science fiction bullshit disaster: my life in film.

(Today I watched two American films while I was recovering from the flu.)

The film, "Over The Edge" is an indictment of suburbanization that resonates even more today than upon its initial release in 1979. It has increased in popularity over time, through its availability and exposure. Junior high, shitty suburbs, hash, acid, beer, rock music, sex and rebellion. It's as good a film as you'll ever see. That's that.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day is an apocalyptic ballet of gargantuan explosions and cyborg death matches. It really makes the best of its billion dollar budget and hundreds of dead stuntmen. Trying to stop the future is hard. And makes for a good story.


Look. Being bedridden with swine flu has apparently seeped through my skull and corroded my brain. It has caused me to do a bunch of fucking asshole things like critiquing a film real loud in my head, quelling that goddamn notion by writing it all down, then submitting it to the shadowy abyss of the internet. Now I'm staring into this strange screen where I can write stories while checking basketball scores and chatting with my 4th grade teacher.
The internet. The audience that may or may not be. A million eyes or perhaps just one, an eye patched pedophile, may read anything anyone ever does on this deal. That's quite a range of possiblity. The be all, end all possible-audience machine. We've beaten science fiction in a footrace and we're not slowing down for anybody. It's stupid, it's heartwrenching, it's full of shit. And here I am.

Oh well, I've blamed myself enough. Those string pulling dickheads are the reason for the season and I hope they all get theirs. These films sure ignited something.
Over The Edge bleeds escape and rebellion.
T2 features man and machine coming together to fuck with time and murder the apocalyptic future. And it stars the governor of California, the failed state I love and defend and currently witness burning alive.
It really is too bad Arnold Schwarzeneggar couldn't have died after the filming of Terminator 2 in 1991. No "Junior." No "Collateral Damage." And most importantly, no governorship. He wouldn't have to be the face for the bullshit disaster we've all been buried in. It'd probably just be some other rich asshole who sucks.

All that acid jazz aside, these are fucking good movies. And they are truly inspirational testaments when mixed with cold medication and seething anger. Fuck swine flu, I think I'm suffering from dementia.

I know I should have taken an extra dose of Nyquil and just shut the fuck up. I could have just fallen asleep and dreamed about something weird and psychedelic like fly-fishing with Louis Armstrong on the River Styx. And then kept it to myself and went on and got well. But it's all I had today.

Bad times coming down and two films to help me wait it all out.

Execution Style.

The baseball card shop I used to frequent as a child still occupied the same building downtown. It had changed hands, I had heard, but still sold cards and collectibles. It used to be run by a young Italian guy in his late 20s, always wearing a pompadour and a Misfits t-shirt. He was a really nice dude. When I was some 8 year old kid coming around with innumerable questions about baseball cards and never buying a goddamn thing, he never once gave me the brush off. Twenty years later, with the same curiosity and lack of funds, I walk into the shop. At the very least, I’d like to price some of the cards still housed in my mother’s garage. A mighty fortune may await me.

First thing, the bells on the door ring. No response from the proprietor as I enter and greet him. Just a stone look, arms folded, a fat man with slicked back gray hair. He doesn’t look the least bit happy at the possibility of business. In addition to this asshole, the place has changed dramatically. There are hardly any cards here at all. Nothing in the flat and formerly eye level glass display cases. Just packs, mostly unopened complete sets, overrun by the scatter of sports memorabilia. Autographed portraits in overpriced glass frames. A neon sign with Budweiser and San Diego Padres logos brightly linked. A life sized cardboard cut-out of Derek Jeter, a large tag that reads Limited Edition. The price is so fucking ridiculous that I feel sick and angry and never want to think about it again. Anyhow, the place sucks now.

I don’t know what to ask the fat man behind the counter, perplexed by the erosion all around me. And it’s almost as warm in here as it is outside. So I move about the place. It’s still small but now more crowded with clutter. I ask the man, the only other person in the store, if they sell price guides and he still doesn’t say anything. The fat fuck just moves his head in the direction of a rack. It’s sitting in the far corner of the tiny shop. He lazily points at it, flailing his left hand slowly in the general direction. He’s putting more effort into the thousand ounce fountain soda in front of him. The occasional slurping is the only sound in the world. I try to pay it no mind.

I see shit in here people would never buy. Out of market stuff, things from Milwaukee that people in Milwaukee don’t want. I don’t understand it but it doesn’t get me down. It’s just another place that isn’t the same anymore. And I don’t know how any place selling collectibles survives in this town, past or present. Nobody has the money or the time for this shit. So I distract all these thoughts along with the mute behind the counter with the magazine rack where several price guides are waiting to answer the questions that this asshole won’t.

There’s only one price guide that I can recall and it stands out in front of the several others I’ve never heard of. So I pick it up and look for some year in the 1980s, which is easier to find because there used to only be a small handful of brands. And I’m about to find this rookie card to see if my fortunes in life have changed and if I have finally found the reason why my path has lead to this moment in time!

And then the dick behind the counter finally speaks.
“Hey,” he says.
So I look up at the sound, the interruption, the proprietor of this stupid establishment.
He says, “Hey pal! There’s no looking up the prices, ‘kay?
You gotta buy somethin’, you gotta pay for that thing there, y’understand? There’s no lookin’”

I say nothing, suspended in my own shock and disgust. I can’t believe this motherfucker. I look all around me for support, for other eyes of mutual disdain, makeshift weaponry pointed in his direction.
I look outside into the heat of summer and search the parking lot for possible recruits for the angry mob I hope to assemble. There’s nobody there. All is empty and quiet and dead.

I know there are things of more importance and misery going down outside the tinted storefront windows, far worse things in my own life as well. But something inside here has to be settled. The world gets worse everyday and we still strive to find the surface and live. And here this spineless fuck sits and looks at me like I’m the asshole! Maybe it’s the fact that I am an asshole for being here and wasting precious hours of my life once again, wasting precious energy on the hatred of this man I don’t know and his Steve Young collectible plates. Whatever it is, I can’t take it. I want to kill this piece of shit. But instead I just stand there. I drop the magazine on the floor. Its pages crumple and rip a little and the fat man just looks at it. He looks startled now and is once again mute. I want to tell him my story and how it has all come to this. I want to tell him how his worthless position and his smug demeanor have led to this final and violent moment in time.

Despite my thoughts of murder, I leave the magazine on the floor and try to laugh a little, breathing in heavily each time. And I walk out of the store, across the empty parking lot and I’m thankful when my car starts. I drive over to my mother’s house where I spend that evening going through old baseball cards and quietly plotting arson and murder. I think about the gasoline and the rags and an array of bludgeoning tools that hang above me in the garage.

