of "Don't Come Around". "We have to be the legal guardian..."
"Hmph," said Wyatt as he smirked into a cloud of smoke.
"I'm serious, man. Officer Mayhew, the lesser one, he said...."
"Hey, chill, if that's the case, why would Dade send you?" Tom Petty was singing the opening licks of 'I Won't Back Down'. "Just finish the job and go see your beautiful meat mistress," Wyatt was emboldened. I looked at him critically for a moment and realized his demeanor wasn't quite normal. What could it be? He's fired up about something. "You know I hate driving drunk," he sucked his breath through his clenched teeth into the dwindling sunlight. "We'll get her."
I nodded, and lit a cigarette and opened the passenger window of the car. I stuck my arm and half of my head out of the window. I let the beautiful red and orange light of the fading sun in. There was an approaching storm from the west. The sun hit my face intermittently as the long shadows of buildings and trees buffeted the outlines of the city streets.
It is times like this when the framed space of trees and buildings allow me to see the movie of my life in slow motion. It's where I get my power to alter the perception of time. Regression. Every flash of dark and light are a new or an old image of horror and deliverance from myself. This story. My eyes register the landscape and the people, but I am reliving the pains and pleasures of my life through graphic hallucinations spurned by the tiny patterns that my eyes perceive as miles slam through them. It's as if you're sitting next to a giant piece of film as it rolls through a projector at 24 frames a second. It's as if you're so close to it that you can only make out certain pieces of it. It's like a Monet painting too close. You can make any swirl of color a beast of your imagination. It is a truly special time of the day, the sunset, or the gloaming. Wyatt's words were of comfort, and true. If Dade didn't set up the appointment for the Chloe pick up, it wasn't my deal, now was it?
As we drove east, I was lost in my thoughts.
This one time when I was in college, up in Greeley, I used to drink quite a bit. I drink quite a bit now, but I was younger and more resilient, therefore went at it with more gusto. I did something that literally scarred me for life. Those were good times, but this time in particular, I wonder if I was sane. A little legend grew up around this incident that went something like this:
I was thrown through a plate glass window once and I lived to tell the tale.
I went to a party on Halloween, apparently, and I don't remember this very much, I was abusive to a male member of the party. Now, I know I don't get abusive for inappropriate reasons, even when I'm completely hammered. Maybe he didn't like my costume. That year, I was a vampire. I had dressed nicely, because vampires are pimps. I had a black overcoat on. It was over a dark blue pin-striped suit that I had bought from the Salvation Army the day before. I wore no make up. I did, however have a set of fangs custom made by my father. He is a dentist. It was a cool, if not subtle, costume. I had no problems getting into parties all night. Once I bared my custom fangs and acted the part, my costume was one of the best at any party, but there was this last one.
The last party we went to that night was a party thrown by some assholes that told me at the door that I wasn't wearing a costume and that I had to buy a mask from them for ten dollars to enter. All attempts by me to show my custom made fangs fell on deaf ears. I was quite drunk and far from fighting over ten bucks, so I purchased a Strawberry Shortcake mask and went in. The party was beautiful. Drinks, and beautiful women, and Tara, my girlfriend, dancing, drinking, did I mention drinking, because there was drinking.
At some point, I don't remember certain things; I had to be filled in later by my friends that were also at the party. It went like this:
I got in a tussle with a gentleman in the kitchen. I vaguely remember getting him into a chokehold and ramming his head into the refrigerator. Apparently, I knocked him out. He was the cousin of some guy that was throwing the party. I got summarily ejected by several large gentleman, that chased me down the muddy alley after some fisticuffs. I remember falling down while running down the alley. Apparently there was a guy chasing after me after all his friends had stopped and he tried to tackle me. He only succeeded in head-butting my knee and passed out or was knocked out, but I fell down anyway. After getting up, I was covered in mud and remember thinking, "Tara's not going to like this at all."
I remember taking off my overcoat and covering my would-be attacker with it. Then I walked back to the front of the house to re-enter the party. This is where it gets hazy. Supposedly, this guy befriended me. For the whole rest of the night I called him simply, "Mexican." I've never seen him before or have since. Sometimes I think he might be a dream, but since my friends have recollections of him, he had to be real. Tangible, and true, although I remember nothing of him except for a friendly presence over my shoulder during the ensuing moments. Ah, Mexican, where ever you are, call me!
There are stories as if he was kicked out of the party a little before I was. There are also stories as if I did some bumps of crystal meth with him before we came back to the party. There were stories as if I just pulled this guy from the street as I came back. None of these stories surprised me, but the truth is probably stranger.
Apparently, we came back in force. We started shit with everybody. I was ejected head first through a large screen door with a plate glass window front. No screen, just a plate glass window. I remember this part very well. It took three or four large gentlemen to heave me through it. Someone had torn my Salvation Army suit jacket off during the tussle and I remember tucking and rolling into a cannonball to save my face and everything else.
As I went through, the screen door crumpled and shattered and I heard the crowd go, "OooooH!"
When I got up I remember feeling okay. I walked back towards the house. People moved away from me in horror. I grabbed what was left of the screen door, and by then I felt warm trickles all over my body. I must have been cut in a million places. My hands and forearms were dripping with rage. One of the guys that threw my through the door tried to stop me from coming in. I could only think about finding Tara and going home. When he tried to stop me it was like trying to stop a train. I over came him in two swipes of blood drenched, adrenaline raged, alcohol induced, haymakers. Bless Tara. She found me quickly and drove me to our home in her friend's Jeep Wrangler. It didn't have its top on and I remember shivering deeply the few blocks of the ride home.
What happened next is the weirdest thing ever. Tara threw me into the shower and hosed me off with cold water. She closed my wounds with super-glue. I'm talking gaping wounds on my back, my forearms, knees and hands. She quietly closed all of them.
Then she did something weirder. To this day, I have nothing that matches it. After I was all closed up, and she had stopped bleeding, she laid me down on our bed and fucked me so sweetly. She took care. She made sure. She didn't want to injure all of these new wounds. We came together. Fuck, it was amazing.
After that there was a stupid legend that ran rampant upon the UNC campus. "The Vampire" or the “Greeley Vampire” as the story had come to be known, he got his revenge that night. I was both too afraid and too mortified to fess up that it was me. Everyone who new it was me came up with a convenient story about where they were at the time. It was easily forgotten, and I was thankful for it. My wounds were closed and my blood was forgotten, to this day, I have little pink, raised scars all over. After that day I made a solemn oath, mostly to myself, to never come in contact with plate glass again. And tequila and or meth.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Chapter 10 "Pokemon Lunchbox"
Dear reader, at this point I feel as if I need to back up a little, because there will be a moment where you will inevitably wonder about certain details of my life, and how or why I came to be in certain situations. Since the need to explain this fact of my being, my livelihood, will come up later; this small fact must be addressed.
I am a highly successful small-time crook.
I am serious.
I make about 24,000 dollars a year at my straight job.
I make about 20,000 dollars in four to five nights a year.
I am a thief. I am a con-artist. I don't really have a conscience about it either, it troubles me very little. At some point I decided that these minimal paying jobs that I went to and from on a weekly basis, were not responsible for me. I couldn't blame my lack of education or moral upbringing on them. I decided that if my credit and capitalistic requirements were sub-par, that I would enact furious retribution against institutions and persons that I would blame, if I cared to.
Insurance companies piss me off. Banks piss me off. Big box retail outlets really piss me off. Rich real estate agents piss me off. You know the kind of credit strapped suburbanite dwellers, that ride their Harley's on the weeked, so they can rebel against...WHAT? Themselves?! People suck. And I will rob them.
I'll rob people that will never miss it, companies that can't keep track of it, and entities that are too stupid to know what they have. Life is survival. You know how much those shoes are that you're wearing? A hundred bucks?! No, I mean on the street. Thirty. That's the bottom line.
To me, anyone with enough sense to figure out the bottom line is smart, not cheap or underhanded.
The first time I ever committed a felony, I was desperate. I wasn't quite out of college, yet. I had no money, and no prospects and all that crap that goes along with being poor, up to your eyeballs in debt, for a peice of paper you don't really need, for the promise of money you will never make with your degree in whatever-the-fuck. So, I was desperate.
I walked into the smallest 4-plex movie theatre in Parker, a town on the outside of the suburbanite wasteland of Denver. I walked into that place with a carrot in my coat pocket and a .25 caliber pistol strapped to my ankle. Right before, I decided to leave the gun on my ankle for emergencies only. I felt as if I was stepping into a dark world that I may never come back from, this was my way of justifying my humanity. I walked in there, and grabbed the manager and told him to use the keys. I had timed it so that they had taken in all of the money for the seven-o-clock movies on the weekend that one of the Lord of The Rings movies came out. I grabbed the twenty-something manager, and poked that carrot into his back and pushed him into the box office door screaming, "Use the keys! Don't look at me!"
He was crapping his pants, but he got that door open lickety split. When we got into the box office, there were two teenagers sitting there with blank looks on their faces. One was a small blonde girl, and the other was a fat blonde pimply faced boy. I didn't want to scare them too much, so I shoved the spindly manager into a corner and said, "Tell them!"
"Were being robbed," he said coldly. "Do whatever he says." The kids were frozen. This was no good, so leaned in and whispered to them.
"This is just a big prank," I hissed, and then showed them the carrot. I was impressed, they didn't laugh, and they went straight to work emptying the registers with smirks on their young faces. The fat kid even emptied out his Pokemon lunch pail to put the money into. (He was some kind of D and D raver type kid. However, I was thankful for his forethought. I hadn't really planned for this eventuality.)
After that, I ripped the only phone I could find out of the wall and said, or rather hissed, "Stay here." I closed the box office door and locked the top lock with the manager's key. It took me two tries because I didn't know which key was which, but once I did that, the adrenaline was driving me mad. I was going to get caught. I knew it. I turned around to the lobby, and the concessions. There were a couple late-comers milling around, getting popcorn, playing a video game. Nothing. No one saw and or reacted to my presence, what-so-ever. Creepy.
I walked into the concession aisle and declared, "THIS IS A ROBBERY! OPEN YOUR DRAWERS NOW!" More blank looks from the cashiers, all teenagers, two girls, one guy. I saw one late-comer take cover behind a full length cut-out of Gandolf and another one, a Hispanic, short, pregnant woman, she whimpered and cowered against her tall Hispanic boyfriend. He was just staring at me like the cashiers, as were the other handful of occupants. At this point, it had occurred to me that I should have worn like a ski mask, or pantyhose over the head or something, but, nope. There was a long silence. My mind was turning cartwheels. I was still twitching this carrot around in my coat pocket like an idiot, holding a Pokemon lunchbox. Still, this eerie silence. It felt like it lasted for about seventeen minutes, but in fact, it probably only lasted like seven seconds. I shrugged, "Get over here," I whispered exasperated to the teenagers; I motioned at them with my gun-carrot-coat hand. We huddled behind the popcorn thingee.
"This is just a huge prank on your boss; it's his birthday present from some very sick friends." The guy teenager, whose name badge said BRENT, piped up.
"But his birthday was last week!"
I inhaled sharply, oh the horror, but I recovered well and said, "Exactly! Ass dick!" And then I smacked him on the back of the head. I showed them the carrot. They all sniggled a bit. "Empty the drawers." This was getting fun.
"We can't." It was EILEEN from her name badge. Eileen was a beautiful little Asian-white girl kid with green eyes. "We can't open the drawers by ourselves!"
I glowered at her for a second and said, "Let’s just pretend..." I looked up at the menu board and put my carrot and my hand on her shoulder and continued, "I ordered a 'Colossal Tub' and paid with a ten, okay?" They all nodded and went to work. My Pokemon lunchbox was filled to capacity.
