Observations in Miniature: Different Drivers

If you see yourself amongst these people it might be time to change your driving habits.

Granny Driver – If the only part of your body that I can see when I’m behind you is your knuckles on the steering wheel and the floral arrangement on your hat then you might be too shriveled and old to drive. The lines on the road are there for a reason. Your car is not a pinball that can careen happily back and forth over three lanes hitting the guard rails and bouncing back into traffic. Here’s a clue, that 1962 decommissioned aircraft carrier on wheels without power steering that you drive and can’t seem to control needs to be dry docked, yes, sent to that great resting place for over the hill vessels and stripped down and the excess scrap metal used to build a wing on the new children’s hospital. I’m sure you make great cookies and someone out there loves their granny but the fact is that you’re a horrible fucking driver and I’d feel a lot safer with you behind a pair of knitting needles than the wheel of a car.

Middle Aged Corvette Guy – I don’t know what’s shinier the bold spot on your head or the wax job on your cherry red Corvette. For God’s sake button up your shirt, I could stuff three throw pillows with all the chest hair hanging out of it. And that gold chain with the medallion on it that’s blowing up in your face in the wind isn’t helping matters, it makes you look like a retired porn star. Do you feel the need for speed? Are you randy from the Viagra cocktail you just ingested with the Bloody Mary? Here’s a clue you aren’t going to hook up with a hot 21 year old babe no matter how much pheromone cologne you douse yourself with so stop cursing night clubs and start cruising the retirement village, the women there, many of whom use walkers, won’t be able to run away from you like everyone else does.

Monster Truck Guy – Yeah, Mopar, I get it you’re car part savvy. Nice decal of a guy peeing on the window on the back of your cab. How original, a W 04 and an American Flag bumper sticker on your tailgate. You have a lot in common with George Bush don’t you? Do you guys get together and discuss how getting rid of the dividend tax has allowed you to expand your investment portfolio? Oh, you don’t have an investment portfolio? Stupid me. When it’s snowing out and you pass me going 75 mph do you really think that even with your 40 inch super knobby tires you are going to be able stop on a sheet of ice? No? So, slow the fuck down because the person you hit could be me and if you do I sincerely hope you kill me because if you don’t I’m going to get out and strangle you with that stupid Rebel flag hanging in the window of your cab.


Sports Car Punk - You are not Vin Diesel and no matter how many fins and pieces of plastic you super glue to your Honda Accord it will never be a Ferrari. And yes, I am giving you a dirty look. You just passed me doing 125 mph in your tuna can on wheels and nearly ran me off the road. You are not playing a video game and the world isn’t out to get you, that’s the carbon monoxide talking, which is leaking into your car from that loud muffler you “self-installed” on your car. Here’s a clue, instead of working 60 hours a week to buy new accessories for your $2000 dollar car why don’t you study and get good grades, go to college, and then become something? Then you really will be able to buy a Ferrari and will become something else other than a pain in my ass whenever I drive through the Giant parking lot.

Seat too far back guy – Does your car have a front seat home slice? Why does it look like you’re driving sitting in the back seat? Are you wearing stilts so you can touch the gas pedal and breaks? Take your feet off the dashboard, you might need them to stop your car and turn down the fucking bass on your stereo, my coffee cup just vibrated out of its holder. I get it, you’re laid back, too cool for the front seat, there’s a bigger party going on in the back seat, but you’re not really driving your car are you? You’re improvising, lunging forward when you need to stop and straining like a mother fucker to even get the tips of your fingers to touch the steering wheel. Improvising is fine in Jazz or even when your boat is leaking and you plug the hole with a hotdog roll but when you’re driving it can be deadly so be a big boy and move up to the front seat so we all feel a little safer on the road.