Then I find a Fernando Valenzuela card. It’s a 1986 Topps #630. And it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I know it’s not worth that much. It’s no rookie or rarity. But I’ll never trade it so its price remains a nameless and redundant figure. For me, it’s a rare find, perfect and inexplicable.
I look at the card and I see Fernando, poised, clocked in, a seasoned veteran at twenty five. The still photograph makes it look as though you’re at the plate and Fernando’s about to throw it straight through you. The wind up, the pitch, another screwball to Mike Scioscia. Strike three, motherfucker.

I find a plastic case to put the card in and think of the inevitable cathedral. I will construct an altar to be built around it. There will be other things to be blessed and sacrificed, small things within reach that spark far greater ones, inside the noise of my skull and the pain in my chest. They are the only things that matter.
I take the card with me when I leave the next morning. I drive North on the boulevard, away from the town, the card shop and everything else.

I never kill the proprietor. I never burn the place down. I never go back there for that reason or any other.

All Day Music.

I.

Out in the garage, he opened the hood of a ’72 Electra and his first tall can of the day. The Buick and the Budweiser. It was warm and early and pleasant. Half past ten in the morning, cold beer, birds screaming at each other, Henry Lopez surveyed the day’s work as it sat there inside the cluttered one car garage. He had been offered a hundred dollars cash to tune-up the Electra by an ex-brother in-law who lived down in Norwalk. He knew the job was worth more and that the labor would be tedious and unfulfilling. But he took a second swig, looked around and tried, with all conjured might, to evade his own thoughts.
Henry looked down into the heart of the weathered monster. A corroded 455 big block. He stared down into what had once been a glorious machine. And then began his work.

“Henry! Phone for you!” A child’s voice screamed from inside the house. A screen door separated his place of business from the inside of the tiny house, starting with the kitchen. He ignored the noise and lit a non-filtered cigarette, continuing his labor under the hood. He didn’t like phones.
Then, a lovely little woman, nine years in age, wearing two long black braids, appeared before him, hands on her waist, startling him just a little.
“Uncle Henry, there is a phone call for you,” she said.
Henry stood up and smiled. Hello Priscilla.
“Who is it?” he asked, ash finally dropping from the cigarette in his mouth.
Priscilla rolled her eyes in frustration.
“You know who!”
“Yeah, yeah, ok.” He laughed a little and looked away.
“I just thought you should know,” she said. “You know she’ll keep calling.”
Henry thought about it, tried not to, couldn’t help it.
Priscilla, his niece and accomplice, walked back into the house to where she left the phone, gave the familiar excuse for his absence and took the familiar message, usually an earful of shit about responsibility and money and so forth. Then she hung up and returned to reading her book and watching TV simultaneously.
Henry yelled to her from the garage, “Thank you mija. You’re an incredible woman.”
No response. “Did you know that, baby?”
“I don’t like when they yell in my ear on the stupid phone!”
“You’re more of a woman, than…any woman I’ve known, more than any one of them you know…” Henry trailed off, talking to himself, unsure if his niece was still listening. He figured she was.

Priscilla opened a can of orange soda and listened to her uncle work. Priscilla Mejia, at her young age, knew some womanly truths. Men were little babies, no matter what. No different from her little cousins, crying when they want something, console them and satisfy them, then they're crying about something else. They seem to bury themselves with needs. Men were incapable but also inevitably threaded into her life in one way or another, for better or worse. She loved her uncle though, loved him just the same.

By noon, it was searing and uncomfortable, especially inside the garage. He knew he should take a break and go inside the house where it was cooler but he had already changed the oil, replaced a hose and topped off all the fluids. He planned on finishing up early and having the end of the afternoon to sit on the porch and listen to a Dodger game, or call up Lilia to see if she was down. But he couldn’t think too far ahead. Something was leaking from under the Buick. He needed a beer. He dropped a wrench. The phone was ringing. Goddamn, it was hot. He could hear his niece tell her that he wasn’t around. He was busy. He was working. No, not like a real job but real work. No, he isn’t here.
Henry stood and walked into the front yard where he didn’t have to hear a child make excuses for him. He wanted to pick up the phone and viciously explain to the voice on the other end that he didn’t have any money. To stop fucking with his niece’s head. He was trying real hard. A dark and murky feeling began to settle. It seemed that every breath he drew was heavy with reminiscence and longing. He wanted to be left alone.

All the houses in Baldwin Park looked more or less the same. Different colors, some standard, some pink, some bright green, some small and clean, some run-down, a little fucked up. Cars worse off than the Buick were being worked on in other garages or else lay rusted in the yards. Music poured out from every other garage or backyard. Oldies played soft and slow. Or else Banda raged loud and proud. Every sound dissonant and beautiful. He looked at the houses on the street. He saw each one as a tiny mansion, workers and warriors under the sun, getting by and moving through the spiral of time. This was his neighborhood and always had been.

By now, whatever it was that leaked from the Buick had spilled down the driveway and a dirty stream now gathered around his boots. Henry knew he would have to fix all these additional problems. It was real fucking hot outside. Henry went back into the garage. He needed to fix this car. He needed another beer.





II.

Moises Arias thought about the ocean as its breeze came through the screen door, having traveled some thirty elusive miles to find him. It rattled chimes in a faraway backyard and finally embraced him completely. Moises had spent that morning scrounging through an ash tray, looking under a couch, searching frantically for a roach, a misplaced crumb or with greater hope, an endless fucking mountain crop of weed, hidden, just waiting to reward him for his relentless search and pursuit. He eventually found his prize. It was nearly half of an old blunt, a super roach, discarded and misplaced long ago. Moises found it in a jar of change, with a book of matches, perfection and peace finding him at last.
Soon he was high and reading Antonio Gramsci, studying for a college class, happy to be alive. When he was bored, in the early afternoon, he continued to greet the day and wait for another pleasant breeze and meditate in his own way on the wind and the reality of things. Moises put his long black hair into a pony tail that reached the small of his back and it shined like obsidian when he walked outside into the sunlight.

Henry was underneath the Buick now, fixing another ailment. He moved in a quick cycle of ferocious labor, flashes of fatigue and then cold beer to regenerate. Any alleviating breeze was lost on him, never making it inside the garage. By two p.m. he didn’t know where he was or why he was fixing this goddamn car. Just when he felt he could expire, a voice picked him up out of his daydream. He slid from underneath the car and saw a Mayan prince eclipsing the merciless and beautiful sun. Then he saw it was only the neighbor kid. Not the divine design of the gods, just some acne scarred Chicano. Henry recognized this pudgy stoner as the same kid wandering into the middle of the street in diapers. He thought Moises looked about the same, more age to the face, a hint of a mustache but still a baby’s face. The only real distinction that Henry noticed was in the eyes. Moises now had a dark ferocity in them, even though they were only half open and bloodshot from a morning of weed smoke. His voice was deep and commanding but stoic and slow. Moises, high as fuck.
“Henry, carnal, I thought that was you,” Moises said. “I didn’t know you were out.” He shifted, feeling awkward, hoping he didn’t sound like an asshole.
“Yeah, I’m back in the world, ese. How are things, Moi?”
“Oh you know, mas o menos, going to college.”
“East Los or…”
“No, No, Cal State now, I’m gonna fuck some shit up from the inside, you know?”
“Oh yeah?”

