Get Well Soon.....and shine your shoes will you?
PART 4
When I finally got back to Los Gatos, I figured something needed changing. I felt strange staying at John's place, even though they welcomed me more than they should have. They weren't even there most of the time. It was nothing they were doing; it was just everything I was. I felt like a squid in a sack.. Helpless, bogged down, dying.
When they told me I no longer had the job at Adobe...I didn't know what to do. At that time I was so numb to the knocks on the head I kept getting I really don't know if I could feel anything at all. But the good news was that they fired the new nanny, and I was going to be the replacement. $100 a week and room and board, two kids who I already loved.
I could deal with that.I guess.
I spent most of the following days for the next several months in parks, at tae kwon do, or ballet, and waiting in the nanny circle after school for the kids to get out of class. Most of the nanny's there in Los Gatos were from other countries. One girl from Africa had a father who was a priest, and used to tie big American businessmen up in an old French Prison, so they could learn teamwork.
I ran at the end of every day, and I would always think of a fluffy pink sweater floating in the wind above me. I've never known why I thought of that, but I always did. Sometimes, I think of it still.
At night I'd hang in the coffee shops with the Nannys and listen to them talk to each other, and wonder what they were saying. Every now and then they'd remember I was there and say in some lusty accent.
"Are you having fun Brrrrad?"
"um hmm" and a sip of my triple mocha. "yes."
We played backgammon and I was a champion. The foreign girls all knew how to play backgammon.
I started seeing a Persian girl named Baharak eventually, and we'd do things like volunteer at the food bank in San Francisco, hand out fresh beautiful needles at the clinics in Santa Cruz. One night we took an inflatable raft out into the middle of a lake somewhere near Los Gatos and it sank. She didn't swim so I pulled her up on the shore, and she was panting, scared. I never really called her after that.
The little boy I was keeping, Trey ,told me once he'd rather be a blade of grass than a worm. He also told me that if he had any superpower it would be to ward off death. He was six years old.
On my 23rd Birthday, a friend from Georgia came out to visit. Shepherd Dunn from Fitzgerald, Georgia. He's a hard one to describe. A former champion wrestler, short but chocked full of the kind of muscles that can just tear your head clean off. I'd seen him try it many times. If you've never seen a wrestler get into a fight, they hardly ever lose. He had bright green eyes, and a long goatee, and a demeanor like a hillbilly infused with beautiful butterflies. Shepherd was not only powerful physically, but he held a power over anyone he was talking to. It was lie Dickey Betts meets Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi. You believed in him. He had this effortless spiritual way about him that drew everyone into his world. He'd say things like "Man, the day before I left to come our here, I was writing San Francisco on my hand and at the precise same moment, the teacher said the word, SAN FRAN CISCO. I knew that meant I was supposed to be here."
Whatever.
It was uncomfortable to be cynical around him. And I know he knew this. And eventually, it works.
He had his problems though, which is probably why we identified so well with each other. His fourth DUI had led him to quit the sauce too. We were both pretty near the bottom, we just didn't want to look down. While he was out we stayed up most of the night walking around San Franciso, went to the Fillmore, and a bunch of all night diners, and it was decided that when I came back out after the summer, he'd come with me.
The tentative plan was for me to head back to Georgia, work in the cotton fields all summer and get back to California with a few thousand dollars in my pocket. Shep would work the summer as well. Between us we hoped to have enough to get a place, and get started on whatever it was we were supposed to be doing.
On my way back across the country, I took hwy 40 this time. I didn't want to get too close to Mexico; I camped out next to an Old Western saloon one night. I went in to eat, and the wait staff was serving everyone while singing "Unda tha sea" from The Little Mermaid. It was all very confusing and I felt perfectly alone watching them.
Two weeks later Im back in Georgia for the summer.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
A Bitchhole in the Earth
In the weeks after the mudslide, I'd work all day, then come home and dig, and clean the wet dirt off of all the nice things that John and Dawn had accumulated. I was on CNN, in mudboots and a purple sweatshirt, telling my violent tale of climbing over a giant mound of mud out to the road, where the firemen were standing there watching. hoping that someone was alive in that nice ass crushed house. I told the news guy that the mudslide really brought the world down with it. I thought that was really clever. And it kept on coming.