I dodged out into theatre number four, through the darkened capacity crowd watching god knows what preview, for god knows what. I had tunnel vision. I had planned this exit. All sound was a wash of static in my ears and I only had one goal. My eyes were fixated on that side exit door. I knew exactly where to go and how many steps were required. When you're sprinting, you can actually speed time up. I'm much better at slowing time down, but when you're running for your life, there is a certain lack of detail, a certain white smoke around the edges of the frames of every waking moment. When you’re running for your life...
I slammed through the exit door, and found the bike. It was an old cruiser that I had actually restored to some working order, just for this moment. It cost me fifteen dollars. It was a Schwinn. I bought it off of a friend of mine in school up north, in Greeley. The bike was tied to the railing on the up ramp into the parking lot from theatre four. It was held to the fence by an old U-lock that didn't work. When I tugged the bike from the railing, the U-lock fell apart, breaking the bike free. I tugged off my sweater, with that; my thin jacket easily came with it. I stuffed the sweater, jacket, carrot and the two halves of the U-Lock into the basket on the front of the red and rusted Schwinn, and walked it the rest of the way up the ramp. I pulled an orange hunter's beanie from my back pocket and tugged it over my head. Finally, I stuck the Pokemon lunchbox on to the top of my Schwinn basket and rode into suburbanite oblivion, trailing my misty hyperventilating breath as the only clue that I had committed a crime, a felony.
I glanced at my watch as I pedaled into the subdivision where I had parked my car. There was a police cruiser that passed in front of me at a high rate of speed as I crossed a neighborhood intersection. My watch said 7:37pm. If my calculations are correct, it had taken me a mere four minutes to rob that theatre. I passed street after street, like a merry paper boy tossing item after item into different brown and crusty, snow dappled lawns. First was the sweater, which I easily separated from the jacket. I put the jacket back in the basket and tossed the U-lock barrel, next. Shortly after that, the U-rod. Then, as I drove past a mailbox, I lightly draped the jacket over it, then, finally, the carrot. I took a huge bite of it as I was riding and tossed it over my shoulder. It tasted good. It tasted a little coppery, like money, maybe, if you were so inclined, like blood. I parked my car near a large cul-de-sac that headed downhill. I grabbed the Pokemon lunch box and sent the Schwinn down the hill to oblivion. I had secretly hoped some boy or girl would find it and make it their own. I hopped in my car. At that point, I was leasing a new Chevy Cavalier, and took off into the chill night air. My take for that night was four thousand, nine hundred, and sixty eight dollars. I still have the Pokemon lunch box.
I am a highly successful small-time crook.
I am serious.
I make about 24,000 dollars a year at my straight job.
I make about 20,000 dollars in four to five nights a year.
I am a thief. I am a con-artist. I don't really have a conscience about it either, it troubles me very little. At some point I decided that these minimal paying jobs that I went to and from on a weekly basis, were not responsible for me. I couldn't blame my lack of education or moral upbringing on them. I decided that if my credit and capitalistic requirements were sub-par, that I would enact furious retribution against institutions and persons that I would blame, if I cared to.
Insurance companies piss me off. Banks piss me off. Big box retail outlets really piss me off. Rich real estate agents piss me off. You know the kind of credit strapped suburbanite dwellers, that ride their Harley's on the weeked, so they can rebel against...WHAT? Themselves?! People suck. And I will rob them.
I'll rob people that will never miss it, companies that can't keep track of it, and entities that are too stupid to know what they have. Life is survival. You know how much those shoes are that you're wearing? A hundred bucks?! No, I mean on the street. Thirty. That's the bottom line.
To me, anyone with enough sense to figure out the bottom line is smart, not cheap or underhanded.
The first time I ever committed a felony, I was desperate. I wasn't quite out of college, yet. I had no money, and no prospects and all that crap that goes along with being poor, up to your eyeballs in debt, for a peice of paper you don't really need, for the promise of money you will never make with your degree in whatever-the-fuck. So, I was desperate.
I walked into the smallest 4-plex movie theatre in Parker, a town on the outside of the suburbanite wasteland of Denver. I walked into that place with a carrot in my coat pocket and a .25 caliber pistol strapped to my ankle. Right before, I decided to leave the gun on my ankle for emergencies only. I felt as if I was stepping into a dark world that I may never come back from, this was my way of justifying my humanity. I walked in there, and grabbed the manager and told him to use the keys. I had timed it so that they had taken in all of the money for the seven-o-clock movies on the weekend that one of the Lord of The Rings movies came out. I grabbed the twenty-something manager, and poked that carrot into his back and pushed him into the box office door screaming, "Use the keys! Don't look at me!"
He was crapping his pants, but he got that door open lickety split. When we got into the box office, there were two teenagers sitting there with blank looks on their faces. One was a small blonde girl, and the other was a fat blonde pimply faced boy. I didn't want to scare them too much, so I shoved the spindly manager into a corner and said, "Tell them!"
"Were being robbed," he said coldly. "Do whatever he says." The kids were frozen. This was no good, so leaned in and whispered to them.
"This is just a big prank," I hissed, and then showed them the carrot. I was impressed, they didn't laugh, and they went straight to work emptying the registers with smirks on their young faces. The fat kid even emptied out his Pokemon lunch pail to put the money into. (He was some kind of D and D raver type kid. However, I was thankful for his forethought. I hadn't really planned for this eventuality.)
After that, I ripped the only phone I could find out of the wall and said, or rather hissed, "Stay here." I closed the box office door and locked the top lock with the manager's key. It took me two tries because I didn't know which key was which, but once I did that, the adrenaline was driving me mad. I was going to get caught. I knew it. I turned around to the lobby, and the concessions. There were a couple late-comers milling around, getting popcorn, playing a video game. Nothing. No one saw and or reacted to my presence, what-so-ever. Creepy.
I walked into the concession aisle and declared, "THIS IS A ROBBERY! OPEN YOUR DRAWERS NOW!" More blank looks from the cashiers, all teenagers, two girls, one guy. I saw one late-comer take cover behind a full length cut-out of Gandolf and another one, a Hispanic, short, pregnant woman, she whimpered and cowered against her tall Hispanic boyfriend. He was just staring at me like the cashiers, as were the other handful of occupants. At this point, it had occurred to me that I should have worn like a ski mask, or pantyhose over the head or something, but, nope. There was a long silence. My mind was turning cartwheels. I was still twitching this carrot around in my coat pocket like an idiot, holding a Pokemon lunchbox. Still, this eerie silence. It felt like it lasted for about seventeen minutes, but in fact, it probably only lasted like seven seconds. I shrugged, "Get over here," I whispered exasperated to the teenagers; I motioned at them with my gun-carrot-coat hand. We huddled behind the popcorn thingee.
"This is just a huge prank on your boss; it's his birthday present from some very sick friends." The guy teenager, whose name badge said BRENT, piped up.
"But his birthday was last week!"
I inhaled sharply, oh the horror, but I recovered well and said, "Exactly! Ass dick!" And then I smacked him on the back of the head. I showed them the carrot. They all sniggled a bit. "Empty the drawers." This was getting fun.
"We can't." It was EILEEN from her name badge. Eileen was a beautiful little Asian-white girl kid with green eyes. "We can't open the drawers by ourselves!"
I glowered at her for a second and said, "Let’s just pretend..." I looked up at the menu board and put my carrot and my hand on her shoulder and continued, "I ordered a 'Colossal Tub' and paid with a ten, okay?" They all nodded and went to work. My Pokemon lunchbox was filled to capacity.
I dodged out into theatre number four, through the darkened capacity crowd watching god knows what preview, for god knows what. I had tunnel vision. I had planned this exit. All sound was a wash of static in my ears and I only had one goal. My eyes were fixated on that side exit door. I knew exactly where to go and how many steps were required. When you're sprinting, you can actually speed time up. I'm much better at slowing time down, but when you're running for your life, there is a certain lack of detail, a certain white smoke around the edges of the frames of every waking moment. When you’re running for your life...
I slammed through the exit door, and found the bike. It was an old cruiser that I had actually restored to some working order, just for this moment. It cost me fifteen dollars. It was a Schwinn. I bought it off of a friend of mine in school up north, in Greeley. The bike was tied to the railing on the up ramp into the parking lot from theatre four. It was held to the fence by an old U-lock that didn't work. When I tugged the bike from the railing, the U-lock fell apart, breaking the bike free. I tugged off my sweater, with that; my thin jacket easily came with it. I stuffed the sweater, jacket, carrot and the two halves of the U-Lock into the basket on the front of the red and rusted Schwinn, and walked it the rest of the way up the ramp. I pulled an orange hunter's beanie from my back pocket and tugged it over my head. Finally, I stuck the Pokemon lunchbox on to the top of my Schwinn basket and rode into suburbanite oblivion, trailing my misty hyperventilating breath as the only clue that I had committed a crime, a felony.
I glanced at my watch as I pedaled into the subdivision where I had parked my car. There was a police cruiser that passed in front of me at a high rate of speed as I crossed a neighborhood intersection. My watch said 7:37pm. If my calculations are correct, it had taken me a mere four minutes to rob that theatre. I passed street after street, like a merry paper boy tossing item after item into different brown and crusty, snow dappled lawns. First was the sweater, which I easily separated from the jacket. I put the jacket back in the basket and tossed the U-lock barrel, next. Shortly after that, the U-rod. Then, as I drove past a mailbox, I lightly draped the jacket over it, then, finally, the carrot. I took a huge bite of it as I was riding and tossed it over my shoulder. It tasted good. It tasted a little coppery, like money, maybe, if you were so inclined, like blood. I parked my car near a large cul-de-sac that headed downhill. I grabbed the Pokemon lunch box and sent the Schwinn down the hill to oblivion. I had secretly hoped some boy or girl would find it and make it their own. I hopped in my car. At that point, I was leasing a new Chevy Cavalier, and took off into the chill night air. My take for that night was four thousand, nine hundred, and sixty eight dollars. I still have the Pokemon lunch box.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Interlude: Vote for the name of Chapter 10
Okay. Anyone out there reading the novel I am so dutifully posting? If so, vote for the name of Chapter 10 -- 'Pokemon Lunchbox' or 'I Pack A .25' Just drop a line on the blog space or on FB or on Twitter...my handle is KungFooGrip.
Chapter 9 "Wyatt"
I hopped back in my car, shut the door and heaved a heavy sigh. Well, they'll have to call Dade's aunt from the daycare, because I sure as hell am spooked. I nodded to myself and tried to start the car, but it shuddered and sputtered and died.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" I put my head on the steering wheel, and groaned, "Don't do this, not now." I tried it again. Vapor lock. No good. I pulled my keys from the ignition, got out and calmly closed the door. I had to find a phone. At least the car was legally parked. I trotted back north a block and started walking on Colfax Avenue again, and quickly found a payphone and dialed up the only person I knew that could bail me out of this one. Wyatt.
Wyatt was probably my only friend in this world. Well, my only good friend, anyway. Hopefully, he wouldn't mind picking me up from this little disaster. His phone was ringing. It took six rings for him to finally pick up, and when he did he wasn't listening. He was ordering food at a pick up window. From the sound of it, I'd guess it was chicken.
"Wyatt!" I was pleading into the phone. The phone rustled for a second, and then he said, "Yeah, who the hell is this?"
"Buddy?"
"Buddy! Well I haven't heard from you in like a week! That's no way to treat a buddy, buddy."
"I know, buddy, but I need you to do me a solid, man."
"A what?"
"A favor. I'm stuck out here on Colfax, and I need you to pick me up."
"Sure thing," he said. "Just let me finish up here, and I'll come get you. Kristy wants to have a chicken dinner tonight."
"I don't want to interrupt anything."
"No, dude, she's got one of her dumbass friends over, and they’re sitting there talking and doing shots of Hot Damn. Where are you, buddy?"