Henry was listening, was interested, but his work preceded all other interactions and interests. He had to get this fucking car fixed but couldn’t just tell this kid to fuck off, couldn’t tell the evil voices that screamed through the telephone to fuck off, couldn’t stop this car from falling apart, needing the small amount of cash and being this hard up, he couldn’t tell his tightwad ex-brother in-law to take his car and fuck off. Henry couldn’t keep these thoughts from invading the afternoon. The car needed to be fixed. But it was an endless slew of problems. Now the coolant was leaking everywhere.
“Need any help, man?” Moises asked.
“No.” Henry thought about it. He could put some of these youngbloods to work, have his niece out there holding tools, a team of surgeons and such. He laughed to himself.
“It’s cool, Moi, it shouldn’t take me too long,” Henry said.
“Ok, that’s good anyway, ‘cause I can’t work on cars for shit.” Moises laughed loud with his full heart, put his hand on Henry’s shoulder, “I better stick to the books, you know?”
“Yeah, you should do that. You want a beer, man?”
Moises couldn’t refuse a tall can with a weathered legend of the barrio, this barrio, this town, this street.
“Fuck yeah, ese, they in this ice chest here?”
“Go for it, there’s a few more in there.” Henry could see the kid was a little uneasy but played it off with ease. Moises was big and soft and couldn’t hurt a blade of grass, but he looked strong and fierce and he was smart. Henry liked him. But he hoped the tall can would send him on his way. It was hot and it was Saturday, he thought, didn’t this kid have somewhere to be?

Moises didn’t have anywhere to be. He hung out for over an hour. Drinking two tall cans, offering to go buy some more, saying although he was only nineteen, the Korean dude at the store on the corner sold to him all the time. Moises was drunk after the first tall can and then felt comfortable opening up. He told Henry about school, about this woman in his Political History of Latin America class. Her name’s Raquel and she lives in Boyle Heights and her father was this Peruvian revolutionary but she never met him, she lived with her mother, a Mexicana, in Boyle Heights, and that usually he liked to get laid and be on his way but this mujer was different, something about her and the things she said in class, she countered all the bullshit regular ass college kids with her intelligence and insight, “And on top of that,” Moises concluded, “She’s fucking down, you know?”
Henry just worked and half listened. Moises talked about everything. He was normally quiet and liked to read and he performed his own rituals, summoning gods left alone and suffering since 1519 and so forth. But the warmth of the sun and the taste of cold beer made him feel comfortable.
Then he asked Henry some questions about cars, about Electras, Cutlasses, Impalas, wanted to know about the old days, low riders, 1968 in East L.A. Did he ever meet Oscar Acosta or did he know any brown berets, did students walk out of Sierra Vista like the vatos at Roosevelt, pausing in his wondering, how old was Henry? Did that make sense chronologically? Moises wanted to know if Baldwin Park was as down for La Raza so he could feel good and proud about the history under his feet. But he paused at some point in his rambling, wondering if he was asking too many questions. Moises and his insatiable thirst for knowledge gently collided with twenty four ounces of beer. It had been a great day for him so far.


The phone was ringing again and the Buick wasn’t leaking anymore. Henry was sweaty and his rough hands were covered in grease. Moises’ voice drowned the noise of the phone and caused the sound of Priscilla excusing her uncle to be inaudible. Then it was momentarily quiet. Priscilla walked into the garage, regarded Moises with a smile that was returned, then glared at Henry relentlessly.
“I know baby, I know,” he said.
“This one sounded more serious,” she said.
He nodded and looked away.
“It’s getting kind of ridiculous.”
She stood there for what seemed like a large portion of time, a still frame, a scowling and radiant and eternal glare. “You think they’re going to stop?” she said.
Then she looked away. She turned to her neighbor. “Moises, did you want an orange soda?”
“No thank you, maybe later.” Then Moises remembered something.
“Hey, I have a book you might like. I can bring it by later. It’s about desert things. Native people, animals, wildflowers, everything.”
“Cool. Thank you, Moi.”
She then disregarded her uncle and went back into the house. The sudden silence in the garage seemed to seize and strangle Henry. Moises noticed but was too buzzed to figure the reasons why. Henry looked out into the street, tried to fix his eyes on something to take him away from this moment in time. Moises killed the last of his tall can and looked up. “Hey Henry, if this car’s running ok, you think I could get a ride somewhere?”


III.

The garage was still open. The Buick continued to fall apart, stretching the afternoon into a grueling and laborious time. All of this against an otherwise warm and easy afternoon. Fucking L.A., man, Henry thought. His heart was always in so much pain on days like this. He looked around and saw everything changing, something beyond nature. He felt some inexplicable force, poised to strangle this place, his home and his family and then evasively slip out unnoticed. Henry would look around at all the remnants of his youth still living in the gravel and dead grass of the neighborhood. He could still conjure all the little fortunes lying around. The barbeques in the park and listless window shopping on the boulevards, Saturday in California, early beers and old stories. Children playing, moving through the neighborhood in all their glory. And he loved every last one of these kids, these young people that ran the streets, the corners, the parks. Some would not live long and he took pride in his own survival. And even the child inside the house that he loved, could not shake him from the nightmare in his head. He didn’t want to go back to jail, didn’t want to go to church, didn’t want to go back in time and do it all over. And he didn’t want to think about the bleak and stagnant future that lied ahead for him. It seemed that only the simple things remained. But all else had become disfigured and strange. All he could see was the fucked up Buick and the handful of cash he might have for another Saturday night in Los Angeles.

People kept coming by. Henry was happy to see them, old friends and cousins and such. But they were all interruptions. Gloria, who his sister used to roll with, was having problems with her girlfriend and wanting his advice. Moco, the biggest dude in the barrio and a legendary character, came by with some beers and talked about the old days but had to take off to his son’s soccer game. And Simon, who was Luisa’s five year old boy, walked over dressed like a cowboy, chaps, vest, gun belt, a blue bandana over his face. But no hat. Simon also refused to leave, telling Henry about how his horse was stolen by bandits to which Henry played along until Simon’s mother called from two houses down. Off into the sunset, the little cowboy ran.