Minivan Momma –Your days of driving like a maniac were over the day junior’s umbilical cord was cut so don’t try to pass me with twelve kids in that underpowered three cylinder minivan from 1985, you’re just going to sit in the passing lane unable to build up enough speed to beat the old guy on the side of the road in a wheelchair. You didn’t just cut me off and then flip me the finger did you? Calm down, try to show some restraint in front of the horde, I’m not trying to beat you to Chucky Cheese, there will still be pizza there if you’re ten minutes late. And please put some clothing on, you’re not Hugh Hefner, stop wearing your pajamas when you’re running around town, coupled with your unkempt appearance you look like a deranged circus clown. Be careful and remember the little ones in the back of your minivan are the future of our country…God help us...

Observations in Miniature: People in the Gym II

If you see yourself amongst these people it might be time to change your gym habits.

Naked Guy – For God’s sake throw a towel over yourself when you’re in the locker room, it is not a nudist retreat. If you want to be naked in front of people do a Google search under “exhibitionist” and find a healthy alternative for your weird behavior. I don’t want to look up from tying my shoes to see your unit swaying in the breeze. You are the reason I spend only nano seconds in the locker room. Some men like to walk naked amongst other men and actually search out places where other men can be found naked. They are GAY and maybe you are too! And if you insist on sitting on the benches for God’s sake please put a towel down first or better yet put some fucking clothes on.

Mr. Upper Body –Evidently you bought your Arnold Schwarzenegger Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding at a fire sale and the section on legs was burned away because your lower extremities look like they belong to an anorexic nun. When the circumference of your biceps is equal to that of your thighs it might be time to give up some of the time you spend on power curls and do a few sets of squats. Of course this could make you sweat and disrupt that avant-garde gel creation that is holding your hair sculpture up but in the end you won’t look like you traded legs with Don Knotts and women won’t be laughing behind your out of proportion back.


Ms. Steroids- Is that a beard or are do you moonlight as a chimney sweep and forgot to wash the soot off your chin this morning? Here’s a clue women aren’t supposed to have beards or testosterone levels higher than a 340 lbs NFL lineman. That bulge in your pants that looks like a trouser weasel is your clitoris which has grown large enough from your anabolic adventures to be noticed from across the gym. Don’t you think it’s odd that they moved you to baritone in your church choir? The science experiment is complete, you proved you can turn yourself into a man, now get off the juice before you start to look even more like the Reverend Al Sharpton than you already do.

Mrs Mom and Mr. Dad – First and foremost the gym is not a playground for underprivileged children. Do not bring your kids to the gym and let them hang from the lat pulldown and swing like drunken acrobats. This is neither amusing nor original; monkeys have been doing it for millions of years. If you want people to see how cute your children are make them sit at the protein drink bar and memorize the Gettysburg Address. Then, after my workout, when I’m getting a protein drink I’ll listen intently to them quote Abraham Lincoln. Otherwise lock them in your minivan or leave them at home locked in a closet but don’t bring them to the gym.

Neurotic talking guy – When I’m in the middle of a set of squats and the veins are popping out of my forehead don’t tell me about how you had to take your cat to the vet last night because it wouldn’t eat for a week. First off I hate cats and second of all I DON”T CARE! I’m sure what you have to say would be interesting to someone that has been stranded on a deserted island for thirty years and is starved for conversation of any type but I’m not that person. You’ve stretched my 45 minute workout into an hour and a half because you can’t keep your pie hole shut. I have a solution to your verbal diarrhea. Go see a therapist. You pay this person to listen to your boring stories and then they actually say something back to you which in case you haven't noticed is how a conversation is carried out!

Mr. Gear – Do you really need a Nike backpack with a thirty piece endurance silverware set to complete your wimpy circuit training? Do you really think a four hundred dollar pair of suction cup sneakers is going to help you dunk a basketball? Is that two hundred dollar silk Adidas sweat shirt with Pele’s name stitched in gold on the back going to get you the hot chick in spandex doing the Butt Blaster? Are you even listening to that $600 dollar Ipod strapped to your arm or are you just pretending to listen to it and are really trying hear if anyone is talking about how cool you look? If you answered no to all these above questions you are well on your way to recovery. If you answered yes to even one of these questions then you have serious gear issues and need to refocus your energies on your physique, particularly that big roll around your midsection and your third chin because when those hand stitched Terrell Owens Body Armour underwear come off you’ll have only your original gear for women to focus on and by the looks of you they will be sorely dissapointed.