"A few blocks past Colorado, on the north side of Colfax."
"Okay, buddy, I'm at Church's Chicken, just walk down to Colorado and Colfax, and I'll pick you up there in like five minutes or so."
"M'Kay."
"Bye."
I actually couldn't wait to see Wyatt. To tell Wyatt the story of how this day has turned out so far, would be fun. The dog mauling, Dean, Jaime, Officer Mayhew...times two, it had been a day for the ages, and it wasn't over yet. I started walking down Colfax toward Colorado, taking in the scenery of the city, such as it was.
It was becoming rather clear to me that this wasn't a well planned Chloe extraction. Once I picked Chloe up, assuming I could, what was going to happen? Was I to wait patiently at my apartment until Dade or his aunt showed up? Perhaps I could take Chloe on my date with Jaime. That'd be fun. Maybe I was going to be called and I would await further instructions. Right about now, I'm rethinking my distaste for cell phones. To top it all off, I don't exactly know where Dade is being treated at; this is a major fuck all situation. It's important not to lose my head about it, I told myself.
Perhaps I don't have to bail on Dade's daughter quite yet. Wyatt could be helpful.
From certain experiences in my life, I have learned one thing. It is this: Whenever you feel like getting hung up on the smaller details, don't. It's as simple as that; keep the faith in the big picture. That credo is harder to live by than you may think. If I think back to all my previous relationships with women, these memories have been kind of an obsession of mine lately, I remember certain fights vividly. They were always about the small stuff, which ended up adding together to be a huge metaphor for our relationship, and the metaphor ended up being stronger than all of the good things that were present in our shared lives. It's a shame, not seeing the forest for the trees.
I wonder if you are willing to give love away for a metaphor, then, what was your definition of the nature of love to begin with? Did it have exceptions? Would you qualify it? Would you say things like, "Why do you like your friends more than me?" Or, "How can you say that? You know how it makes me feel." Or, "Why don't you make love to me anymore?" That's a biggee, eh? Is it based on the actions of another person? How can it be? How does love become a game of validation where you are basing your worth on what you perceive your lover’s feelings about you to be? I've been obsessed by thoughts like this because I am missing something in the center of my chest that makes me feel so isolated from the rest of the world that it makes me want to scream. Was I responsible for destroying the love in my life?
I've been thinking that love is the byproduct of the sixth human sense. The sixth human sense has always been a mysterious mode of perception, lauded by psychics and mystics to allow super human powers. I think it's more primal. It's sticky and wet, elicits flushed cheeks and moans of pleasure. It's sexual. I think we know on some base level. We see everyone naked in our minds eye. Humans can perceive the baby making attributes, fertility, ovulation. We smell and taste compatibility. We can hear health, success, stamina. It makes us crave. It makes us yearn. We are not human without it. And without love, where would you be now? Sigh. I trudged on.
I reached Colorado Boulevard still stuck in my head. I was replaying scenes of my most idiotic instances on the planet. You know, the ones that make you wince and laugh alternately. As if on cue, Wyatt pulled up in his grey Volvo. It wasn't a new Volvo; it was one of the clunky old ones that I used to make fun of as a kid. You know, "They're boxy, but they're good." Wyatt made like he was going to stop in the middle of Colorado Boulevard, in the middle of rush hour traffic, to pick me up, but he kind of faltered and hung in the middle lane, much to the chagrin of a few motorists behind him. They were honking and swearing. Wyatt looked at me through his open window and kind of shrugged. I indicated for him to take a right by pointing so that he could meet me on the other side of the boulevard. An Acura passed him and honked, I heard him growl some obscenities out of the window, and then watched him cut off a driver on his right and take a right on to Colfax.
"Now that's a true friend," I mused to myself. The pedestrian light turned grey and I jogged across the street. I saw his car pull in to a Good Times burger joint a couple blocks down.
Good Times burgers are a strictly Colorado institution. It's what In n' Out Burger is to California, but in my humble opinion, Good Times handily kicks In 'n Out Burger's ass. (To be fair, I just figured out how to order a burger animal style at In n' Out and now I could be rethinking that whole theory.) Anyhoo, I jogged the rest of the way to his car. Wyatt had gotten out of his car and was casually leaning against the trunk of his car, smoking. I like to say that Wyatt, even though he's barely thirty, has the fashion sense of an older black dude. You know the guy that shows up at the wedding looking better than the groom? Wyatt had more accessories than my last girlfriend. He was wearing a well-worn straw hat complete with an Elvis button, gold plated Elvis style sunglasses, a black button down shirt that must have cost him about seventy dollars, some fashionable jeans, black Pumas, and he was rockin' the gold watch, gold chain with crucifix, and matching gold and onyx ring. I swear he belongs to a different era. Or he could be in a Tarantino film as some scrappy protagonist. Wyatt is of average height, but commands the quiet respect of a larger man; he has brown hair, brown eyes, and five o'clock shadow that reappears soon after he shaves.
If I sound venerable, I am. Wyatt has gotten me out of more than a few tight situations. He's, as I indicated earlier, my best friend. As I jogged toward him, he was beaming at me and shaking his head. Apparently, I entertain him as much as he entertains me. I reached him. I was short of breath, wheezing like a morbidly obese schoolgirl. He embraced me and said in a psuedo New York accent, "You nevah call me!"
"Sorry, mom," I gasped. I was still trying to catch my breath. I leaned over his trunk for a second and inhaled deeply. The trunk of his Volvo was pockmarked from hail damage, and I noticed his Kansas License plate was more than a year expired. "Man, how do you drive with that thing?" I breathed, indicating the plate.
"Buddy, most of the time I use my Chevro-legs."
"You will not believe the day I have had."
"Yeah, well hop in, you can tell me about it, but let's get the fuck out of here." I nodded, and we were on our way.
"Last night I had the thirst."
"Yeah, I know it well,” Wyatt replied.
"So I went to the Goosetown and started on a whiskey regiment, backed by cheap beers."
"Ouch. You meet any women?"
"No, I saw Nelson."
"Nelson?"
"You know, 'fuck stick'?"
"Oh, annoying Nelson? I'm glib and funny, yet so, so sad, Nelson?"
"Yeah," I replied.
"So how is that douche nozzle?"
"Better!"
"Hmmmm."
"He found some kind of rad swingers club online that made him feel like a man again. He gave me their card." I had taken on a somewhat serious tone. Wyatt scoffed.
"Well, if it's got a card, it's legit!" Wyatt laughed.
"Yeah." He was right about that. Anyone can get a business card, even I had one, it said 'Pleasure Professional'. "Although, he did say something to the effect of...he won the trifecta." I gauged Wyatt for a response, but he just lit another cigarette and stared out of the windshield. "You know, the ménage a'...A THREESOME!" Wyatt just nodded, and began to park his car in the small parking lot next to his place. "He said that this group of people changed his life. He said it and I believed it." Wyatt sighed and looked over at me.
"Yeah, I guess you'll believe what you want to hear."
"No, man, you know me. I saw something in him that really changed him..."
"Like I said..."
"Well, this isn't the story, anyway. I don't know why I'm stuck on this point, there's more. I just thought of this as the point at which to start it, but in retrospect, you probably only need to start from the point where I wake up, hung over." We got out of the car and started up towards the apartment. Wyatt flung a brown paper bag at me; it was obviously filled with a titty bit o’ liquor. Somewhere an angel choir sang. I have the thirst, often, especially after run-ins with the po-po. I dare not look in the bag. Knowing Wyatt, it could be anything from Wall Street Whiskey to Crown Royal. It could be anything from Absolut to Skoal.
He pulled the chicken from his car and was like, "What the fuck do you care, man? Nelson, buddy, come on."
"No, it was just weird. I really believed him."
"Maybe he was just drunk, and so were you from the sound of it."
"Yeah...no...he didn't even drink his drink, and HE was buying."
"Hmmmm. Yeah that IS weird. Maybe, he was so drunk, he passed into some kind of drunken sobriety."
"That's stretching..."
"...quite a bit, I know." Wyatt said while nodding and smoking. He motioned his head up toward his apartment and we walked in silence until we got past the front door of the apartment building. "So anyway..." Wyatt said in anticipation. He was looking at me as if I should have been talking the whole time. I nodded a slight apology and continued as we walked up the stairs.
"I went off on my boss, I have a date with Jaime, Dade is in the hospital, and I almost got arrested," I blurted out. Wyatt nodded again and took a drag off of his cig. He smiled and shook his head again. It was if I had amused him. Like I said, we amuse each other, but today, his life was probably a little less interesting than mine had been.
"Mmmmkay, keep on, buddy." We started walking up the stairs, and by the time we got to his door, I was finishing the story about my confrontation with Dean. We got into his place and went to the kitchen. By about this time, I was deep into the dog mauling story. I started to put the brown bag in the freezer, but Wyatt was rapt. He shook his head disapprovingly and pulled it from my hand as I continued. He revealed the bottle. It was a half pint of Jagermeister. He cracked it and took a snort, and offered it to me. I grabbed it and continued. I didn't drink, however. I kept on going; it was coming out of me like a faucet with a bad filter, all spray, no style. It had lots of water pressure behind it. Amazingly, Wyatt held it together, like he was holding a Bell jar straight into the spigot. I love this about Wyatt. He, unlike most of our generation, can hold his attention span, without trying to top the story, or bring his own stories in at any point. I think we have this in common, although sometimes I wonder about my own attention span.
I was at the end of Dade's story and moving into my little scene with Jaime when he made a quick move and deprived me of the Jagermeister bottle. I had been hoarding it for awhile. Again, he made a short, disapproving shake of his head and proceeded to drain about half of the bottle. He sucked in through his cheeks and bulged his eyes. He handed it back to me. I paused, and took a nip.
I realized, at this point, that I was probably taking too long with this story, and became aware of the two women talking in the front room. One of them was Kristy. Wyatt had dinner for her in the form of Church's Fried Chicken. Wyatt was fingering the bag o' chicken as he listened to my long ass story. Kristy is Wyatt's long term girlfriend. The other one was either Mandi, Candi, Sandi, Brandi, or Mandy. ("...with a 'y', not an 'i'...") I didn't know. I made out with one of them...once.
I made a head nod towards the front room. Wyatt laughed out loud and then gave me a dismissive hand gesture. He didn't really give a flying fuck. He then cupped his hand to his ear. The acoustics aren't great in his pad, but I heard snippets of girly conversation via the hallway. It was really insipid. Fashion, shoes, comments about "that bitch" were all present. It's like Wyatt and I weren't even there. We could have been privy to some real female bullshit convo, but fuck that. It was kind of cool. The girls didn't care, and neither did we. In my past relationships, my women couldn't wait to get all up in my business. Wyatt seemed to be invulnerable and invisible to this kind of shit. It is something that will haunt him later in this story, but something that will also set him free.
We finished the small bottle of Jager whilst I finished up my story, and somehow we moved to small glasses of white Russians. I must have talked for about thirty minutes. I was getting a little tipsy, but I was acutely aware of the time, even though I had wordlessly given up on the Chloe extraction. It was about at this moment when Wyatt said, "Let's go get Chloe."
To spite my best judgment, I said, "Alright."
"WHAT THE FUCK?!" I put my head on the steering wheel, and groaned, "Don't do this, not now." I tried it again. Vapor lock. No good. I pulled my keys from the ignition, got out and calmly closed the door. I had to find a phone. At least the car was legally parked. I trotted back north a block and started walking on Colfax Avenue again, and quickly found a payphone and dialed up the only person I knew that could bail me out of this one. Wyatt.
Wyatt was probably my only friend in this world. Well, my only good friend, anyway. Hopefully, he wouldn't mind picking me up from this little disaster. His phone was ringing. It took six rings for him to finally pick up, and when he did he wasn't listening. He was ordering food at a pick up window. From the sound of it, I'd guess it was chicken.