The phone kept ringing, Priscilla took the calls, Moises was inside watching TV with her. Moises was a good companion for any age and Henry was glad to have some time alone finally with the car.
Eventually, people stopped coming by. Some older people would walk by and wave and Henry would wave back. By now it was early evening, the car still falling apart, several more beers gone down, sweat burned Henry’s eyes and his thoughts lingered on. His chest hurt. He needed to get out of here, away from this feeling. He drained the last lukewarm swill of his Budweiser and patched up the Buick as best he could. With Band-Aids and prayers, it would have to do.
Henry walked into the house and into the room he had once lived in as a young man, as a child, as an infant.
He showered and shaved and ironed his favorite pair of khakis. He found a Fernando Valenzuela jersey he hadn’t worn in twenty years. He put it on over an undershirt and a simple gold crucifix his grandmother gave him when he went away for the first time. Henry loved her more than God.
He tried to call Lilia one last time, in hope of a decent Saturday night. But nobody answered. So he took one last look into the mirror before walking out into the front room. Moises slept sitting up in a chair while Priscilla watched TV.
“Did anyone call who I might want to talk to, baby?” Henry asked.
“No,” Priscilla said.
“Well,” Henry looked around the room and finally felt relaxed, “Don’t worry about it anymore. I’m sorry you’ve had to do all this for me and I’m sorry I haven’t been around to take you to the park and to help you with things. Just know that I wasn’t meant to be around all the time. But I love you just the same.”
Priscilla had never heard her uncle say that much at one time before. Not to her or anyone else. He was always such a quiet man, a listener, a hard ass who would fix cars and fight other men in parking lots. But here he was, kneeling beside her, looking straight into her eyes. She could see his eyes welling with tears but they didn’t fall.
She knew what was next. She knew that she wouldn’t see him for some time. But this time held some kind of affirmation that she needed. Henry would always love his family and take care of them when he could. She had nothing to say but let him know that she understood, in the same way she always did, a look a feeling, something inexplicable that they shared. Henry said nothing more. The profound silence was broken up by Moises as he began to snore loudly. It was louder than any of them had ever heard and strange sounding. Like a large animal suffocating then breathing fluidly and peacefully, then suffocating again. Henry and Priscilla both broke into laughter and neither of them could stop. They laughed so loud that it woke Moises up to which he replied something incoherently and then fell back into the heaviest nap of all time.
Henry stood up and walked into the bedroom feeling the weight of many years recede and fall away.

He rolled three joints, grabbed a Pendleton and a little money he had stashed away.
When he came back into the front room, the TV was still on. Cops in Albuquerque were arresting an old drunk man for stealing a bike. They were rude and condescending and abusive. They were cops all right. Henry turned it off, woke Moises up with a slap to the leg and stood straight and summoned the room.
“Ok, peoples, get your shit and get into the car. Moises, you need a right somewhere, no? Priscilla, I’m gonna need to drop you off at your prima’s house, ok?”
“Lorena’s house? That place sucks.”
“No, at Darlene and Flaca’s. In South Gate, baby. I’ll let your mama know. Come on, Moises, go get a jacket and a joint. Vaminos, bro.”
Moises was still sleepy but got up and was ready. “I got everything I need, carnal.”
Priscilla got a jacket and a backpack with her colored pencils and a notebook. They were all ready to roll.

For all its constant problems that day, the venerable 1972 Buick Electra ran pretty good. Henry felt good driving it, the work was done, the day was fading away. They listened to oldies on the radio with the windows down and sat comfortably in the wide vinyl seats. They cruised past familiar parks and down boulevards and side streets that Henry hadn’t been down in awhile. Moises, sitting comfortable in the big backseat, had to be in East L.A. for a community organizing function. “Extra credit for school and plenty of girls,” he explained.
Priscilla wore sunglasses and felt calm and grown up cruising in big car down a wide boulevard. These boys in her life would have to be taken with a hundred grains of salt. She wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You’re a Big Girl, Now” by the Stylistics came on and everyone leaned back and simultaneously, though in their own way, felt the good times coming on. The afternoon faded faraway behind them and the summer night greeted them . More cars on the road but no weekday traffic. The radio seemed to know what they wanted to hear. Henry felt himself cruising back in time. Every corner, every park bench, every woman walking down every street seemed to evoke some long lost memory.
With his mind full of painfully hard times, these fine sceneries revealed themselves and embraced him as he rolled down Whittier Blvd. And when the sun was finally gone, streetlights and headlights all around, they arrived at the Salazar Community Center.

When Priscilla let Moises out, he gave her a hug and looked at Henry.
“Gracias, carnal. Good times hanging out today, good luck with this fucking car, man. Thank you for the ride. I guess that’s it then. I gotta see about a mujer.” Moises laughed a little. He was going to be all right. Henry nodded his head in recognition.
When Moises was walking away and Priscilla was sitting shotgun again, Henry whistled to get his attention. He walked back to hear what Henry had to say.
Henry suddenly conjured countless things to tell his friend upon this departure. But he just looked him in the eye, straight and stern, and said, “Worship the earth around her, ese. And you know…be cool.”
And the two men clasped hands, the eternal handshake of brotherhood. Priscilla rolled her eyes a little under her shades and watched the sun set over the evasive ocean that seemed so far away. In this Buick, they could go anywhere.

Then Henry and Priscilla were cruising down the 710 toward Long Beach. The night air had relieved the ruthless heat. Henry still felt a certain heaviness but it was mostly the residuals of earlier thoughts. He felt a sweet admiration for his niece and a deep longing for all the dying times around them. The Buick sounded great and Henry was proud of that. It had to be in Norwalk soon. Luis, his ex-brother in law, would be waiting with the chump change for a nearly rebuilt engine. It was an injustice embedded in a million others.
Henry couldn’t hang. That was his problem all along. Priscilla was enjoying this cruise with her uncle. It seemed pivotal and strange. In her short time, there had been so many goodbyes, piled atop one another. She couldn’t wait to see her mother when she finally got off work, at the hospital, later that night.
“Baby, you think you could do me one more favor?” Henry asked.
“I called my mom before we left.”
“Thank you. You’re the greatest woman that has ever lived,” he said.
Henry said nothing more as they exited the freeway and rolled down more familiar streets. They pulled up to an old apartment where her cousins and her aunt on her father’s side lived. The street was dark and quiet.
“You comin’ in Henry?” Priscilla asked somberly.
“No. I think I’ll just head out. But I’ll make sure you get in ok.”
“You look real nice. Do you have a date tonight?”
He smiled, could feel himself smiling.
“No baby. Well, not yet. You never know.”
They both laughed. The engine was idling loudly and the radio hummed softly. Henry did look good. And for the first time in awhile, he felt good. He knew these feelings were like smoke in the air. They hang there awhile and eventually fade, sometimes slowly, most times in a desperate flash.
And when she hugged her uncle this time, long and good and poised for departure, she left a stain of tears on his Valenzuela jersey.
And then she walked away, trying to act tough, knowing she would always have to. Her cousin greeted her at the door and Priscilla waved back at the Buick as it slowly rolled away.