Treadmill foot smacker – okay jackass quit fucking smacking your feet when you’re running on the treadmill. It is perhaps the most annoying sound I’ve ever heard in my life and you’re treading dangerously close to me grabbing you by your thin runner’s neck and snapping it. We all see you’re using perfect form and that you’re throwing your long legs out like a giraffe and hoisting your elbows up properly like a Nazi storm trooper. Now, slow the fuck down like a normal human being and quit making a spectacle of yourself. We all know you were some big shot in cross country running once upon a time but those days are over and no matter how good your form is you can't run back to them.

Full Body Spandex Guy – Please tell me you have underwear on under that Spandex body suit. Are you friends with naked locker room guy? Does walking around in nothing but a form fitting swatch of spandex make you feel closer to nature? I have an idea. Why don’t you and naked locker room guy come to the gym at 4:00 AM. No one is in the gym at that time so you will probably be able to work out naked and no one will know. Just make sure you put down a towel before you sit on the fucking equipment.

The Heimlich Maneuver at Dusk: Christmas Dinner at My House

Twas the night of Christmas and I was on my third bottle of Franziskaner, which is the proper elixir for gatherings of a family nature, when my mother called us to the dinner table. I was seated beside my Grandfather who was decked out in a brown polyester suit that was stained in the front with a white crystalline substance that I was glad I didn’t have the lab results of. I pushed the center piece, which was adorned with several candles, away from our side of the table for fear his suit would go up in flames if he brushed up against it.

Before anyone could say grace he was elbows deep in plate of prime rib. Bits of potato and beans and meat flew from the sides of his mouth pelting me. I tried to resist this onslaught with my raised forearm but soon realized that such a efforts were not going to stop the slip and grind of his cockeyed dentures, which at one point came unhinged and slipped out of the side of his mouth landing in my mashed potatoes. I would have tried to push them back with a fork but was afraid that with the ferocity he was attacking his food that I might lose a digit in the process.

At eighty-three my Grandfather’s appetite is that of a man half his age and twice his weight. I suspect he brought back an intestinal parasite from his retirement community in Florida, probably from wading in a stagnant pond looking for a miss hit golf ball.

“Could you pass the butter,” he asked in his gravely voice.

Everyone’s eyes at the table zeroed in on the butter for they knew that if they wanted any they would have to get to the plate before my grandfather did.

“Look, I think I saw snow,” my aunt said, trying to distract my Grandfather from the butter plate in hopes that maybe one or two people could get a thin pat of it to butter their bread but my grandfather was not so easily distracted. For one thing he can’t hear much of anything even with his new hearing aids which looked like cell phones pushed half way into his ears so when my aunt tried to distract him with the prospect of snow I doubt he could hear her. For another thing he goes into a Buddihst Zen eating state in which he hums loudly while shoveling in food. I believe this aids in relaxing his diaphragm so that he can take in twice the amount of food as a normal human being in one bite.

“How about I serve you some butter?” I said.

My Grandfather grabbed the plate of butter from me with dexterity that belied his eighty-three years and had hacked into the last stick before I even knew what had happened.

Everyone sighed when they saw he’d only taken a pat of butter about half an inch thick. I broke a roll in half, my mouth salivating in anticipation of the creamy butter I was about to spread across it but then my Grandfather did the unthinkable. He put the little piece of butter back on the plate and took the ¾ of a stick still there, sandwiched it between to rolls and bit into it and before anyone could say Yule log he swallowed the entire thing.

“Would anyone like more potatoes?” my mother asked.

My Grandfather nodded yes and my mother replenished the eight inch pyramid that had just disappeared from his plate. It seemed a good portion of these potatoes were ending up on his chin and the lapel of his polyester suit. I’ve noted that as he’s grown older less of his food makes it to his mouth and more of it ends up on his chin and clothing. At a wedding not long ago I witnessed my grandfather eat potato salad off his shoe with a seafood fork. He also had three or four rolls, several sets of silverware, some celery, a pat or two of butter and a napkin in his suit coat, which he commenced to pull out of his pockets at awkward times throughout the day.