"Wyatt!" I was pleading into the phone. The phone rustled for a second, and then he said, "Yeah, who the hell is this?"
"Buddy?"
"Buddy! Well I haven't heard from you in like a week! That's no way to treat a buddy, buddy."
"I know, buddy, but I need you to do me a solid, man."
"A what?"
"A favor. I'm stuck out here on Colfax, and I need you to pick me up."
"Sure thing," he said. "Just let me finish up here, and I'll come get you. Kristy wants to have a chicken dinner tonight."
"I don't want to interrupt anything."
"No, dude, she's got one of her dumbass friends over, and they’re sitting there talking and doing shots of Hot Damn. Where are you, buddy?"
"A few blocks past Colorado, on the north side of Colfax."
"Okay, buddy, I'm at Church's Chicken, just walk down to Colorado and Colfax, and I'll pick you up there in like five minutes or so."
"M'Kay."
"Bye."
I actually couldn't wait to see Wyatt. To tell Wyatt the story of how this day has turned out so far, would be fun. The dog mauling, Dean, Jaime, Officer Mayhew...times two, it had been a day for the ages, and it wasn't over yet. I started walking down Colfax toward Colorado, taking in the scenery of the city, such as it was.
It was becoming rather clear to me that this wasn't a well planned Chloe extraction. Once I picked Chloe up, assuming I could, what was going to happen? Was I to wait patiently at my apartment until Dade or his aunt showed up? Perhaps I could take Chloe on my date with Jaime. That'd be fun. Maybe I was going to be called and I would await further instructions. Right about now, I'm rethinking my distaste for cell phones. To top it all off, I don't exactly know where Dade is being treated at; this is a major fuck all situation. It's important not to lose my head about it, I told myself.
Perhaps I don't have to bail on Dade's daughter quite yet. Wyatt could be helpful.
From certain experiences in my life, I have learned one thing. It is this: Whenever you feel like getting hung up on the smaller details, don't. It's as simple as that; keep the faith in the big picture. That credo is harder to live by than you may think. If I think back to all my previous relationships with women, these memories have been kind of an obsession of mine lately, I remember certain fights vividly. They were always about the small stuff, which ended up adding together to be a huge metaphor for our relationship, and the metaphor ended up being stronger than all of the good things that were present in our shared lives. It's a shame, not seeing the forest for the trees.
I wonder if you are willing to give love away for a metaphor, then, what was your definition of the nature of love to begin with? Did it have exceptions? Would you qualify it? Would you say things like, "Why do you like your friends more than me?" Or, "How can you say that? You know how it makes me feel." Or, "Why don't you make love to me anymore?" That's a biggee, eh? Is it based on the actions of another person? How can it be? How does love become a game of validation where you are basing your worth on what you perceive your lover’s feelings about you to be? I've been obsessed by thoughts like this because I am missing something in the center of my chest that makes me feel so isolated from the rest of the world that it makes me want to scream. Was I responsible for destroying the love in my life?
I've been thinking that love is the byproduct of the sixth human sense. The sixth human sense has always been a mysterious mode of perception, lauded by psychics and mystics to allow super human powers. I think it's more primal. It's sticky and wet, elicits flushed cheeks and moans of pleasure. It's sexual. I think we know on some base level. We see everyone naked in our minds eye. Humans can perceive the baby making attributes, fertility, ovulation. We smell and taste compatibility. We can hear health, success, stamina. It makes us crave. It makes us yearn. We are not human without it. And without love, where would you be now? Sigh. I trudged on.
I reached Colorado Boulevard still stuck in my head. I was replaying scenes of my most idiotic instances on the planet. You know, the ones that make you wince and laugh alternately. As if on cue, Wyatt pulled up in his grey Volvo. It wasn't a new Volvo; it was one of the clunky old ones that I used to make fun of as a kid. You know, "They're boxy, but they're good." Wyatt made like he was going to stop in the middle of Colorado Boulevard, in the middle of rush hour traffic, to pick me up, but he kind of faltered and hung in the middle lane, much to the chagrin of a few motorists behind him. They were honking and swearing. Wyatt looked at me through his open window and kind of shrugged. I indicated for him to take a right by pointing so that he could meet me on the other side of the boulevard. An Acura passed him and honked, I heard him growl some obscenities out of the window, and then watched him cut off a driver on his right and take a right on to Colfax.
"Now that's a true friend," I mused to myself. The pedestrian light turned grey and I jogged across the street. I saw his car pull in to a Good Times burger joint a couple blocks down.
Good Times burgers are a strictly Colorado institution. It's what In n' Out Burger is to California, but in my humble opinion, Good Times handily kicks In 'n Out Burger's ass. (To be fair, I just figured out how to order a burger animal style at In n' Out and now I could be rethinking that whole theory.) Anyhoo, I jogged the rest of the way to his car. Wyatt had gotten out of his car and was casually leaning against the trunk of his car, smoking. I like to say that Wyatt, even though he's barely thirty, has the fashion sense of an older black dude. You know the guy that shows up at the wedding looking better than the groom? Wyatt had more accessories than my last girlfriend. He was wearing a well-worn straw hat complete with an Elvis button, gold plated Elvis style sunglasses, a black button down shirt that must have cost him about seventy dollars, some fashionable jeans, black Pumas, and he was rockin' the gold watch, gold chain with crucifix, and matching gold and onyx ring. I swear he belongs to a different era. Or he could be in a Tarantino film as some scrappy protagonist. Wyatt is of average height, but commands the quiet respect of a larger man; he has brown hair, brown eyes, and five o'clock shadow that reappears soon after he shaves.
If I sound venerable, I am. Wyatt has gotten me out of more than a few tight situations. He's, as I indicated earlier, my best friend. As I jogged toward him, he was beaming at me and shaking his head. Apparently, I entertain him as much as he entertains me. I reached him. I was short of breath, wheezing like a morbidly obese schoolgirl. He embraced me and said in a psuedo New York accent, "You nevah call me!"
"Sorry, mom," I gasped. I was still trying to catch my breath. I leaned over his trunk for a second and inhaled deeply. The trunk of his Volvo was pockmarked from hail damage, and I noticed his Kansas License plate was more than a year expired. "Man, how do you drive with that thing?" I breathed, indicating the plate.
"Buddy, most of the time I use my Chevro-legs."
"You will not believe the day I have had."
"Yeah, well hop in, you can tell me about it, but let's get the fuck out of here." I nodded, and we were on our way.
"Last night I had the thirst."
"Yeah, I know it well,” Wyatt replied.
"So I went to the Goosetown and started on a whiskey regiment, backed by cheap beers."
"Ouch. You meet any women?"
"No, I saw Nelson."
"Nelson?"
"You know, 'fuck stick'?"
"Oh, annoying Nelson? I'm glib and funny, yet so, so sad, Nelson?"
"Yeah," I replied.
"So how is that douche nozzle?"
"Better!"
"Hmmmm."
"He found some kind of rad swingers club online that made him feel like a man again. He gave me their card." I had taken on a somewhat serious tone. Wyatt scoffed.
"Well, if it's got a card, it's legit!" Wyatt laughed.
"Yeah." He was right about that. Anyone can get a business card, even I had one, it said 'Pleasure Professional'. "Although, he did say something to the effect of...he won the trifecta." I gauged Wyatt for a response, but he just lit another cigarette and stared out of the windshield. "You know, the ménage a'...A THREESOME!" Wyatt just nodded, and began to park his car in the small parking lot next to his place. "He said that this group of people changed his life. He said it and I believed it." Wyatt sighed and looked over at me.
"Yeah, I guess you'll believe what you want to hear."
"No, man, you know me. I saw something in him that really changed him..."
"Like I said..."
"Well, this isn't the story, anyway. I don't know why I'm stuck on this point, there's more. I just thought of this as the point at which to start it, but in retrospect, you probably only need to start from the point where I wake up, hung over." We got out of the car and started up towards the apartment. Wyatt flung a brown paper bag at me; it was obviously filled with a titty bit o’ liquor. Somewhere an angel choir sang. I have the thirst, often, especially after run-ins with the po-po. I dare not look in the bag. Knowing Wyatt, it could be anything from Wall Street Whiskey to Crown Royal. It could be anything from Absolut to Skoal.
He pulled the chicken from his car and was like, "What the fuck do you care, man? Nelson, buddy, come on."
"No, it was just weird. I really believed him."
"Maybe he was just drunk, and so were you from the sound of it."
"Yeah...no...he didn't even drink his drink, and HE was buying."
"Hmmmm. Yeah that IS weird. Maybe, he was so drunk, he passed into some kind of drunken sobriety."
"That's stretching..."
"...quite a bit, I know." Wyatt said while nodding and smoking. He motioned his head up toward his apartment and we walked in silence until we got past the front door of the apartment building. "So anyway..." Wyatt said in anticipation. He was looking at me as if I should have been talking the whole time. I nodded a slight apology and continued as we walked up the stairs.
"I went off on my boss, I have a date with Jaime, Dade is in the hospital, and I almost got arrested," I blurted out. Wyatt nodded again and took a drag off of his cig. He smiled and shook his head again. It was if I had amused him. Like I said, we amuse each other, but today, his life was probably a little less interesting than mine had been.
"Mmmmkay, keep on, buddy." We started walking up the stairs, and by the time we got to his door, I was finishing the story about my confrontation with Dean. We got into his place and went to the kitchen. By about this time, I was deep into the dog mauling story. I started to put the brown bag in the freezer, but Wyatt was rapt. He shook his head disapprovingly and pulled it from my hand as I continued. He revealed the bottle. It was a half pint of Jagermeister. He cracked it and took a snort, and offered it to me. I grabbed it and continued. I didn't drink, however. I kept on going; it was coming out of me like a faucet with a bad filter, all spray, no style. It had lots of water pressure behind it. Amazingly, Wyatt held it together, like he was holding a Bell jar straight into the spigot. I love this about Wyatt. He, unlike most of our generation, can hold his attention span, without trying to top the story, or bring his own stories in at any point. I think we have this in common, although sometimes I wonder about my own attention span.
I was at the end of Dade's story and moving into my little scene with Jaime when he made a quick move and deprived me of the Jagermeister bottle. I had been hoarding it for awhile. Again, he made a short, disapproving shake of his head and proceeded to drain about half of the bottle. He sucked in through his cheeks and bulged his eyes. He handed it back to me. I paused, and took a nip.
I realized, at this point, that I was probably taking too long with this story, and became aware of the two women talking in the front room. One of them was Kristy. Wyatt had dinner for her in the form of Church's Fried Chicken. Wyatt was fingering the bag o' chicken as he listened to my long ass story. Kristy is Wyatt's long term girlfriend. The other one was either Mandi, Candi, Sandi, Brandi, or Mandy. ("...with a 'y', not an 'i'...") I didn't know. I made out with one of them...once.
I made a head nod towards the front room. Wyatt laughed out loud and then gave me a dismissive hand gesture. He didn't really give a flying fuck. He then cupped his hand to his ear. The acoustics aren't great in his pad, but I heard snippets of girly conversation via the hallway. It was really insipid. Fashion, shoes, comments about "that bitch" were all present. It's like Wyatt and I weren't even there. We could have been privy to some real female bullshit convo, but fuck that. It was kind of cool. The girls didn't care, and neither did we. In my past relationships, my women couldn't wait to get all up in my business. Wyatt seemed to be invulnerable and invisible to this kind of shit. It is something that will haunt him later in this story, but something that will also set him free.
We finished the small bottle of Jager whilst I finished up my story, and somehow we moved to small glasses of white Russians. I must have talked for about thirty minutes. I was getting a little tipsy, but I was acutely aware of the time, even though I had wordlessly given up on the Chloe extraction. It was about at this moment when Wyatt said, "Let's go get Chloe."