When Henry got back onto the freeway, he knew what roads to take to go east a few miles to Norwalk, to get his payment and return the car. His ex-brother in-law had enough money to pay him fairly but Henry knew he wouldn’t. On top of being cheap, Luis remembered every rift, every scuffle, every ounce of bullshit in their lives. It wasn’t worth the trouble. Henry couldn’t live that way. And he knew Luis would be too drunk to give him a ride back to Baldwin Park.
When he cruised down and found Interstate 5, he stopped at a red light. The mercy would not be found and tomorrow the sun would rise and do its thing once again, burning holes into hearts, playing music for everybody, low and slow and just on time. With the chaos of luck, it might be all right.
Henry turned the radio up, rolled the windows all the way down and took the freeway south. He didn’t know where he was going. And a lot of people would be calling, looking for him. But he couldn’t think of that. He had to roll with what consumed his mind tonight. A sea of dim lights flickered across South Los Angeles. Henry pushed the pedal down and leaned back in the old and wide and comfortable bench seat. The Buick felt good. Nothing left but a serenade, the sweet sound of oldies finding their way through muffled speakers and a bent antenna, over the victorious roar of the engine, igniting the night around him. They don’t make them like they used to, he thought. It was his work. It was his world.

weapons.

I have this typewriter. It’s an old and venerable machine from 1962. It’s an Olympia. It came as a strange and necessary gift, given to me by this woman from Socorro, New Mexico. We’re neighbors and good friends. She likes me a lot. I like her a lot too. And she is a direct reflection of this fine, well traveled machine. It all works out fine.

She’s an angry and beautiful thing. I hear her come home from all-night drives through these mean streets with a soft fury upon her face and a glorious incision inside her heart. It pours out distant warriors that quell the bedlam outside my window or else ignites every kind of riot when appropriate, when necessary.

I haven’t been around my typewriter long enough for it to develop a nickname. We’re close associates but I’d say we’re still in a prolonged honeymoon state, as one might say.
Or maybe no little sub-name will be necessary. Ali was just Ali, not “Mumu” or “Hambone” or “Little Smiley.” No just Ali, the man, the fighter, the artist. Ali.
My typewriter might just be Olympia. From 1962.

Through the years, the ebb and flow, it has slept and awoke and stared into the eyes of countless fighters and writers and assassinations and mass murders and amplified sounds out of radios and the alteration of the automobiles they scream out from. It has outlived Corvairs and Pintos. It has seen the death of the Lowrider and the end of the mystery and bad ass lore that was once the Harley Davidson. Now rich people can buy all of these and have them hanging there like charms useless and triumphantly full of shit, dangling there, dressed in gold, for all to see and feel.

My typewriter has endured the onslaught and development of our malignant asshole culture. If I ask it to, my typewriter would murder Sting and Bono, at the same bullshit event, same night, same weaponry. Each in their fucking heads. It’s a reliable machine.

And into my life, I rhythmically hit the keys, sometimes just to hear the music it plays. It doesn’t even need to make sense, just 1-2-3-4-5 like gunshots in my mind. War is on. We dance into the night.

And quite possibly better than anything else, is that my machine sits quietly and waits for me when I’m not around, which is never for long. The lonely night throws shit through my window, screams and threatens, attempts to intimidate me, calls my house with death threats, once tried to set my car on fire. But with my typewriter at my side, I feel strong and confident.

I go out into the street shirtless with a bat. It’s 3:42 in the morning. I yell shit. I’m ready to fuck somebody up. Anybody. But they always run off. And it’s a good thing. Because when I look back into my window, I see my typewriter, waiting to murder any motherfucker who crosses me. She has my back and I have hers. Like I said, it all works out fine.

The Loser.

I usually don't sleep very good. It’s usually a short and shallow bout and it’s always been this way.
But every so often comes a time when I find my place in the night.
I try and hold on to it, grasping it with everything possessed and conjured.
And there I defend it with the promise of vengeance.
I will cling to it with my goddamn fingernails if need be.
But then they drag me away forcefully, until the nails pop out of my cuticles and blood splatters everywhere.
And the agony of the alarm clock brings me reluctantly up and out of this evasive, dreamless slumber.


I was electrocuted awake at 5:42 in the a.m. It's dark and it's cold and it came along too fast.
Dim and yellow street lights fade into the room as my eyes are pried.
A quick initiation with my surroundings this fine morning.
Where the fuck am I?


Fridays are naturally those incredible celebrate-and-freakout kind of days that I’m forced to truly live for these days. My mind has been heavy and tired from mute and mild perseverance.
But still, I can’t feel the weekend’s lovely presence or any alleviation of the work week until late into Friday afternoon.
And so, this morning sucked like any other workday.
Waking at that awful hour, it may as well be Monday.
I couldn't find my work boots. Where the fuck is my jacket?
I'm out of the house and on the bike and to the train and under the bay and west to east oakland and down the avenues finally crash landing into the work day. Into a dull and terrible place in the world.
It’s a warehouse. A factory. A loading dock. It doesn’t matter.
It’s a building. Men work there. It will close its doors in less than a year.


I was on time today. I put Mexican cocoa in my coffee. Things were working out fine.
Then, ten minutes into my shift, over the noise of the forklift and the bullshit,
I hear two pieces of information simultaneously.
One is that this dude is getting fired. His name’s Jason Gomez.
Now this is a terrible thing to compact the hard times, etc.
But this guy sucked at his job and while I feel bad about it, I am more selfishly worried, at this point, that he will come back at break time and fuck everybody up with an assault rifle.
He's just the kind. A friendly and generally likable guy, telling jokes one minute.
And then off the fucking handle the next.
You could tell he was the kind of kid who struck out looking and then trashed the dugout with angry tears burning his eyes.
He seems to embody that cry baby fat kid attitude that a lot of these fucking men carry with them far past infancy.
So, I was wondering why nobody else was worried about this. Fuck getting shot at work.
Isn’t Friday supposed to be a lighter load?
A day that some are rewarded for another week of labor by getting off early?
Can we all please evade this mass murder-suicide?