Within two weeks I'd totaled my brothers new LandRover on the way to work, my sister-in-laws BMW in the ADOBE parking garage, then I wrecked my company's van on the streets of San Jose. Manuela was so was freaked out by the thought that she was upstairs in the kitchen(which no longer existed), moments before the mudslide had happened, that she'd hightailed it back to Germany. Her goodbye letter reads:
.I was so interested in your insides. I felt that you had many interesting things to explore, and that you had nobody to talk to. That feeling makes my feelings uncomfortable. I'm sad that you never let me look at your insides. She signed it XXXOOO MANU.
She left it on my bed the night she left.
She was right about me having no one to talk to. I wrote letters all day that I never sent, holed up in closets at work. I listened for something that I could never hear. I quit drinking, quit eating meat, quit everything I was used to. I just wanted to be alone.
We moved into my Sister-in-Laws X-Husband's house. Dawn and "Rob" had one of those "we're still friends, but we couldn't stay married" kind of relationships. . It was basically Me, The Kids, and a new Nanny from Germany who walked around in her underpants. She knitted things but she never wore them. It confused me and she spoke no English. I hated her. Hated her. Rob moved over to his girlfriend's house but would check in from time to time. He owned a string of Car Washes
Since my truck ended up with a creek flowing through it, I had to find a new ride. With insurance money, it wasn't too big a deal, and John said he'd help me out. John was such a good man to me. I found a used range-rover in the paper, with a big metal luggage rack and too many miles. It was perfect. The day I got the car, I headed up alone to San Francisco. I didn't know where I was going, I just drove up hwy 101 until I saw the skyline then dove the car down the Market St exit and into the City. After stopping for some coffee and lingering too long at a few bars drinking ice water, I was driving up a giant hill by bums and trolley tracks, and lampposts when the car died. I had to pull the emergency brake to keep from tumbling backward forever into the pacific. I could see cars lined up and the whispy white waves of the sea beyond them. Another Pickle. The hill was so steep I had to lean forward to walk to the hood and pop it. I thought maybe if I popped the hood the car would start. People were blowing, yelling, shaking fists, at me. They were all different colors, driving small efficient cars that meant to make the world better. They were going somewhere fast. I was in the way. I ran into a bar on the corner, but it was an Asian bar, and the little light skinned people stared at me- a giant screaming at them for a phone. They didn't speak English. Not that it mattered. There was absolutely no one I could call. There wasn't much brother could do from Alaska. I was stranded in the city with less than twenty bucks. Hell I could've been there for days. It hurt so bad in my lungs and my throat that I could have gone forever down into San Francisco, could have become a part of it that no one would ever notice. I wanted that. I really wanted it then.
I sat down on the curb and put my head in my hands. I Heard the honking, people yelling for me to get the fuck out of their way over and over.get the fuck out of the waygetthefuckoutofthewaygetthefuckoutoftheway asshole!!
A bus pulls around my car and stops, and a tall skinny blond body full of tattoos gets off and stands staring at me smiling.
"Man, maybe you should get the fuck out of everybody's way".
"Maybe." I bare my teeth at her like a lion, or an idiot from Georgia.
She walks off.
About five minutes later she walks out of the bar with a beer and gives it to me. Tells me she's a herion addict who just walked out of rehab, and she's looking for a fix. Did I have any money. What was my Name? Brad? Really! My Husbands name is...was..Brad. See I have it tattooed on my ring finger.
She showed me her finger, which held the word Brad in a perfect cursive half-cirlce, , which I thought should probably mean something. I sat quietly until she got bored, until I knew that she didn't offer me a way out of this. Until I knew that I wouldn't end up with her in an alley with a needle looking for a pillow in the cold puddles in the dark. But I didn't want to. I really didnt want to then.