To spite my best judgment, I said, "Alright."
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Chapter 8 "COPS"
"I am a beautiful woman!" She emphatically reminded me of this. I sighed. It was Tara. She was speaking in my head again. The three year old conversation had the distortion of a telephone call. I remember it sounding more personal. It was some long forgotten conversation in between the mist and mystic of our relationship.
"I DO have men that ask me out, and I think I'll take 'em up on the offer," she continued. "And maybe I'll find a man that actually thinks as much of ME as he does of HIS FRIENDS!" I sighed again, and then I slowed down time to watch her stamp her foot on the ground and stomp out of the room like a little girl. She slowly stormed out of our college apartment, looking more beautiful than she ever did. I groaned as if I was kicked in the stomach. "Do YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"
"No, I really don’t get you sometimes," I muttered.
"DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!? CITIZEN? COMPLY. I am going to restrain you for my protection." I was dazed, it happens sometimes. When I am in terrible, stressful situations, sometimes I think back on my past and sort of block out the present. At present, I was slammed up against the door of my car. My stomach was reeling for two reasons. One, I was being detained by an officer of the law. Two, said officer slammed me into my side view mirror as I was daydreaming.
"Is that necessary, man?" I wheezed.
"COMPLY, citizen." He cranked the cuffs and my wrists into the small of my back.
"Affirmative...fuckin-A,” I could barely breathe. He spun me around and put me on my ass, nearly dumping me off the curb and into the space between my car and the curb. "Oh! Nice! Thank YOU very much officer!!" He still had a hold of my shirt and my legs were skitting about on the grass as he pulled me closer to the sidewalk. Finally, he layed my ass to rest on a wettish patch of grass with a grunt and stood there panting and regarding me.
"Twenty-one-oh-one." His radio went psssshhht.
"Go oh-one." It was dispatch.
"I'm oh-one...standby." He regarded me for about a minute, while catching his breath for some reason. It was as if he had a mighty foot pursuit in apprehending the furious "missile throwing bandit". I was trying to catch my breath from the side view mirror that I caught in the solar-plexus. What a drag.
I will digress, at this point...
I am of the theory that the show "COPS" has done nothing more for society than breed a new smarter criminal, and a new form of cop. This form of cop automatically thinks, no matter how small the bust, that he is somehow being secretly taped. (In a way, they are, via the front camera on their squad car. I suspect that this tape is used solely for police’s advantage and not the suspect's.) So now, I am about to hear from him, not only how he apprehended me, but why, and then he will start on some heavy handed and blunt street cop interrogation.
"COPS" has also bread a new kind of criminal. If you notice, in the later seasons, after COPS: FLORIDA and after COPS: KANSAS CITY and yes, even after COPS: DENVER, the subsequent episodes had less and less of the blurred-blob-over-the-face shit. Why? Dear reader, I'll tell you. It's because, they make you sign some kind of binding legal paperwork to show your face on TV. By signing whatever that form is, they have to give you certain rights. For some reason, it used to work in the favor of defense lawyers. What do they say at the beginning of all COPS shows? "ALL SUSPECTS ARE INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW." Have you noticed that there are no new COPS episodes? There is no new season. It’s still the same shirtless mullet quaffed idiot from 1996. It works out that the criminal's lawyer can subpoena ALL the footage taped during the show. That means any wrong doing by the officer in rolls and rolls of tape can be brought to trial by the defense attorney. That means ANYTHING that the cop did on his supposed documentary run was under scrutiny. Word on the street became this: If you're on COPS, you get off. More and more people were advised to go ahead and sign the waiver, and let their faces be shown on camera. FOX was cool with it, but it became a judicial snafu when anyone tried to prosecute.
The defenses ranged anywhere from, "The cameras made me do it!" to "Man, I thought I was on the REAL WORLD or sumfin." More often than not, it worked. Anyway, all that footage that they still play, on weekends or whenever there is some dead ratings spot on the FOX network, you can be sure COPS is on. The smart criminals have learned volumes from it…Well, anyway I have. Seasons and seasons of episodes have taught me about the cop standard operating procedure. Personal experience has taught me even more. A big bust means more than one cop, and when there is more than one cop, they have to get their story straight at the end of the bust by replaying the bust through conversation. (i.e.: "You were over there, and I was here, and we found him under the kiddie pool, yeah?" Then you restrained him by placing your knee on his face for our protection.) You see this happen all the time on the show. They are planning to testify against you before the report is even filed.
This is my theory and god knows I’ve had chances to test it out, but I’ll get to that later.
I knew that I was not under arrest, or I'd be read my Miranda and poked oh-so-carefully via my head into the squad car, so I was mute, except for the cries of pain as I endured the abuses that were being inflicted upon me by this brute. I've been well trained by our beloved media. So I sat there watching the officer huff and puff as he walked two paces left to right and back again.
He stared at me the whole time; meanwhile, pairs of Hari-Krishnas were walking past our little scene. Two men walking hand in hand…huh. Finally, he spoke, here comes the cop interrogation.
"Drivers license, sir.
"Well now, that's going to be difficult, since I'm sitting on it." He pulled me up slightly by the crook of my shoulder and lifted it out of my butt pocket and came around to face me.
"How much have you had to drink tonight?" He put on a southern drawl that I hadn't heard until now.
"I didn't really notice that it was night outside, sir." I used the same southern drawl, but I was relaxed about it. He thumbed through my wallet and pulled out my old student ID.
"This doesn't look like you," he said. I squinted at it.
"No sir, it doesn't." He was trying to fluster me. The seven year old ID card really didn't, though. He found my License.
"You know your license is expired son?"
"No it's not," I said. He nodded.
"How much have you had to drink tonight?"
"Sir, I fail to see where this is going," I responded.
"Just answer the question." His southern drawl was getting thicker.
"Not a sip, I reckon...sir." The sarcasm in my voice was evident. That was little much.
"Stand up, buddy." Fuck. He grabbed me under the shoulder again. I stood up and faced him. He was short, really short, and had a really skinny head to boot. I mean, his body armor size must have read XF, for X-tra Frodo. I shuddered and winced to bolster his confidence. He regarded my license again.
"You're not 6'3"!"
"No sir!"
"Not a sip, huh?" He was essentially leering at me.
"Nope." I tried not to breathe.
I don’t care if you’ve had half the bar. NEVER EVER say you’ve had anything to drink. EVER.
Oh here we go:
"I was about a hundred yards to the rear of your vehicle when I saw you launch the first missile at that indigent."
"But..."
"I closed the distance quickly and observed you launch another missile at the green ‘91 Festiva causing that driver to perform an erratic maneuver. It was then I decided to perform a traffic apprehension and subdue you for questioning." Cop jargon. I fucking love it. I was smiling.
"Do you find this funny?"
"No, sir..." Although I wondered several things.
How did this cockjockey ever get a squad car? I mean, he WAS the size of a jockey; wouldn't a Palomino or an Appaloosa be better suited for him? Could he actually see over the steering wheel, or did he need some kind of telephone book/blocks on his shoes device to drive the car? (Ala Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.) It would explain the time it took for him to get out of his fucking car.
Also, how the fuck did he know that it was '91 Ford Festiva?! Who knows that? Isn't it a "traffic stop" and not a "traffic apprehension"? I peered at him. He couldn't be any older than I. I looked at his badge.
C. Mayhew. Imagine that.
"Any relation to Carl Mayhew?" I asked.
"He's my brother, I'm Chris."
"Small world, brother," I said.
"What do you know of him?"
"He was just at a vicious dog attack scene that I was part of." Chris Mayhew then spit on my car and coughed. I groaned at the sight of another loogey attaching itself to my car.
"No shit?!"
"No shit, man." I echoed him.
"That was all over the radios! Did you know the guy?"
"Dade? Yeah, I was there, he beat the ever loving shit out of that thing. First he hammer clubbed it..." I was working my shoulders even though my hands were bound behind me. "Then he hit the fucker square in the face, like he was hitting a human."
"How'd he hold it down if it tore up his arm so bad?"
"He squeezed it between his knees."
"No shit, huh?"
"No shit." We were both excited about the topic. It was clear. "Then he finished it off with a 2X4 and a cider block." Chris grimaced.
"Holy shit."
"To tell you the truth, Officer Chris, I have to pick up his daughter from daycare." That's what I'm doing."
"Why the hell are you throwin shit out your car window?!"
"It's..." I grunted and sighed. "...a long story." "That guy in the fucking Festiva..."
"Spit on your car."
"Yes, so you saw it."
"Yeah, so what?" He hocked a snot-filled honker on my car... AGAIN! "You gonna throw something at me now?!"
"No...Well, I can't."
"Would you?"
"No."
"You can wash your car, and you can pick your battles in life, my friend," said Chris the jockey cop. "With what's at stake right now, do you think you chose wisely?"
"No."
"Well..." He looked me up and down. I was a sorry sad sack. Really. "I'll let you off with a warning." He walked around and released the cuffs.
"Thank you Officer Mayhew, sir."
"Uh-huh. Don't thank me. Thank the daycare worker that's gonna let YOU pick up your FRIEND'S kid? You don't think they let just ANYONE pick up kids at those places do you?"
"Uh..."
"You got a longer night ahead of you than you think, kid. But if it's worth anything, don’t worry about the hassle from me. I saw the whole thing. What did you flip him, a quarter, or a nickel, or a dollar?"
"A dollar."
"Sometimes your best intentions, huh?"
"Most of the time, it seems like, Chris." He was already walking back to his squad car.
"Until that day, then,” He called back to me.
"Until that day, Officer Mayhew."
What the fuck was I supposed to do about Chloe? Officer Mayhew was right about daycare and security. What the fuck was I supposed to do about Jaime?
Fuck, I wish I had a cell phone right about now.
"I DO have men that ask me out, and I think I'll take 'em up on the offer," she continued. "And maybe I'll find a man that actually thinks as much of ME as he does of HIS FRIENDS!" I sighed again, and then I slowed down time to watch her stamp her foot on the ground and stomp out of the room like a little girl. She slowly stormed out of our college apartment, looking more beautiful than she ever did. I groaned as if I was kicked in the stomach. "Do YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"
"No, I really don’t get you sometimes," I muttered.
"DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!? CITIZEN? COMPLY. I am going to restrain you for my protection." I was dazed, it happens sometimes. When I am in terrible, stressful situations, sometimes I think back on my past and sort of block out the present. At present, I was slammed up against the door of my car. My stomach was reeling for two reasons. One, I was being detained by an officer of the law. Two, said officer slammed me into my side view mirror as I was daydreaming.
"Is that necessary, man?" I wheezed.
"COMPLY, citizen." He cranked the cuffs and my wrists into the small of my back.
"Affirmative...fuckin-A,” I could barely breathe. He spun me around and put me on my ass, nearly dumping me off the curb and into the space between my car and the curb. "Oh! Nice! Thank YOU very much officer!!" He still had a hold of my shirt and my legs were skitting about on the grass as he pulled me closer to the sidewalk. Finally, he layed my ass to rest on a wettish patch of grass with a grunt and stood there panting and regarding me.
"Twenty-one-oh-one." His radio went psssshhht.
"Go oh-one." It was dispatch.
"I'm oh-one...standby." He regarded me for about a minute, while catching his breath for some reason. It was as if he had a mighty foot pursuit in apprehending the furious "missile throwing bandit". I was trying to catch my breath from the side view mirror that I caught in the solar-plexus. What a drag.
I will digress, at this point...
I am of the theory that the show "COPS" has done nothing more for society than breed a new smarter criminal, and a new form of cop. This form of cop automatically thinks, no matter how small the bust, that he is somehow being secretly taped. (In a way, they are, via the front camera on their squad car. I suspect that this tape is used solely for police’s advantage and not the suspect's.) So now, I am about to hear from him, not only how he apprehended me, but why, and then he will start on some heavy handed and blunt street cop interrogation.