The other thing I overheard was that Les Schultz, some careless business agent from the union,
was hanging around.
The only time this guy ever shows up is for bullshit like union dues. He's a thug for the moneymen
in the local. Useless to those who work. He isn’t the angry and somewhat charismatic guy, the archetypal organizer, the fabled being we naively hope to find as workingmen, coming around to the few remaining warehouses in East Oakland, to give the Friday morning news.
"We should become the parts of a new machine and rise and counter and destroy what
keeps us near dead and stratified! No more, motherfuckers, No more!"
Not this asshole. Not today. No, Les Schultz just collects money.


So, I had to evade this asshole because I owe some past dues I can't send until my next paycheck.
And I don't know what's going to happen with this deranged and recently former warehouse hand.
This sounds like a Springsteen song.

Most of the morning was spent wandering around and getting a headache.
And then I think about the fact that the listless path of my life has brought me to this stupid moment in time.


I found a way to keep busy and to avoid certain people.
And time went on excruciatingly slow. But it went on.
At about ten minutes to noon, I saw the ex-employee leave with the union stooge.
They walked out to a blue late 90s model Ford Taurus. And they never came back.
Then I realized that the firing and the union and the closed door office meeting inside was all over with.
And none of it had to do with me.
I thought hopefully that we’d all make it to five o'clock.


My fucking head throbbed and it was a menacing afternoon, but I made it. We made it. I could go on living, with all my limbs and a tired but non-vegetative mind.
I could evade union dues and go home and sleep like the elderly and smoke dope and listen to records.

Sabbath. Infest. Curtis Mayfield. Waylon Jennings. Dr. Dre. John Coltrane.
Blunt wraps. Light beer. Dark beer. Whiskey poured into beer. All limitations have died.
All my fears have eroded for the day. “I'm gonna live!”

Friday afternoon finally moved into evening and no work now and no work tomorrow.
I ride a hundred miles per down 98th avenue and back the way i came.
Home is where is weed is.




Then it was just about dark. The sun receded and night time would soon be everywhere.
I arrive home in that fine bridge of time. Yellowish lights dimly igniting the street I live on.
It's kind of warm outside.
I open the windows and get high and think about beer and basketball and poetry and film. All kinds of shit.
I’m safe and warm for now.
The world opens up for just one moment. And rests alongside me. And then it smiles and fades away.


The weariness from work is a language everybody knows. It wears us down.
Backs and knees and fingers and feet. Slowly, they become broken and useless.
But the worst thing for me is what it does to my brain.
It fucks with my memory. It constantly blurs any path to glory.
The truth about the things that hide all the time, the ones that are simple and not so bad, it buries itself in the center of my chest. It says it won't go away but I get scared.
I have to remember all of this.
I have to remember things like the ceremony in listening to a record.
The waiting just after the needle drops and the wonderful assault, that first sound.
A holy act if there ever was one, the music, the ending, the reward money.

I remember all of this. Celebration will come.
For now I breathe and think blankly about the fortune in this break between battles.
I listen to another record.
I remember and I revel in the calmness of victory.

undisputed lightweight champion of the world.

He didn’t want to be there. It was a bust in every sense. Loose plans to see about a woman had fallen flat and were fading away. Henry barely knew Janice but wanted to like her and she was supposed to be there, somewhere, only reason why he came to this fucking place. But he couldn’t find her anywhere.

Once in awhile someone would talk to him, ask him if he liked the song that played or if he lived in the city. Henry had his story and his interests and liked to wrap himself around the words and emotions of others, enjoying the high time of conversation. But he wasn’t into it tonight. He knew he didn’t want to talk to these assholes. And so, Henry gave kind, concise answers that didn’t invoke responsive follow-up questions. Not from these people. I live in Oakland. I like Megadeth. I’m an out of work factory hand. This guacamole sucks.
He wished in quiet desperation that Janice would emerge out of this mess of aging hipsters but she never did. He knew then that he had to get out of there before he got drunk and sad and ruined somebody’s good time.

Henry had lived in West Oakland for a time, working at a warehouse on the docks. But those days ended as they were ending everywhere. Lay offs and evictions and strange wheels of fate leading him to his place back in the city, San Francisco, it had been a steady six months of trying to readjust to a city he had once left behind.
The Bay itself wasn’t that big, less than two miles across, but it served as a significant barrier nonetheless. Even the skyline of San Francisco, looking Westward from Oakland, would disappear in the fog and he could watch it swallow the city in a few soft moments from the docks as it happened, feeling alive and victorious. Despite the job being shit, it had signified a decent time in his life. Henry had had a good time being anonymous. Drinking, reading, playing chess with an old man across the street.
It had been a fine, necessary break from the previous year of drinking, not reading and arguing with a sociopath. Henry had actually run into his ex, Cristina, on a busy street corner above the BART station earlier in the evening. She pretended like they were friends and no void of time or space had ever existed. She had this grocery bag full of art supplies. She wore a lot of eye make up. She had dyed her hair herself, she said. Auburn, because she’d always wanted to be a red head, which he never remembered her saying before. Anyhow it had been an empty and useless encounter.
He tried to tell himself that seeing Cristina had nothing to do with the feeling he was currently trying to extinguish with another cold swig of Pabst, as he tried to tell himself that the all the blind rage in his heart was on account of all these yuppie assholes that infested this town and surrounded him currently, that it was nothing more than that.

It had nothing to do with Janice, he also concluded. Fuck her for not showing up, sure, but he knew he couldn’t blame anyone but himself. Henry was too bored and alone these days to play it cool and wait anything out. He had met Janice the week before at a bar not far from his place. They talked most of that night and she had seemed so radiant over the smell of stale beer and sweat that dominated the bar. Then a few days later, he ran into her on the street and she had seemed excited about the coincidence and then told him about this party. It was at a friend’s house, off Valencia, no further information beyond that. That she would be there was enough for him.
And Henry had mistakenly thought about her all week. He built a small cathedral around her quick laughter and low-cut Motorhead t-shirt, breasts that probably tasted like fresh strawberries picked from the far corners of Heaven and so forth. Janice had long raven-colored hair with bangs cut short, tattoos on her neck and chest, a crooked front tooth and she said she’d grown up in Pittsburgh but hadn’t been back there in years.

But Janice wasn’t anywhere to be found tonight. And this party was an awful and awkward place to be. It would be all right, he told himself. Henry had friends he could call, redeem the night with beers and blunts among people he actually liked. But his energy for all that kind of shit had seemingly been infiltrated and snuffed out by this crowd and this town once again. He decided he would call it a night.

Without saying anything to anyone, Henry took two cans of Pabst from a 12 pack he had brought, left the rest and walked out the door. People smoked on the stoop and many others passed him by on the street going to the same party somewhere else in the city.
Fuck all this, he thought, feeling fifty years older but as wise as a child.