Eventually a carload of punk kids came walking up the street wearing spikes, and mascara with blood on their shirts, and offered to help me push the car to the side. We barely made it up the hill and to a parking spot, but we made it. The honking stopped, and then it stopped forever when we went to a bar and let the loud throbbing sounds of guitar and the screaming surprise me. I was from Georgia. At least I had that going for me. At least I could still be surprised. That night I spent the night with the those punk kids, or hardcore as they called themselves. They admitted they didn't trust me to sleep upstairs so gave me the basement, which they locked me in with a giant silver masterlock. I looked at the lock a long time before I went down the stairs into the dark. But it was there thatI met Betty, a 100 pound brendel Pit Bulldog. (Named for Betty Page of Course)
She and I dreamt together that night, I spooned her, and her snores lulled me into a dark deep sleep. I woke the next morning, found my brother and towed my Car back to Los Gatos on his credit card. . I went to sleep early wondering forever if I would just fall always if I let go. I wanted to. I wanted to let go. I woke up Monday without a job.
Within two weeks I'd totaled my brothers new LandRover on the way to work, my sister-in-laws BMW in the ADOBE parking garage, then I wrecked my company's van on the streets of San Jose. Manuela was so was freaked out by the thought that she was upstairs in the kitchen(which no longer existed), moments before the mudslide had happened, that she'd hightailed it back to Germany. Her goodbye letter reads:
.I was so interested in your insides. I felt that you had many interesting things to explore, and that you had nobody to talk to. That feeling makes my feelings uncomfortable. I'm sad that you never let me look at your insides. She signed it XXXOOO MANU.
She left it on my bed the night she left.
She was right about me having no one to talk to. I wrote letters all day that I never sent, holed up in closets at work. I listened for something that I could never hear. I quit drinking, quit eating meat, quit everything I was used to. I just wanted to be alone.
We moved into my Sister-in-Laws X-Husband's house. Dawn and "Rob" had one of those "we're still friends, but we couldn't stay married" kind of relationships. . It was basically Me, The Kids, and a new Nanny from Germany who walked around in her underpants. She knitted things but she never wore them. It confused me and she spoke no English. I hated her. Hated her. Rob moved over to his girlfriend's house but would check in from time to time. He owned a string of Car Washes
Since my truck ended up with a creek flowing through it, I had to find a new ride. With insurance money, it wasn't too big a deal, and John said he'd help me out. John was such a good man to me. I found a used range-rover in the paper, with a big metal luggage rack and too many miles. It was perfect. The day I got the car, I headed up alone to San Francisco. I didn't know where I was going, I just drove up hwy 101 until I saw the skyline then dove the car down the Market St exit and into the City. After stopping for some coffee and lingering too long at a few bars drinking ice water, I was driving up a giant hill by bums and trolley tracks, and lampposts when the car died. I had to pull the emergency brake to keep from tumbling backward forever into the pacific. I could see cars lined up and the whispy white waves of the sea beyond them. Another Pickle. The hill was so steep I had to lean forward to walk to the hood and pop it. I thought maybe if I popped the hood the car would start. People were blowing, yelling, shaking fists, at me. They were all different colors, driving small efficient cars that meant to make the world better. They were going somewhere fast. I was in the way. I ran into a bar on the corner, but it was an Asian bar, and the little light skinned people stared at me- a giant screaming at them for a phone. They didn't speak English. Not that it mattered. There was absolutely no one I could call. There wasn't much brother could do from Alaska. I was stranded in the city with less than twenty bucks. Hell I could've been there for days. It hurt so bad in my lungs and my throat that I could have gone forever down into San Francisco, could have become a part of it that no one would ever notice. I wanted that. I really wanted it then.
I sat down on the curb and put my head in my hands. I Heard the honking, people yelling for me to get the fuck out of their way over and over.get the fuck out of the waygetthefuckoutofthewaygetthefuckoutoftheway asshole!!
A bus pulls around my car and stops, and a tall skinny blond body full of tattoos gets off and stands staring at me smiling.
"Man, maybe you should get the fuck out of everybody's way".
"Maybe." I bare my teeth at her like a lion, or an idiot from Georgia.
She walks off.
About five minutes later she walks out of the bar with a beer and gives it to me. Tells me she's a herion addict who just walked out of rehab, and she's looking for a fix. Did I have any money. What was my Name? Brad? Really! My Husbands name is...was..Brad. See I have it tattooed on my ring finger.
She showed me her finger, which held the word Brad in a perfect cursive half-cirlce, , which I thought should probably mean something. I sat quietly until she got bored, until I knew that she didn't offer me a way out of this. Until I knew that I wouldn't end up with her in an alley with a needle looking for a pillow in the cold puddles in the dark. But I didn't want to. I really didnt want to then.