"COPS" has also bread a new kind of criminal. If you notice, in the later seasons, after COPS: FLORIDA and after COPS: KANSAS CITY and yes, even after COPS: DENVER, the subsequent episodes had less and less of the blurred-blob-over-the-face shit. Why? Dear reader, I'll tell you. It's because, they make you sign some kind of binding legal paperwork to show your face on TV. By signing whatever that form is, they have to give you certain rights. For some reason, it used to work in the favor of defense lawyers. What do they say at the beginning of all COPS shows? "ALL SUSPECTS ARE INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW." Have you noticed that there are no new COPS episodes? There is no new season. It’s still the same shirtless mullet quaffed idiot from 1996. It works out that the criminal's lawyer can subpoena ALL the footage taped during the show. That means any wrong doing by the officer in rolls and rolls of tape can be brought to trial by the defense attorney. That means ANYTHING that the cop did on his supposed documentary run was under scrutiny. Word on the street became this: If you're on COPS, you get off. More and more people were advised to go ahead and sign the waiver, and let their faces be shown on camera. FOX was cool with it, but it became a judicial snafu when anyone tried to prosecute.
The defenses ranged anywhere from, "The cameras made me do it!" to "Man, I thought I was on the REAL WORLD or sumfin." More often than not, it worked. Anyway, all that footage that they still play, on weekends or whenever there is some dead ratings spot on the FOX network, you can be sure COPS is on. The smart criminals have learned volumes from it…Well, anyway I have. Seasons and seasons of episodes have taught me about the cop standard operating procedure. Personal experience has taught me even more. A big bust means more than one cop, and when there is more than one cop, they have to get their story straight at the end of the bust by replaying the bust through conversation. (i.e.: "You were over there, and I was here, and we found him under the kiddie pool, yeah?" Then you restrained him by placing your knee on his face for our protection.) You see this happen all the time on the show. They are planning to testify against you before the report is even filed.
This is my theory and god knows I’ve had chances to test it out, but I’ll get to that later.
I knew that I was not under arrest, or I'd be read my Miranda and poked oh-so-carefully via my head into the squad car, so I was mute, except for the cries of pain as I endured the abuses that were being inflicted upon me by this brute. I've been well trained by our beloved media. So I sat there watching the officer huff and puff as he walked two paces left to right and back again.
He stared at me the whole time; meanwhile, pairs of Hari-Krishnas were walking past our little scene. Two men walking hand in hand…huh. Finally, he spoke, here comes the cop interrogation.
"Drivers license, sir.
"Well now, that's going to be difficult, since I'm sitting on it." He pulled me up slightly by the crook of my shoulder and lifted it out of my butt pocket and came around to face me.
"How much have you had to drink tonight?" He put on a southern drawl that I hadn't heard until now.
"I didn't really notice that it was night outside, sir." I used the same southern drawl, but I was relaxed about it. He thumbed through my wallet and pulled out my old student ID.
"This doesn't look like you," he said. I squinted at it.
"No sir, it doesn't." He was trying to fluster me. The seven year old ID card really didn't, though. He found my License.
"You know your license is expired son?"
"No it's not," I said. He nodded.
"How much have you had to drink tonight?"
"Sir, I fail to see where this is going," I responded.
"Just answer the question." His southern drawl was getting thicker.
"Not a sip, I reckon...sir." The sarcasm in my voice was evident. That was little much.
"Stand up, buddy." Fuck. He grabbed me under the shoulder again. I stood up and faced him. He was short, really short, and had a really skinny head to boot. I mean, his body armor size must have read XF, for X-tra Frodo. I shuddered and winced to bolster his confidence. He regarded my license again.
"You're not 6'3"!"
"No sir!"
"Not a sip, huh?" He was essentially leering at me.
"Nope." I tried not to breathe.
I don’t care if you’ve had half the bar. NEVER EVER say you’ve had anything to drink. EVER.
Oh here we go:
"I was about a hundred yards to the rear of your vehicle when I saw you launch the first missile at that indigent."
"But..."
"I closed the distance quickly and observed you launch another missile at the green ‘91 Festiva causing that driver to perform an erratic maneuver. It was then I decided to perform a traffic apprehension and subdue you for questioning." Cop jargon. I fucking love it. I was smiling.
"Do you find this funny?"
"No, sir..." Although I wondered several things.
How did this cockjockey ever get a squad car? I mean, he WAS the size of a jockey; wouldn't a Palomino or an Appaloosa be better suited for him? Could he actually see over the steering wheel, or did he need some kind of telephone book/blocks on his shoes device to drive the car? (Ala Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.) It would explain the time it took for him to get out of his fucking car.
Also, how the fuck did he know that it was '91 Ford Festiva?! Who knows that? Isn't it a "traffic stop" and not a "traffic apprehension"? I peered at him. He couldn't be any older than I. I looked at his badge.
C. Mayhew. Imagine that.
"Any relation to Carl Mayhew?" I asked.
"He's my brother, I'm Chris."
"Small world, brother," I said.
"What do you know of him?"
"He was just at a vicious dog attack scene that I was part of." Chris Mayhew then spit on my car and coughed. I groaned at the sight of another loogey attaching itself to my car.
"No shit?!"
"No shit, man." I echoed him.
"That was all over the radios! Did you know the guy?"
"Dade? Yeah, I was there, he beat the ever loving shit out of that thing. First he hammer clubbed it..." I was working my shoulders even though my hands were bound behind me. "Then he hit the fucker square in the face, like he was hitting a human."
"How'd he hold it down if it tore up his arm so bad?"
"He squeezed it between his knees."
"No shit, huh?"
"No shit." We were both excited about the topic. It was clear. "Then he finished it off with a 2X4 and a cider block." Chris grimaced.
"Holy shit."
"To tell you the truth, Officer Chris, I have to pick up his daughter from daycare." That's what I'm doing."
"Why the hell are you throwin shit out your car window?!"
"It's..." I grunted and sighed. "...a long story." "That guy in the fucking Festiva..."
"Spit on your car."
"Yes, so you saw it."
"Yeah, so what?" He hocked a snot-filled honker on my car... AGAIN! "You gonna throw something at me now?!"
"No...Well, I can't."
"Would you?"
"No."
"You can wash your car, and you can pick your battles in life, my friend," said Chris the jockey cop. "With what's at stake right now, do you think you chose wisely?"
"No."
"Well..." He looked me up and down. I was a sorry sad sack. Really. "I'll let you off with a warning." He walked around and released the cuffs.
"Thank you Officer Mayhew, sir."
"Uh-huh. Don't thank me. Thank the daycare worker that's gonna let YOU pick up your FRIEND'S kid? You don't think they let just ANYONE pick up kids at those places do you?"
"Uh..."
"You got a longer night ahead of you than you think, kid. But if it's worth anything, don’t worry about the hassle from me. I saw the whole thing. What did you flip him, a quarter, or a nickel, or a dollar?"
"A dollar."
"Sometimes your best intentions, huh?"
"Most of the time, it seems like, Chris." He was already walking back to his squad car.
"Until that day, then,” He called back to me.
"Until that day, Officer Mayhew."
What the fuck was I supposed to do about Chloe? Officer Mayhew was right about daycare and security. What the fuck was I supposed to do about Jaime?
Fuck, I wish I had a cell phone right about now.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Chapter 7 "Throwing Missles"
"My aunt is stuck in Blackhawk, she can't pick up Cloe." Dade said.
"Uhhhh, boy, I...I dunno, dude." I sighed.
"Please, dude. You gotta do it." When Dade said "gotta" it sounded like "goffa".
"Why can't she do it?"
"Somefing about cars and cows on highway 119," he said.
"Why can't you do it?"
Dade erupted, "Ohhh yeah! Doped up, Ffffiankenstein, daddy?! Are you ffffucking high?!" That's like years of therapy! Ffffucking years!" I heard some hospital personel in the background telling him to calm down. The phone rustled and became muffled. "Why don't you piss off, Nurse Ratchet?" I heard him say. I laughed. "They let me check my messages, and I got Auntie Laura's message, she wha ... 00000h, more drugs, eh?" The phone muffled again, "I'm una taking back everything bad I ever said to you, Ms. Ratchet."
"Dade, where's the daycare?"
"Leetsdale and Florida-ish."
"What do you mean 'ish'?"
"Whoa."
"Dade?"
"Duuuuuuude. That last one was a d00000sey."
"Dade, you owe me for this you fucker."
"You're the man, man!" With that, he hung up.
I leaned against the wall and let out a heavy sigh. This shouldn't make me late with Jaime, but it might be close depending on how long it takes me to find the stupid daycare. I had about two hours, I should be okay, right?
I quickly threw on my favorite pair of jeans (sans underwear) and the shirt I was wearing from last night. It's kind of this flashy silver looking thing with black piping. I ran my hands through my hair with some hair wax and sprayed on a little cologne. I grabbed my wallet, keys and cigarettes and went bounding out the door.
It was a warm spring evening, almost stuffy. The air wasn't moving at all. By the time I got to my car, about a block and a half away, my upper lip was beaded with a little perspiration. I hopped into my car and turned the key. The huge V-8 roared to life, and slowly moved into idle RPMs. I pulled slowly away from the curb, and on to Josephine St. I hung a right on Colfax and started towards Leetsdale Blvd. Dade had been slightly cracked out when he told me Leetsdale and Florida. I knew these streets didn't intersect, but I knew the area well enough to fake it. I thought that Dade had taken me there one time after work, when we had just started working together.
I rolled down the windows and lit a cig with the car lighter. I turned up the radio. I like the classic rock stations. For some reason they seem to play the most songs, without all the sadistic DJ babble. They were playing a Doobie Brothers song. It was "Long Train Runnin." I like this song quite a bit. I love the chorus: "Without love, where would you be now? Without LAAHHOOOOHUUUUHHHVE! " Those words put together thusly have weight to me. They sing to my soul. You have to admit it's a pretty good question.
If a human child didn't have the love of it's parents or guardians, it would most certainly die. If you didn't follow that one girl away from college, and so on and so forth.
The decisions and actions and definitions and feelings that swirl around that simple little word are amazing to me. It's fun to ponder where I would be if I hadn't ever met my ex, Tara. Maybe I'd be hopping freight trains from town to town with a needle in my arm. Who knows, right?
I drove along listening, hung a right on Adams when I passed the Goosetown Tavern, and took a left on 14th, which was a one-way that would take me up to Quebec, I was tired of Colfax Avenue. 14th Street, is definately more chill.
I wonder if people hop freight trains anymore. The romance of that kind of "Boxcar Willy" lifestyle was somewhat fascinating. Imagine being so poor, or so fed up, or so in trouble in a certain town that your only choice is to pull up stakes and stow away for a new hope in the next town. I think I'll try hopping a freight train someday.
I pulled up to 14th and Colorado Blvd. There was a homeless guy standing on the corner with a sign. "Anything would help," proclaimed his sign. "Indeed," I said to myself. Normally, I wouldn't bother, but the whole thought process of hopping trains, and the like inspired me to look in my cupholder for some change. There was a golden dollar in there. I guess the bum got lucky. I leaned out the window as best I could. The bum blinked and looked at me and held out his hand. I was a good ten feet away, but he wasn't moving towards me, so I rolled the golden dollar over on to my thumb and flicked it over to him with a high arcing pass. He was watching the coin flip through the air until it bounced uncermoniously off of his forehead, hit the sidewalk and rolled in to the grass. He yelped and grabbed his forhead and staggered about. He dropped his sign.
"What'd you do that for, ya prick?" He had a voice like Chong's, from Cheech and Chong.