"Jesus Christ this is good," my Grandfather said, as he shoveled another bite of potato into his mouth.

Dinner continued on in usual manner with jokes and insults going back and forth across the table. My Grandfather seemed oblivious to it all and if it weren’t for the humming and the smacking of his dentures I might have forgotten he was beside me at all until I heard my aunt yell.

“I think Dad is choking,” she said.

My Step-Grandmother continued to eat, chewing in the slow, mechanical way she does.

“Dad, are you all right?” my Mother asked.

My Grandfather grabbed at his throat, his eyes bugged out. He stood and wobbled uneasily on his white loafers.

“Someone do something,” my sister, who was holding my baby niece, said.

My mother shot up like an agitated weasel while we all sat around slack jawed. At five feet two inches tall and weighing in the neighborhood of 120 pounds my mother came up from behind my six foot one grandfather, pulled him out of his chair and locked him in the preliminary Heimlich maneuver and then hoisted him up by shooting her hips out and driving her clenched fists into his abdomen.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” was the noise that that came from my Grandfather’s mouth.

“Do you need help?” I asked.

“Is he all right?” my step grandmother asked, as she pushed another forkful of prime rib into her mouth.

My Grandfather continued to grab at his throat and my Mother again hoisted my Grandfather in the air and rammed her fists into his abdomen.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, my Grandfather said, and then “huphhhhhhhhhhhh,” and then something that looked like a wet sock came shooting out his mouth, across the table and onto my aunt’s plate and then he puked on the table. His dentures slipped out of his mouth and fell into the gravy boat.

“Could you pass the gravy?” my Step Grandmother asked.

Undaunted by his near fatal experience with prime rib my Grandfather sat back down, located his pie, which had been spared by his projectile vomiting and commenced to eat it.

“Is there any whipped cream?” he asked.

My step-Grandmother doused his pie with a twelve inch spire of whipped cream and he attacked his pie as if he hadn’t just eaten, nearly choked to death, and then puked.

My cousin ran into the bathroom and barfed. My Mother slumped back in her chair exhausted.

I pushed my plate away and tried not to notice that my Grandfather was gumming a piece of pie that was sitting in the middle of a puddle of vomit.

“What do you say we open presents?” I said.

On the Road Again: JK Style Part II

The moon was full and bloated and looked like an irradiated meatball as it hung in the sky over the Watergate. I took a deep breath. There was mischief in the air and mixed with the overpowering cologne Paco was wearing which smelled like the essence from the froth pot on a Hindu healer’s stove, the creation of a funkified eve was born. The kind of night that I knew despite my best intentions would not and could not bring about a sleep heavy with peaceful dreams but a night of cold sweats and fitful tossing and turning. If you didn’t have an adventurous side it was best to watch this one from your television…speaking of televisions, if I were king I’d get rid of all televisions, they muddy the mind and are the Twinkies of the intellectual diet. Take your televisions and throw them out of your window. Crash and burn baby, crash and fucking burn.

“Goddamn, it’s cold out here,” I said.

I was wearing that skimpy matador’s jacket Paco had given me and which was about as warm as a lettuce leaf T-shirt. I looked grudgingly at Paco who was wearing my duster, which was several feet too long and drug behind him like the train of a wedding gown. He was also wearing an immense ten gallon cowboy hat and a pair of black, hand-stitched cowboy boots that he’d produced from the same closet that yielded my matador’s jacket.

“You’re too funny,” Erica said, playfully hitting my brother on the shoulder.

My brother smiled and the gap between his front teeth became visible. He and Erica seemed to be hitting it off smashingly which was par for the course. My brother was as smooth as glass table top and had a knack for saying not only the right things but the perfect things. My social skills were apparently as bad as my kissing; a former love interest had recently told me I kissed like a Chihuahua. How was I to win? Erica seemed to like my kissing and my over the top antics but I still lost in the end. I was running out of back up plans.

“I wonder where the Hell he is?” I said.