Eventually a carload of punk kids came walking up the street wearing spikes, and mascara with blood on their shirts, and offered to help me push the car to the side. We barely made it up the hill and to a parking spot, but we made it. The honking stopped, and then it stopped forever when we went to a bar and let the loud throbbing sounds of guitar and the screaming surprise me. I was from Georgia. At least I had that going for me. At least I could still be surprised. That night I spent the night with the those punk kids, or hardcore as they called themselves. They admitted they didn't trust me to sleep upstairs so gave me the basement, which they locked me in with a giant silver masterlock. I looked at the lock a long time before I went down the stairs into the dark. But it was there thatI met Betty, a 100 pound brendel Pit Bulldog. (Named for Betty Page of Course)
She and I dreamt together that night, I spooned her, and her snores lulled me into a dark deep sleep. I woke the next morning, found my brother and towed my Car back to Los Gatos on his credit card. . I went to sleep early wondering forever if I would just fall always if I let go. I wanted to. I wanted to let go. I woke up Monday without a job.
Hotub DIrt
PART 2
After leaving El Paso, I was so broken I barely stopped until the car made me. A fan belt broke in Barstow, California, home of the Western American Railroad Museum. I was out of money, and slept on the side of the road for a day or two while my generous, brother wired me the money to get the car fixed and get to his house in Los Gatos ( The Cats), California. Neal Cassidy's son lives there. He plays in a cover band at Coffee Shops and Mexican Restaurants. Jamba Juice, knick knacks and very healthy animals.
When I get there, my brother and his wife are gone.... working. They are doing this in Alaska, and I'm left with Manuela, a German Nanny, and my brother's two stepchildren, Brittany and Trey. I'll only be alone with them for a week or so at first, until we meet the family up North in Lake Tahoe for a weekend of skiing. Things were looking up for me, but I wasn't looking down.
After skiing, I went on the job hunt, and finally found one at a maintenance firm in San Jose. We had a contract at ADOBE. That's the company that makes photoshop, illustrator, and most of the other programs we now use to put our paper together. It was the nineties, the internet was rollin big, and I was putting together bookshelves in Charles Geschke's (one of the founders) office on the top floor of this huge innovative building. A different chef came to the cafeteria every week. There was a workout facility and televisions that came out of the ceiling. Geshcke came in and talked to me and asked what I wanted to do with my life. Everyone who was making a lot of money on the internet seemed to be really into self-help, and I didn't know what color my parachute was. I told him I wanted to start a newspaper. He told me I'd have to learn how to use all his products. I was putting books about algorithms on his shelves by then, and just wanted him to stop looking at me.
"I'm not really a janitor you know."
"You should learn computers."
"Yeah, maybe I will."
I stocked power bars and organic milk in conference halls and break rooms, crawled in air conditioning shafts, re-organized storage facilities, and watched 5500 successful young adults run a giant corporation without ever really knowing what that corporation did. I was too busy trying to hide, trying not to look at them. Hoping they were not looking at me, in my Izod shirt, JANITOR in script on top of my heart. Now of course, ADOBE products are a huge part of how we make our living. Weird, but everything then was a giant domino stack of coincidences and dream-like trances that kept me from facing all the terrible, wonderful things were going to happen to me.
El Nino was also brewing out in the sea and it had been raining for weeks.. I'd just cleaned up a homeless camp outside the ADOBE building. There were shit stains on the concrete that had to be pressure washed off. I remember the spray reflecting off the concrete being brown, yet I could still see the faint picture of a rainbow. I figured that must have meant something, but I didn't linger too long.
I was already well into an affair with the Nanny, Manuela. Kissing and tugging and grabbing in the laundry room while the kids were sleeping, her broken English washing over me and letting me pretend I was somewhere else, that I hadn't just seen a rainbow in shit water. I went home that day and tried to bite her to pieces on the couch. Afterwards, she took my German Shephard and put it in the Garage down the hall from my bedroom, and took the kids over to their father's house down the road. Joint Custody.