"What? You didn't see it, or what?"
"Asshole! I don't want your change, you prick! You nearly killed me with that thing! I got a hard enough time with assholes like you, man!"
I sighed, then shrugged, "Sorry, I thought you saw it coming."
"Prick! Next time try a dollar!"
"There won't be a next time, and it was a dollar. Ass."
I screeched off and drove across Colorado Blvd. There was a guy in a small green hatchback to my right. As I was driving up 14th, I sensed him staring at me. I looked over. He yelled out his open window.
"Did you just peg that homeless man with a quarter?!!"
"It was a dollar! !"
"A dollar?!! Riiiighht!! You're a PRICK!!" With that, he spit on my car..twice.
"What do you think you're FUCKING doing?!" I couldn't believe it.
"It's little boys like you that make this place a shithole to live in!!" The guy couldn't have been much older than me, but he was balder and had probably eaten more granola.
"Thanks for your two cents, Donahue!!" I bellowed. He spit on my car AGAIN! I grabbed a half full McDonalds cup and tossed through my open window into his window. The top broke off against the window edge and his left rearview mirror, so he must of caught the full brunt of my half of a super size. His car's wheels shreiked and he pulled sharply to the right.
About this time I was passing the Institute of Krishna Conciousness on my left. I smirked at the irony. Just then I was lit up by a police cruiser. My heart skipped a beat. Of all the rotten, fucked up luck ... Shit. I pulled to the left immediately and flipped on the hazards. I waited.
Why the hell can't they just get out of their cars? They just sit there and make you sweat. Five minutes go by and the green hatchback goes flying by at about sixty miles an hour with his middle finger out the window. Two more minutes, and finally officer Road Warrior gets out of his squad car, all body armor, mirrored "face sheild" Oakleys circa 1991, crew cut, hand on the holster, glory boy. Cautiously, he approached my window.
"Yes sir?" I asked.
"I witnessed you throw a missile from your vehicle while it was in motion. I sighed, "The green car, you also witnessed, am I correct?"
"Can you step out of the car please?"
"That guy was spitting on my car, he was suffering from road rage!"
"Can you step out of the car please? Turn the engine off." I complied. I shut the door and he spun me and put me up against my car and kicked my legs out wide. "Do you have any weapons, or needles on you?"
"No."
"Any drugs, anything like that?"
"No." He started to pat me down.
"This is only for my protection. You're not under arrest, yet. I am detaining you for throwing a missile at another vehicle."
"A missile, huh?"
"Affirmative."
"I don't suppose I could talk you out of using those cuffs?"
"That's a negative."
"Uhhhh, boy, I...I dunno, dude." I sighed.
"Please, dude. You gotta do it." When Dade said "gotta" it sounded like "goffa".
"Why can't she do it?"
"Somefing about cars and cows on highway 119," he said.
"Why can't you do it?"
Dade erupted, "Ohhh yeah! Doped up, Ffffiankenstein, daddy?! Are you ffffucking high?!" That's like years of therapy! Ffffucking years!" I heard some hospital personel in the background telling him to calm down. The phone rustled and became muffled. "Why don't you piss off, Nurse Ratchet?" I heard him say. I laughed. "They let me check my messages, and I got Auntie Laura's message, she wha ... 00000h, more drugs, eh?" The phone muffled again, "I'm una taking back everything bad I ever said to you, Ms. Ratchet."
"Dade, where's the daycare?"
"Leetsdale and Florida-ish."
"What do you mean 'ish'?"
"Whoa."
"Dade?"
"Duuuuuuude. That last one was a d00000sey."
"Dade, you owe me for this you fucker."
"You're the man, man!" With that, he hung up.
I leaned against the wall and let out a heavy sigh. This shouldn't make me late with Jaime, but it might be close depending on how long it takes me to find the stupid daycare. I had about two hours, I should be okay, right?
I quickly threw on my favorite pair of jeans (sans underwear) and the shirt I was wearing from last night. It's kind of this flashy silver looking thing with black piping. I ran my hands through my hair with some hair wax and sprayed on a little cologne. I grabbed my wallet, keys and cigarettes and went bounding out the door.
It was a warm spring evening, almost stuffy. The air wasn't moving at all. By the time I got to my car, about a block and a half away, my upper lip was beaded with a little perspiration. I hopped into my car and turned the key. The huge V-8 roared to life, and slowly moved into idle RPMs. I pulled slowly away from the curb, and on to Josephine St. I hung a right on Colfax and started towards Leetsdale Blvd. Dade had been slightly cracked out when he told me Leetsdale and Florida. I knew these streets didn't intersect, but I knew the area well enough to fake it. I thought that Dade had taken me there one time after work, when we had just started working together.
I rolled down the windows and lit a cig with the car lighter. I turned up the radio. I like the classic rock stations. For some reason they seem to play the most songs, without all the sadistic DJ babble. They were playing a Doobie Brothers song. It was "Long Train Runnin." I like this song quite a bit. I love the chorus: "Without love, where would you be now? Without LAAHHOOOOHUUUUHHHVE! " Those words put together thusly have weight to me. They sing to my soul. You have to admit it's a pretty good question.
If a human child didn't have the love of it's parents or guardians, it would most certainly die. If you didn't follow that one girl away from college, and so on and so forth.
The decisions and actions and definitions and feelings that swirl around that simple little word are amazing to me. It's fun to ponder where I would be if I hadn't ever met my ex, Tara. Maybe I'd be hopping freight trains from town to town with a needle in my arm. Who knows, right?
I drove along listening, hung a right on Adams when I passed the Goosetown Tavern, and took a left on 14th, which was a one-way that would take me up to Quebec, I was tired of Colfax Avenue. 14th Street, is definately more chill.
I wonder if people hop freight trains anymore. The romance of that kind of "Boxcar Willy" lifestyle was somewhat fascinating. Imagine being so poor, or so fed up, or so in trouble in a certain town that your only choice is to pull up stakes and stow away for a new hope in the next town. I think I'll try hopping a freight train someday.
I pulled up to 14th and Colorado Blvd. There was a homeless guy standing on the corner with a sign. "Anything would help," proclaimed his sign. "Indeed," I said to myself. Normally, I wouldn't bother, but the whole thought process of hopping trains, and the like inspired me to look in my cupholder for some change. There was a golden dollar in there. I guess the bum got lucky. I leaned out the window as best I could. The bum blinked and looked at me and held out his hand. I was a good ten feet away, but he wasn't moving towards me, so I rolled the golden dollar over on to my thumb and flicked it over to him with a high arcing pass. He was watching the coin flip through the air until it bounced uncermoniously off of his forehead, hit the sidewalk and rolled in to the grass. He yelped and grabbed his forhead and staggered about. He dropped his sign.
"What'd you do that for, ya prick?" He had a voice like Chong's, from Cheech and Chong.
"What? You didn't see it, or what?"
"Asshole! I don't want your change, you prick! You nearly killed me with that thing! I got a hard enough time with assholes like you, man!"
I sighed, then shrugged, "Sorry, I thought you saw it coming."
"Prick! Next time try a dollar!"
"There won't be a next time, and it was a dollar. Ass."
I screeched off and drove across Colorado Blvd. There was a guy in a small green hatchback to my right. As I was driving up 14th, I sensed him staring at me. I looked over. He yelled out his open window.
"Did you just peg that homeless man with a quarter?!!"
"It was a dollar! !"
"A dollar?!! Riiiighht!! You're a PRICK!!" With that, he spit on my car..twice.
"What do you think you're FUCKING doing?!" I couldn't believe it.
"It's little boys like you that make this place a shithole to live in!!" The guy couldn't have been much older than me, but he was balder and had probably eaten more granola.
"Thanks for your two cents, Donahue!!" I bellowed. He spit on my car AGAIN! I grabbed a half full McDonalds cup and tossed through my open window into his window. The top broke off against the window edge and his left rearview mirror, so he must of caught the full brunt of my half of a super size. His car's wheels shreiked and he pulled sharply to the right.
About this time I was passing the Institute of Krishna Conciousness on my left. I smirked at the irony. Just then I was lit up by a police cruiser. My heart skipped a beat. Of all the rotten, fucked up luck ... Shit. I pulled to the left immediately and flipped on the hazards. I waited.
Why the hell can't they just get out of their cars? They just sit there and make you sweat. Five minutes go by and the green hatchback goes flying by at about sixty miles an hour with his middle finger out the window. Two more minutes, and finally officer Road Warrior gets out of his squad car, all body armor, mirrored "face sheild" Oakleys circa 1991, crew cut, hand on the holster, glory boy. Cautiously, he approached my window.
"Yes sir?" I asked.
"I witnessed you throw a missile from your vehicle while it was in motion. I sighed, "The green car, you also witnessed, am I correct?"
"Can you step out of the car please?"
"That guy was spitting on my car, he was suffering from road rage!"
"Can you step out of the car please? Turn the engine off." I complied. I shut the door and he spun me and put me up against my car and kicked my legs out wide. "Do you have any weapons, or needles on you?"
"No."
"Any drugs, anything like that?"
"No." He started to pat me down.
"This is only for my protection. You're not under arrest, yet. I am detaining you for throwing a missile at another vehicle."
"A missile, huh?"
"Affirmative."
"I don't suppose I could talk you out of using those cuffs?"
"That's a negative."
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Chapter 6 "Brass Monkey"
So I got to my house and proceeded to act like a little school girl. I tried on some outfits and started talking to myself in the mirror. Just trying to imagine what exactly I'd fill up the night with in conversation was fairly terrifying. My mind was swimming. Did Jaime want me as bad as I wanted her that whole time at work? I was definitely catching vibes from her. Or was I?
Dammit! I must keep this whole thing in perspective. I spent the day half drunk and I watched a dog mauling, and then watched a dog get mauled and somehow managed a date out of the whole deal. This was not your average day in this glorified cow-town.
I decided I could use a drink.
I lumbered over to my fridge in my robe and had a gander inside. The six month old jar of salsa was still there, right where I left it. The four month old pizza box was still there. There was an odd collection of condiment packages that I had never really noticed before. They were sitting on the bottom shelf in a kind of neat little pile. Ketchup, soy sauce, tartar, it was all there. I vaguely remembered stuffing them into my pockets when I was drunk once, although much unexplained phenomena in my life can be simply explained away because of alcohol, when the reality is much more complex. For instance, what type of establishment has both soy sauce AND tartar sauce? It will remain a mystery.
Ahhhh, but the crown jewel of my little fridge collection was about to meet his demise. The Keystone Ice tall boy! I opened it unceremoniously, and took a large gulp, then another. This hooch isn't too bad when it's really cold. I opened the freezer. There was about a half of a half pint of Skyy in there. I pulled it out along with some frozen orange juice concentrate. The O.J. was already open and had a spoon sticking out of it. I walked over to the sink and began to spoon concentrate into the impossibly small opening of the vodka bottle. I was patient, I took my time. Eventually I had quite a bit of the stuff in the Skyy bottle. Then, I screwed the cap back onto the bottle and shook vigorously.
"Mmmmmmm ... vodka slushy," I said to no one in particular.
After taking a nice belt off of that, I poured the rest into the wide mouth opening of the Keystone Ice tallboy. "Leaded!" I proclaimed. (As opposed to unleaded.)
Dear reader, I know you might be wincing after that last little action of mine, but I'll have you know that in Denver, Colorado, the poor man's Mike’s Hard Lemonade is the mixture of malt liquor and OJ at about a four to one ratio. It's called a "Brass Monkey" and it's gotten me through some tough times. It's actually quite refreshing. I'm not really sure what the Beastie Boys' version of the concoction is, maybe Thunderbird and OJ, but try it sometime when you have about 6 bucks and want to catch a buzz. Anyway, my current version is a little more hardcore, but what can you say? I'm hardcore, yo.