Once he got West of Mission St., it was calmer and quieter. There were still plenty of tricks and deals going down but the hip couples, the loft dwelling scum, the bridge and tunnel crowd desperately looking for parking, they were all few and far. A light but cold wind brushed his face and went straight through his lungs. Henry breathed easier, didn’t feel the heaviness as much, his hands gripping the cans of beer in each pocket. He thought about cracking one open but he decided to wait until he was home, where VHS and the last of his weed stash lived. He lived alone but on Saturday nights in the Mission District, being lonely felt good. Sometimes it was the best thing in the world.

Henry could see that some women had set up shop on the corner. It was more or less the same corners every night. The Vice assholes only moved it along elsewhere for a week or two. These working girls never bothered him. They were his neighbors, working graveyard shifts only a couple blocks from his place. Henry would pass them and say nothing and life would move on relentlessly for everyone.
But this time, he nodded to one, because he didn’t feel like feeling awkward or ignoring her obvious glare through the dim yellow light on the corner. She was a tall, lean and nearly beautiful thing. She had a short yellow dress, heels, tiniest purse ever seen, nice legs, hair done up somewhat, real dark skin that seemed to glow under the street light. In this part of town the prostitutes looked as such. No bullshit. As soon as he passed her, she muttered something he didn’t hear, to which he ignored until another voice, a notch above a mutter said something to him.

He turned around to see another prostitute emerge, also tall in heels and a skirt, but white and red headed and a little heavier set, more breasts than legs unlike the other. But it wasn’t her voice that had called out to him. It was a man’s voice, a cackle of laughter out of the shadows. Then the man appeared.
Bad news right away. A skinny white dude, looked like a squirrel under a red Kangol, began pitching ideas, asking where he was going, what he wanted, sales pitching the goods.
Henry wanted to keep walking but the pimp obstructed his path.
“Come on now, man,” he said, “what you want? You can’t look and not touch, and you know it, ‘lil man.”
Henry wasn’t a big man, an inch or two under average and medium built. The squirrelly pimp wasn’t any bigger, in fact just as short and a hell of a lot skinnier. And the way his streetwise demeanor and vocabulary seemed forced coupled with his matching red jump suit made him seem even less intimidating. But Henry knew that this was a man of the street, a street that was dark and empty. The prostitutes, alongside their pimp, were closing in. So, this is how it works, Henry thought to himself. You were forced into fucking two hookers or else robbed by a weasel in a velvet jumpsuit. What a bullshit night.

The pimp kept on, “Listen, man, you ain’t hearin’ what I’m playin’’…You look hella inter-ested in these ladies so I suggest you hurry up and buy…you never had no pussy like this and that ain’t no joke…”
He was ridiculous. Henry still said nothing, wondering if this guy was for real. His heart pounded and the street was still silent around them. He stood back and thought about running. His hands were still in his pockets and the beers weren’t as cold as they had been. The weasel moved in closer, continuing to hock pussy like they were the last used cars on earth.
The black one Henry had initially seen looked indifferent as she stood there and watched this strange scene unfold. The white one looked a little more menacing and seemed to be actually interested in the aggravation that her pimp was currently engaged in. Closer in the yellow light, Henry could see she was gnarled and far less attractive than the other. Her teeth, her clothes, her breasts, everything.
Henry again tried to walk away. Then the incessant little pimp finally stopped Henry with a hand and said, “You gonna put yo’ money where yo’ mouth is or you a straight faggot?”
“Ok,” Henry said. “You know something? You’re not a real good salesman, you know that? I don’t know how the fuck you sell anything. Even if I had been interested in what you sellin’ you killed it with that stupid fucking get-up and that gnarly ass grill. Fuck you, get the fuck outta the way.” The weasel was paralyzed. The white hooker looked even more disgusted. The black one laughed and it killed the silence, her pimp giving her a swift, stale look of hatred. Henry’s heart was pounding hard, trying vigorously to escape from out of his chest. Before anything could be said, the pimp brought out a blade.
It was a straight razor, the kind used for a shave in 1923. It looked old fashioned but it also looked sharp. And his beady, weasel eyes looked murderous. Henry knew this asshole was going to put that blade to use and nobody else was around save for two giant, angry hookers.

In a strange, swift flash and sliver of time, Henry took his right hand out of his jacket pocket. He held the hard, lukewarm can of Pabst, and threw it as hard as he could. It made a thud as it hit the pimp square in the abdomen, possibly in the balls or the bread basket, Henry was unsure as he stood there bewildered by his own accuracy.
The pimp gasped and dropped the blade and the beer rolled along the sidewalk lightly fizzing, slowly spilling beer onto the street. The prostitutes were equally stunned. Each stood staring at Henry. He didn’t know what to do. One beer left. He took it out with his left hand, grabbed it with his right and held it like a quarterback posing for a portrait.
Then, he let it go again, this time throwing it harder than the first, downward, smacking the moaning hustler right in the head. The can bounced off his skull and fizzed and sprayed all over the place. The pimp had already been down on the ground, grunting and gasping, his Kangol in the gutter. The kill-shot, which also served as a warning to his back-up, left the pimp lying on the street. A small geyser of Pabst Blue Ribbon covered his face as a bloody knot would certainly develop quickly there in the dark. Henry wondered if his employees would retaliate.

The white prostitute rushed to her pimp’s aid, not looking at Henry, generally concerned about the injury, taking off her shirt to dress the wound. The bloodied squirrel was out cold, the busty topless prostitute was in tears and the tall black one stared at Henry, looking more beautiful than ever. She lit another cigarette, rolled her eyes at the scene going down before her on the street. No cars passed and no wind blew. Henry was lost and frozen and decided he should continue walking home.
Then, the beautiful black woman smiled and stopped him. “Say, baby, you got any more of them beers?”

Runnin' Free.

The truck stop was off the last exit in Georgia. We were northbound heading up to Chattanooga, just over the state line. The sun quietly descended over the southern Appalachians and the heat dissipated but the humidity did not. We were all either shirtless or sleeveless. A month on the road, five fuck ups from California, playing loud music in basements and bars, drunk and high and ready for the next deal.