Sometime that night I awoke to a loud, explosion. I thought it was thunder. It was about 1000 tons of mud that had fallen from the mountain and lodged against the side of this beautiful home full of pictures and nice sink fixtures, weird shaped soap, stainless steel and rain sticks. I heard my dog raising hell, and walked down the hall to the garage door. I couldn't open it and noticed a brown watery fluid seeping into the house under the door. I thought I was dreaming. (The shit water). I could hear my dog, along with my brother's dog, drowning. But I couldn't pull the door open. I didnt know it, but the garage was filling with mud. Finally another boom, and the front of the house sheered off in front of me. If I could've opened the door, I would have been looking at the front of our house spilling down the hillside. Sparks were flying, things were breaking, and I ran back to my bedroom and out the back door. When I jumped off the porch I landed in the mudslide. Thick sludge full of insulation and wood and nails,wires, and fire headed down the hill to a small creek that ran beside the house. I can remember seeing a light pole snap, and sparks go everywhere, then a punctured gas canister go by. I really remember thinking that I would probably die, but that it wasn't as bad as I used to think it would be. I made it up a hill to a neighbors house, broke the window and went in, tracking dark mud across her white Berber carpet, past the candles, past the mountain bike, past The Road Less Traveled.
I called my Sister-in-Law from her phone and told her that there was a hole in her house and that I didn't know what happened. I'd never even heard of a mudslide. I thought maybe I'd done something. I thought it was something Manuela and I had done.
I dug for two weeks through the sludge looking for my dog. I found him with his head missing, and buried him, which is kind of silly, I guess. I also found a letter Id written the day before the mudslide, to a friend named Will Swinney. In it I claimed to feel kind of Muddy, that I didn't really know what I was doing out there. I found my car under the hot tub down in the creek. Coincidence?
After leaving El Paso, I was so broken I barely stopped until the car made me. A fan belt broke in Barstow, California, home of the Western American Railroad Museum. I was out of money, and slept on the side of the road for a day or two while my generous, brother wired me the money to get the car fixed and get to his house in Los Gatos ( The Cats), California. Neal Cassidy's son lives there. He plays in a cover band at Coffee Shops and Mexican Restaurants. Jamba Juice, knick knacks and very healthy animals.
When I get there, my brother and his wife are gone.... working. They are doing this in Alaska, and I'm left with Manuela, a German Nanny, and my brother's two stepchildren, Brittany and Trey. I'll only be alone with them for a week or so at first, until we meet the family up North in Lake Tahoe for a weekend of skiing. Things were looking up for me, but I wasn't looking down.
After skiing, I went on the job hunt, and finally found one at a maintenance firm in San Jose. We had a contract at ADOBE. That's the company that makes photoshop, illustrator, and most of the other programs we now use to put our paper together. It was the nineties, the internet was rollin big, and I was putting together bookshelves in Charles Geschke's (one of the founders) office on the top floor of this huge innovative building. A different chef came to the cafeteria every week. There was a workout facility and televisions that came out of the ceiling. Geshcke came in and talked to me and asked what I wanted to do with my life. Everyone who was making a lot of money on the internet seemed to be really into self-help, and I didn't know what color my parachute was. I told him I wanted to start a newspaper. He told me I'd have to learn how to use all his products. I was putting books about algorithms on his shelves by then, and just wanted him to stop looking at me.
"I'm not really a janitor you know."
"You should learn computers."
"Yeah, maybe I will."
I stocked power bars and organic milk in conference halls and break rooms, crawled in air conditioning shafts, re-organized storage facilities, and watched 5500 successful young adults run a giant corporation without ever really knowing what that corporation did. I was too busy trying to hide, trying not to look at them. Hoping they were not looking at me, in my Izod shirt, JANITOR in script on top of my heart. Now of course, ADOBE products are a huge part of how we make our living. Weird, but everything then was a giant domino stack of coincidences and dream-like trances that kept me from facing all the terrible, wonderful things were going to happen to me.
El Nino was also brewing out in the sea and it had been raining for weeks.. I'd just cleaned up a homeless camp outside the ADOBE building. There were shit stains on the concrete that had to be pressure washed off. I remember the spray reflecting off the concrete being brown, yet I could still see the faint picture of a rainbow. I figured that must have meant something, but I didn't linger too long.
