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.