We got gas and wandered around the truck stop. Many southern travelers, clerks and parking lot drifters looked at us like we were some strange plague growing along the banks of the Chattahoochee, emerging now in the evening to de-virginize their daughters and take the sheriff hostage. Our ’89 Econoline van that rollicked into the lot was a sweaty mess of beards, tattoos, bandanas, bug bites, beer cans and a large cloud of California Chronic smoke that we had miraculously conserved to this point. But we were running low.
What amazed me, when I went in to buy a t-shirt and a beverage, were the people who were not disgusted by us but rather intrigued and curious and ultimately envious at our self-imposed freedom and insanity. I talked to a man in a camouflaged hat who said,
“Well shit, brother, you gotta get this shirt right here, this one’ll fit ya, hell yeah.”
He was browsing through and saw it. It was black and it had a picture of a deer, a large and impressive buck coinciding with an equally reverent semi truck. A deer and a diesel and the green script above it read, Runnin’ Free. I thanked him kindly and bought the shirt, cutting the sleeves off with a pocket knife as soon as I got back into the van.

It was still hot out but the southern dusk and its softest breeze found us as we drove north into Tennessee. And Chattanooga right away, first town over the line and our destination for the night. We found the place and parked outside. It was an infamous punk house adorned with the decorations you might expect. Misfits posters and a stuffed warthog’s head. It smelled like sweat and stale beer and it lacked furniture. It was our kind of place. We were nomadic and poised for early death. This was where we wanted to be. There was a makeshift bar in a bedroom and a basement for bands. There were a lot of people there, kids and old punks and few random street people. We took in our equipment and smoked a blunt inside the living room. It was still early so we went to this bar across the street and down a hill. Some kind of cockroach flew into my head real hard when I went outside. We found the bar and drank Budweiser and smoked cigarettes inside and watched Nascar. We were a quintet of assholes, mid to late 20s, with a semi-responsible 19 year old roadie wandering around the south after a month in the Midwest and on the East coast. It had been something. We were still weeks away from home and had barely directed our ship west. The beers were real cold and the fan inside the bar felt ok. And night was now falling fast.

We played with a band I don’t remember, from Cleveland, and two local punk bands. The basement was a Southern sweat lodge. The night air stuck to my bare chest like a magnet as I walked through the room to set up my drums. When we were ready to play we decided on doing so naked. It was feasible because of the humidity but necessary because of the mood. It was a crowd of goofballs and knuckleheads, people swinging from the ceiling and lighting firecrackers. So we played naked. Sergio, on vocals, came to me and said, “Hey this isn’t cool. Everyone else has an instrument to protect them from the fireworks.”
I was drunk already and delirious from the heat. I had no advice or consolations.
I said, “Just burn your dick off, dude.”

We played a decent set. The crowd was wild and that was cool. The bottle rockets flying around the room amazingly did not cause injury to anyone. We played for about 12 minutes and a lot of people bought records and t-shirts. We were invited to hang out and party at the house all night. And one of the local bands, who all lived in a house twenty miles outside of Chattanooga, offered us a place to rest our heads. We were grateful for the hospitality but were unsure of what our night would entail.

Many more 12 packs of cheap domestic beer were purchased and put to use. On guitar, Tommy Teeterz along with Sergio got so wasted that they were asking around for hard drugs like the couple of sketch balls they truly are. Anthony, on bass, smoked a lot of weed and wanted to drive to New Orleans that night, where we planned to be the next day. It was a long and humid drive so the idea of doing it at once and at night sounded good to me. Foose, the roadie, was sober and willing to drive. We all kept it in mind and I drank some more beer.

At some point, an older dude with long hair and a good beard approached me and asked, “Hey man, did you put this sticker on my van?”
I didn’t know what to say, figuring he was pissed off about it.
“Mother Speed,” he said, “Is that you guys or what? Somebody put this on my van, it says” and he read, “’Let Your Dork Hang Out.’ Was that you dudes?”
I was the only one around so feeling somewhat responsible, I told him.
“Yeah man, I think someone in my band put that on there,” and I was on the verge of apologizing when he said, “You got any more, man? These stickers are…fuckin’ awesome!”
And so we had beers and joints and exchanged music outside our van. His story was that he had been on tour with a blues duo in England and just moved back to Chattanooga where his buddy had a recording studio. His name was Jules and he was from Port Arthur, Texas. He said places like Beaumont and Port Arthur and even Huntsville kicked Austin’s ass, as far as Texas was concerned. He liked playing gigs out there but said he hadn’t been back to live and wasn’t going to for a long while. Jules had been a traveling preacher and then a heroin addict and went to jail, laid railroad track, played guitar with obscure bluesmen and checked out house shows in Chattanooga when he had the time. There was something about the man that was honest and unpretentious. And he couldn’t have been older than 35. It was a good time.

At some point, after Jules had gone to buy “just some shitty coke,” things changed, shit went down at the house. There was a fight, a Russian punk calling some other kid a cunt, a matriarch of sorts apprehending a culprit for stealing something and a rumor about the cops being called. We all said fuck it. Tommy and Sergio passed out in the back of the van. The rest of us got our equipment, our share of gas money, said thank you and hit the road. We still had a 12 pack of Busch and 2 joints rolled and ready. We never saw our friend from Port Arthur, Texas again.

Heading south, out of Tennessee, through a mile or two of Georgia and then Welcome to Alabama. It was three in the morning. After the joints, Anthony fell asleep and it was just Foose driving and myself sitting shotgun. It was quiet. We didn’t see another car on the interstate for at least an hour. I drank nearly 12 beers and we talked about ex-girlfriends and other scattered memories of ours. It was one of those rare moments on tour when things are still and talking moves the hours along. I looked out the window and saw the dark flatlands of Alabama. We passed a civil war battlefield, an abandoned plantation house and a murky river named after a forgotten Choctaw warrior. We drove into the dawn and stopped at a rest area where we opened the van door and rolled down the windows. We slept in the parking lot until the sun was unbearable. Our stomachs and our heads were sour and stale. And it was late August in Alabama. We drove on.

Later that day, after driving through Mississippi, we reached Louisiana where even stranger insects mated and flew and attacked me simultaneously. Then New Orleans emerged from the ocean and the river and the swamp. And we were once again, temporarily home. And once again, runnin’ free.

first deal.

unable to decide what i hated more, hipster summer fashion or hipster winter fashion, i began to bang my head against a computer hoping i would die of severe head trauma before i came up with an answer. all the inexplicable insanities dancing around in my head and on the pavement outside and i'm alone getting bummed out on ironic cut-offs vs. tundra caps. jesus fucking christ, i said. it all dawned on me by afternoon's end. i stopped trying to kill myself. i printed out some stories i had written. a small but relatively substantial stockpile, considering the factory job kept me occupied and too tired to write more than a sentence for two years. and i decided that while reading and finetuning and possibly burning to death these minor tales, i would post some of them as blogs, alongside useless vomit from my angry mind. such as this.
then, i took five hits of acid, found jesus, bet all i had on a cockfight in barstow, lost all i had, came back home. and wrote a story for nobody and everyone at the same fucking time.
that's what happened. no more. and no less.