I was already well into an affair with the Nanny, Manuela. Kissing and tugging and grabbing in the laundry room while the kids were sleeping, her broken English washing over me and letting me pretend I was somewhere else, that I hadn't just seen a rainbow in shit water. I went home that day and tried to bite her to pieces on the couch. Afterwards, she took my German Shephard and put it in the Garage down the hall from my bedroom, and took the kids over to their father's house down the road. Joint Custody.
Sometime that night I awoke to a loud, explosion. I thought it was thunder. It was about 1000 tons of mud that had fallen from the mountain and lodged against the side of this beautiful home full of pictures and nice sink fixtures, weird shaped soap, stainless steel and rain sticks. I heard my dog raising hell, and walked down the hall to the garage door. I couldn't open it and noticed a brown watery fluid seeping into the house under the door. I thought I was dreaming. (The shit water). I could hear my dog, along with my brother's dog, drowning. But I couldn't pull the door open. I didnt know it, but the garage was filling with mud. Finally another boom, and the front of the house sheered off in front of me. If I could've opened the door, I would have been looking at the front of our house spilling down the hillside. Sparks were flying, things were breaking, and I ran back to my bedroom and out the back door. When I jumped off the porch I landed in the mudslide. Thick sludge full of insulation and wood and nails,wires, and fire headed down the hill to a small creek that ran beside the house. I can remember seeing a light pole snap, and sparks go everywhere, then a punctured gas canister go by. I really remember thinking that I would probably die, but that it wasn't as bad as I used to think it would be. I made it up a hill to a neighbors house, broke the window and went in, tracking dark mud across her white Berber carpet, past the candles, past the mountain bike, past The Road Less Traveled.
I called my Sister-in-Law from her phone and told her that there was a hole in her house and that I didn't know what happened. I'd never even heard of a mudslide. I thought maybe I'd done something. I thought it was something Manuela and I had done.
I dug for two weeks through the sludge looking for my dog. I found him with his head missing, and buried him, which is kind of silly, I guess. I also found a letter Id written the day before the mudslide, to a friend named Will Swinney. In it I claimed to feel kind of Muddy, that I didn't really know what I was doing out there. I found my car under the hot tub down in the creek. Coincidence?
Your's Mine and Alfredo's
Yours, Mine and Alfredo's
Computer crash left many of my older stories lost in space. I'm starting to re-write most of them. All of which, are unfortunately true.
I think it was around 1998 when girlfriends, parents, and other various loved ones finally stopped me. Spending my book money on the good stuff, I guess, was more than they could stand. I didn't really blame them, but I couldn't stick around. I left pretty soon after the meeting and drove 16 hours straight from Vienna to Austin Texas,where holed up in a tall girls apartment for a couple of weeks, and wrote things on napkins down on sixth street that I didn't really mean, that I would hopefully one day, burn. When I drove out of the parking lot of her apartment complex, I halfway wanted her to stop me. I left with the window down, I can remember, listening for a holler, or a whimper at least. Nothing. Looking back, I can see how I probably didn't mean that much to her either. Someone to eat with and grind on for a while. I drove the rest of the day to El Paso, lonely as a bird, whispering like one to the radio and my dog in the seat beside me. Texas, is a long bleak state, and by the time Id gotten to the Western Edge, I was worn way down. I couldn't stop now. I walked over to a motorcycle dealership, and looked around, noticed a small Mexican fellow browsing around like I was, just passing the time. As I headed out to the car he stopped me, and began a long conversation about Colorado, where he was from. I'd never cared to much for Colorado. It seemed like that's where you went if you're parents paid the way. Ski instructors, Microbrews, Aspen Trees, Lamborghinis. I was still mad at being poor.
Somehow Alfredo talked me into his hotel room, where we drank a bottle of brandy, and he told me of the wonders of Mexico. It wasn't long before I'd stashed most of my money, grabbed a buck knife from a sack in the truck, hopped in his civic and headed to Juarez. It was on the way down that he pulled out a Cambells soup can full of Vicadon, offered me one, and told me the real reason he was headed down was to pick up 25 pounds of marijuana, to bring back across the border. I, as can be expected, freaked the fuck out. After calming the giant in his civic down, by assuring him that tonight wasn't the drop off night, that he was just scouting, I somehow kept on going. It wasn't like I had much of a choice. We were on a dark highway, and I was a pipsqueak of the road. Once we got to Juarez, the a really weird old west seemed to surround us. Tranny Hookers lined the dirt streets, people beating on the windows at the American boy. The only one in Mexico that night, or so it seemed. Getting in was easy, and I already wanted out.