My brain farted. I had to call Dade's aunt! Man, if I had forgotten to do that little simple thing, I wouldn't be worthy of Dade's trust or friendship. I don't own a cell phone, I can't stand them, and the people who walk around with those little fucking ear buds and headsets are the worst.
Some bitch customer at my store the other day was wearing one of those pretentious little fruitcake devices and I almost wanted to slap the taste out of her mouth. First of all, she kept calling me from over the counter when I was working with another customer. All the while she kept on trying to make an appointment with someone else on the phone. Imagine how confusing this is! I kept ignoring her. She was an older lady in a grey business suit, if I had to guess she was a realtor. Some of the most impatient, stupid people I know are in real estate, making many times what I make. It's a mystery to me.
Anyhoo, I ignored her until I was done with the other customer and then I stared right at her. She started rattling off her order and I turned around and started walking towards the back of the deli.
"EXCUSE ME!" She was indignant. Man, was she pissed. I turned around and feigned ignorance.
"M'am?"
"Are you going to help me or what?!"
"Oh..." I chuckled. "I thought you were talking on the phone. My apologies, you see, I just can't tell sometimes with those fancy blu-tooth doodads if people are talking to me or to their phone!" I looked at her with some pity, as if I knew she was having a bad day. "I'm really sorry." She pulled the ear bud from her head and the transaction was normal from that point on.
I get annoyed with people that don’t realize that there are other lives going on around them. I’m beginning to notice this myopia of culture. Everyone is slowly becoming so self centered and self motivated. It’s hard to explain, but it annoys me to no end.
My phone, on the other hand, is bolted to the wall, rings with a bell and has an answering machine attached to it that uses those really tiny cassette tapes. My friends say I’m stuck in an era gone by. I have a pager instead of a cell phone, which is kind of an interesting story because the pager has worked for about nine years and I haven’t received a bill for the pager service in about five years. It might seem prehistoric, but there is some comfort to be had in my communications set up. I can disappear, without really disappearing.
I snapped up the blood or iodine smeared slip of paper with Dade’s aunt’s number on it and keyed it into my dinosaur of a phone. After awhile she picked up and was driving somewhere. She was screaming into her phone, and wind was rushing by and she didn’t know who the hell I was. The story that came out of my mouth must have been nearly incomprehensible. Eventually, I got the point across. Pick up Chloe. 3:45PM…Bam! Done.
Now, back to my drink and a shower. I thought I should knock the stink off one more time before spending time with Jaime. The water was steamy and blasted away at my lower back. It felt good. I sucked at the drink until it was gone and then smoked a cigarette. I didn't move for a long time, save for putting my hand to my mouth, either to drink or smoke. I was thinking. A smile or grimace would alternately shoot across my face as my mind wandered about memory after memory. I remembered my first girlfriend. Then the first one I had sex with, then the first one I had REGULAR sex with. I remembered Tara, my last girlfriend. A wave of sadness rolled over me, but for some reason it was one of the occasions that a smile flashed, but only for a moment.
You know, "the one that got away". We "got away" from each other. It's sad. She calls like once a year, and I can hear it in her voice. The passing interest, the sadness about how the older that you get, the less passion and love you tend to encounter. We fought and fucked like teenagers for three years. I know she hears it in my voice too. Time and circumstance can be a real barrier for honest conversation, ours anyway. We both miss each other, but we're too proud and too wrapped up in our own lives now that the conversation just serves to remind us how lonely we really are.
There was something about Jaime, though. She has that mystique about her that Tara once had. This girl works as a butcher, of all things. She plays in a punk band. She's drop dead gorgeous, at least I think so, beauty, is of course, subjective. Somehow she's single…maybe, and MAY like me...maybe. That's always the most important part isn't it? Once you find out that someone likes you, no matter how unattractive you might find them, you still find them a little more interesting than if they didn't like you. It's as if you want to know why, they would like you. If you could, you would ask them to give you a list of reasons that they choose you. Love is often a very egotistical game.
Oh yeah... Nelson's little card. The online swingers club, or whatever the fuck. I had kind of forgotten about it. I started on my shower ritual. It was usually the same every time. Shampoo, brush teeth, soap, rinse all at once. I had often thought that it would be a fun project to video people showering and drying off, and then setting it to music. Kind of like a music video or montage. Everyone has their own unique way of doing that act, it would be funny to see. It would be even funnier to see people do it quickly, as if they were late for work.
I was showering quickly now. I wanted to get done quick because I wanted to check out this internet thing before I left, but as I was walking out of the bathroom, the phone rang loud and satisfying.
"Dude!"
"Dade?"
"Dude?"
"Dade!
"DUDE!!" Dade sounded like he had a mouth full of cotton.
"WHAAAAT? Aren't you supposed to be enjoying a morphine drip or something?"
"You have to do me a solid, a fucking favor, man." he muffled.
"Oh no, man, what?"
Dammit! I must keep this whole thing in perspective. I spent the day half drunk and I watched a dog mauling, and then watched a dog get mauled and somehow managed a date out of the whole deal. This was not your average day in this glorified cow-town.
I decided I could use a drink.
I lumbered over to my fridge in my robe and had a gander inside. The six month old jar of salsa was still there, right where I left it. The four month old pizza box was still there. There was an odd collection of condiment packages that I had never really noticed before. They were sitting on the bottom shelf in a kind of neat little pile. Ketchup, soy sauce, tartar, it was all there. I vaguely remembered stuffing them into my pockets when I was drunk once, although much unexplained phenomena in my life can be simply explained away because of alcohol, when the reality is much more complex. For instance, what type of establishment has both soy sauce AND tartar sauce? It will remain a mystery.
Ahhhh, but the crown jewel of my little fridge collection was about to meet his demise. The Keystone Ice tall boy! I opened it unceremoniously, and took a large gulp, then another. This hooch isn't too bad when it's really cold. I opened the freezer. There was about a half of a half pint of Skyy in there. I pulled it out along with some frozen orange juice concentrate. The O.J. was already open and had a spoon sticking out of it. I walked over to the sink and began to spoon concentrate into the impossibly small opening of the vodka bottle. I was patient, I took my time. Eventually I had quite a bit of the stuff in the Skyy bottle. Then, I screwed the cap back onto the bottle and shook vigorously.
"Mmmmmmm ... vodka slushy," I said to no one in particular.
After taking a nice belt off of that, I poured the rest into the wide mouth opening of the Keystone Ice tallboy. "Leaded!" I proclaimed. (As opposed to unleaded.)
Dear reader, I know you might be wincing after that last little action of mine, but I'll have you know that in Denver, Colorado, the poor man's Mike’s Hard Lemonade is the mixture of malt liquor and OJ at about a four to one ratio. It's called a "Brass Monkey" and it's gotten me through some tough times. It's actually quite refreshing. I'm not really sure what the Beastie Boys' version of the concoction is, maybe Thunderbird and OJ, but try it sometime when you have about 6 bucks and want to catch a buzz. Anyway, my current version is a little more hardcore, but what can you say? I'm hardcore, yo.
My brain farted. I had to call Dade's aunt! Man, if I had forgotten to do that little simple thing, I wouldn't be worthy of Dade's trust or friendship. I don't own a cell phone, I can't stand them, and the people who walk around with those little fucking ear buds and headsets are the worst.
Some bitch customer at my store the other day was wearing one of those pretentious little fruitcake devices and I almost wanted to slap the taste out of her mouth. First of all, she kept calling me from over the counter when I was working with another customer. All the while she kept on trying to make an appointment with someone else on the phone. Imagine how confusing this is! I kept ignoring her. She was an older lady in a grey business suit, if I had to guess she was a realtor. Some of the most impatient, stupid people I know are in real estate, making many times what I make. It's a mystery to me.
Anyhoo, I ignored her until I was done with the other customer and then I stared right at her. She started rattling off her order and I turned around and started walking towards the back of the deli.
"EXCUSE ME!" She was indignant. Man, was she pissed. I turned around and feigned ignorance.
"M'am?"
"Are you going to help me or what?!"
"Oh..." I chuckled. "I thought you were talking on the phone. My apologies, you see, I just can't tell sometimes with those fancy blu-tooth doodads if people are talking to me or to their phone!" I looked at her with some pity, as if I knew she was having a bad day. "I'm really sorry." She pulled the ear bud from her head and the transaction was normal from that point on.
I get annoyed with people that don’t realize that there are other lives going on around them. I’m beginning to notice this myopia of culture. Everyone is slowly becoming so self centered and self motivated. It’s hard to explain, but it annoys me to no end.
My phone, on the other hand, is bolted to the wall, rings with a bell and has an answering machine attached to it that uses those really tiny cassette tapes. My friends say I’m stuck in an era gone by. I have a pager instead of a cell phone, which is kind of an interesting story because the pager has worked for about nine years and I haven’t received a bill for the pager service in about five years. It might seem prehistoric, but there is some comfort to be had in my communications set up. I can disappear, without really disappearing.
I snapped up the blood or iodine smeared slip of paper with Dade’s aunt’s number on it and keyed it into my dinosaur of a phone. After awhile she picked up and was driving somewhere. She was screaming into her phone, and wind was rushing by and she didn’t know who the hell I was. The story that came out of my mouth must have been nearly incomprehensible. Eventually, I got the point across. Pick up Chloe. 3:45PM…Bam! Done.
Now, back to my drink and a shower. I thought I should knock the stink off one more time before spending time with Jaime. The water was steamy and blasted away at my lower back. It felt good. I sucked at the drink until it was gone and then smoked a cigarette. I didn't move for a long time, save for putting my hand to my mouth, either to drink or smoke. I was thinking. A smile or grimace would alternately shoot across my face as my mind wandered about memory after memory. I remembered my first girlfriend. Then the first one I had sex with, then the first one I had REGULAR sex with. I remembered Tara, my last girlfriend. A wave of sadness rolled over me, but for some reason it was one of the occasions that a smile flashed, but only for a moment.
You know, "the one that got away". We "got away" from each other. It's sad. She calls like once a year, and I can hear it in her voice. The passing interest, the sadness about how the older that you get, the less passion and love you tend to encounter. We fought and fucked like teenagers for three years. I know she hears it in my voice too. Time and circumstance can be a real barrier for honest conversation, ours anyway. We both miss each other, but we're too proud and too wrapped up in our own lives now that the conversation just serves to remind us how lonely we really are.
There was something about Jaime, though. She has that mystique about her that Tara once had. This girl works as a butcher, of all things. She plays in a punk band. She's drop dead gorgeous, at least I think so, beauty, is of course, subjective. Somehow she's single…maybe, and MAY like me...maybe. That's always the most important part isn't it? Once you find out that someone likes you, no matter how unattractive you might find them, you still find them a little more interesting than if they didn't like you. It's as if you want to know why, they would like you. If you could, you would ask them to give you a list of reasons that they choose you. Love is often a very egotistical game.
Oh yeah... Nelson's little card. The online swingers club, or whatever the fuck. I had kind of forgotten about it. I started on my shower ritual. It was usually the same every time. Shampoo, brush teeth, soap, rinse all at once. I had often thought that it would be a fun project to video people showering and drying off, and then setting it to music. Kind of like a music video or montage. Everyone has their own unique way of doing that act, it would be funny to see. It would be even funnier to see people do it quickly, as if they were late for work.
I was showering quickly now. I wanted to get done quick because I wanted to check out this internet thing before I left, but as I was walking out of the bathroom, the phone rang loud and satisfying.
"Dude!"
"Dade?"
"Dude?"
"Dade!
"DUDE!!" Dade sounded like he had a mouth full of cotton.
"WHAAAAT? Aren't you supposed to be enjoying a morphine drip or something?"
"You have to do me a solid, a fucking favor, man." he muffled.
"Oh no, man, what?"
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