Alfredo immediately pulled up to a bar and got out, telling me to stay put. Small brown men surrounded the car; beat on the windows even more. "Amigo!"
Finally I got out, at least to let them see how tall I was, how muscles bulged, how mean I thought I was. They didn't care, and surrounded me, lifting me like an angel in their brown clouds. Alfredo came out yelling in Spanish, and split the sea. Explained to me in English that Id probably lost my watch and wallet. I hadn't. They were in my coat, zipped up.
"I wasn't that stupid," I said.
"Yeah." and we were off.
Walking into a strip club, Alfredo showed me the score he held in his hand, a big fat white ball of Cocaine.
"You want some?"
"Nah, I quit."
I was being honest, and while I watched the naked women writhing and Alfredo keep disappearing, my heart beat fast, and I thought about America. I was afraid of the men in the corners holding shiny things and looking down at me over thick sickening moustaches. Bugs crawled in them I knew it. In their bodies. Worms.
We visited several clubs that night; some which I'm convinced were brothels. Pool Tables and big leather belted Amigos, women all there for the taking. I could barley finish a beer. Dead ass sober for the first time in a long time. I probably should have enjoyed it, but Mama still meant something back then.
Once Alfredo was satisfied, our journey back to El Paso began. We didn't get two blocks before the Federales pulled us over, for riding on the sidewalk to get around a big hole in the dirt street. That's right sidewalks and dirt streets.
They pulled us out of the car and handcuffed us, talking in Spanish to Alfredo and to me, who didn't understand. They took the license plate off the car, and Alfredo told me they found the Cocaine, on him, and in the car. A bunch of it. We were fucked, as he said it. Fucked.
I sat down on the street, leaned my back against the car, and went through all the horrible things I had heard about Prison, Mexican Prison. My Hands were behind my back, and I crushed a handfull of dirt into a ball in my hands. I banged my head against the car. I cried.
Alfredo was busy talking with the policia. Ranting, screaming, and crying to them.He ran over to me with his hands behind him and asked if I had $25 bucks. If I did, we could get out of it. He'd spent all his money. I told him I had a 50 dollar bill in my coat pocket. The police came and got it out.
They let us go, and as I settled down, Alfredo got back in the car, talking in Spanish again, sweating, laughing like he'd known it all along.
I noticed the police car following us, as we pulled up to a little market store with the lights on late at night.
"What the hell are we doing?"
"I've got to get change for this 50."
Thats not a lie, the cops let us get change for the 50, and took 25 dollars, and let us go, with the cocaine.
When we got to the border I asked Alfredo to throw it out. No way. As we waited in a real short line of cars, I got out among the Mexicans. Pushed them back from around me, and jogged over to the walkway. I made it across the border alone, and hitched my way back to El Paso, to my dog, and my truck. The sun was coming up as I got there, and I saw Alfredo's car parked in front of his room, with the light on, waiting for me. Him and his cocaine awake in the morning like only a terrible man can be. I quietly slipped into my truck, and pulled off towards California as fast as I could ride.
Computer crash left many of my older stories lost in space. I'm starting to re-write most of them. All of which, are unfortunately true.
I think it was around 1998 when girlfriends, parents, and other various loved ones finally stopped me. Spending my book money on the good stuff, I guess, was more than they could stand. I didn't really blame them, but I couldn't stick around. I left pretty soon after the meeting and drove 16 hours straight from Vienna to Austin Texas,where holed up in a tall girls apartment for a couple of weeks, and wrote things on napkins down on sixth street that I didn't really mean, that I would hopefully one day, burn. When I drove out of the parking lot of her apartment complex, I halfway wanted her to stop me. I left with the window down, I can remember, listening for a holler, or a whimper at least. Nothing. Looking back, I can see how I probably didn't mean that much to her either. Someone to eat with and grind on for a while. I drove the rest of the day to El Paso, lonely as a bird, whispering like one to the radio and my dog in the seat beside me. Texas, is a long bleak state, and by the time Id gotten to the Western Edge, I was worn way down. I couldn't stop now. I walked over to a motorcycle dealership, and looked around, noticed a small Mexican fellow browsing around like I was, just passing the time. As I headed out to the car he stopped me, and began a long conversation about Colorado, where he was from. I'd never cared to much for Colorado. It seemed like that's where you went if you're parents paid the way. Ski instructors, Microbrews, Aspen Trees, Lamborghinis. I was still mad at being poor.
Somehow Alfredo talked me into his hotel room, where we drank a bottle of brandy, and he told me of the wonders of Mexico. It wasn't long before I'd stashed most of my money, grabbed a buck knife from a sack in the truck, hopped in his civic and headed to Juarez. It was on the way down that he pulled out a Cambells soup can full of Vicadon, offered me one, and told me the real reason he was headed down was to pick up 25 pounds of marijuana, to bring back across the border. I, as can be expected, freaked the fuck out. After calming the giant in his civic down, by assuring him that tonight wasn't the drop off night, that he was just scouting, I somehow kept on going. It wasn't like I had much of a choice. We were on a dark highway, and I was a pipsqueak of the road. Once we got to Juarez, the a really weird old west seemed to surround us. Tranny Hookers lined the dirt streets, people beating on the windows at the American boy. The only one in Mexico that night, or so it seemed. Getting in was easy, and I already wanted out.
Alfredo immediately pulled up to a bar and got out, telling me to stay put. Small brown men surrounded the car; beat on the windows even more. "Amigo!"
Finally I got out, at least to let them see how tall I was, how muscles bulged, how mean I thought I was. They didn't care, and surrounded me, lifting me like an angel in their brown clouds. Alfredo came out yelling in Spanish, and split the sea. Explained to me in English that Id probably lost my watch and wallet. I hadn't. They were in my coat, zipped up.
"I wasn't that stupid," I said.
"Yeah." and we were off.
Walking into a strip club, Alfredo showed me the score he held in his hand, a big fat white ball of Cocaine.
"You want some?"
"Nah, I quit."
I was being honest, and while I watched the naked women writhing and Alfredo keep disappearing, my heart beat fast, and I thought about America. I was afraid of the men in the corners holding shiny things and looking down at me over thick sickening moustaches. Bugs crawled in them I knew it. In their bodies. Worms.
We visited several clubs that night; some which I'm convinced were brothels. Pool Tables and big leather belted Amigos, women all there for the taking. I could barley finish a beer. Dead ass sober for the first time in a long time. I probably should have enjoyed it, but Mama still meant something back then.
Once Alfredo was satisfied, our journey back to El Paso began. We didn't get two blocks before the Federales pulled us over, for riding on the sidewalk to get around a big hole in the dirt street. That's right sidewalks and dirt streets.
They pulled us out of the car and handcuffed us, talking in Spanish to Alfredo and to me, who didn't understand. They took the license plate off the car, and Alfredo told me they found the Cocaine, on him, and in the car. A bunch of it. We were fucked, as he said it. Fucked.
I sat down on the street, leaned my back against the car, and went through all the horrible things I had heard about Prison, Mexican Prison. My Hands were behind my back, and I crushed a handfull of dirt into a ball in my hands. I banged my head against the car. I cried.
Alfredo was busy talking with the policia. Ranting, screaming, and crying to them.He ran over to me with his hands behind him and asked if I had $25 bucks. If I did, we could get out of it. He'd spent all his money. I told him I had a 50 dollar bill in my coat pocket. The police came and got it out.
They let us go, and as I settled down, Alfredo got back in the car, talking in Spanish again, sweating, laughing like he'd known it all along.
I noticed the police car following us, as we pulled up to a little market store with the lights on late at night.
"What the hell are we doing?"
"I've got to get change for this 50."
Thats not a lie, the cops let us get change for the 50, and took 25 dollars, and let us go, with the cocaine.
When we got to the border I asked Alfredo to throw it out. No way. As we waited in a real short line of cars, I got out among the Mexicans. Pushed them back from around me, and jogged over to the walkway. I made it across the border alone, and hitched my way back to El Paso, to my dog, and my truck. The sun was coming up as I got there, and I saw Alfredo's car parked in front of his room, with the light on, waiting for me. Him and his cocaine awake in the morning like only a terrible man can be. I quietly slipped into my truck, and pulled off towards California as fast as I could ride.
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