“Maybe he’s standing you up,” Paco said.

“Nobody stands me up if they want to stay on my Christmas card list,” I said.

“You don’t send Christmas cards,” G said.

“I know but I have a Christmas card list,” I said. “And I’ll strike his name from it if he’s not here in the next ten minutes.”

The friend I was going to meet was a former “workout partner” of mine named Dane who I’d met at the gym. We used to sit idly on the stationary bikes, drink smoothies, chat, and watch women do aerobics. At six feet two inches tall and 300 pounds he had a neck like that of a silverback gorilla, and a full rug of coarse body hair that made him look like a science experiment gone bad. He was brutish, his movements primitive and powerful, full of deliberation, not slow but direct and unyielding. If he threw a fist there wasn’t anything in this world or any other that was going to stop it. I once saw him punch through a windshield and bend a steering wheel. It didn’t even leave a mark on his hand. Yes, he was warped, more than a little dangerous and reckless, but underneath it all there was a deep philosophical soul with an affinity for medieval cooking utensils of which he had an extensive collection. He raised Pit Bulls and was involved in some sort of racket for which he shook people down for gambling debts. He always seemed to live on the periphery of lawlessness, dipping in and out of the shadows and emerging in the daylight as a legitimate business man that sold insurance for Omegone, the now defunct corporation whose CEO plundered the company pension fund and disappeared in the cloud his private jet left on the runway in Barbados.

Momentarily I saw a highly polished black Escalade coming towards us. The tinted driver’s window lowered and in the driver’s seat sat Dane.

“What’s up partner?” Dane said.

“The same old, and you still sound like you swallowed a tuba,” I said, grasping his massive hand.

“You still working out?”

“I haven’t missed an aerobics session since you moved,” I said.

“Now that’s what I call dedication,” Dane said, with a laugh that echoed through the streets like a sonic boom.

“Let me introduce you to the gang,” I said. “This is my brother G, Erica, and Paco.”

“Nice to meet you all. Why don’t you pile in the Escalade I have to make a stop before hit the town,” Dane said, looking at his watch.

“A stop?” I said, as the others climbed into the Escalade.

I knew what a stop for Dane could entail, there might be the breaking of bones, beating or being shot at, none of which I considered part of night out on the town.

“Maybe we could meet you somewhere,” I said.

“It will only take a second,” Dane said.

I leaned into the window and whispered. “My brother is an attorney,” I said. “I can’t get him in any kind of trouble.”

“Your brother isn’t going to get in trouble,” Dane said. “I’m reformed.”

Reformed my ass, Dane was too much himself to be anybody else. His flaws weren’t the kind that prescription medication, wool pullovers, an eye patch, or cosmetic surgery could cover up. These imperfections were deep-seeded, spun from the spindle of life and woven in amongst the waxen filament of existence. If Dane’s flaws were removed he would be nothing more than a lifeless pile of skin and bones..

“All right you bastard but remember I’m keeping an eye on you,” I said.

“Isn’t that a little like asking the sushi chef to watch your pet goldfish?” Dane asked.

“Perhaps but remember this goldfish has teeth,” I said with a smile.

* * *

The Escalade rumbled through the back streets of DC as Muse cranked on the stereo. The path we were taking seemed to be taking us away from the lights and into unlit neighborhoods that grew progressively decrepit. I could smell the poverty: the moistness of the pavement, the wino urine, the rotting wood.

From under his visor Dane produced a spliff and handed it to me.

“Try this you won’t even remember your name,” he said, smiling.

“Maybe I’d better write it down,” I said.

I lit the Indica/Sativa hybrid and inhaled and passed the spliff to Paco. In the next few minutes the weed began to take hold and Dane wasn’t shitting me, this stuff was psychedelic. The yellow line in the middle of the road pulsed in white flashes and the macadam rolled in waves. I looked at my closed cell phone and thought that it looked like a robot turd and then I tried to remember if robots shit at all or if I was just making that up and I couldn’t because the glowing readout of the speedometer caught my attention and my mind was off again.

“Remember that time…” I said.

“What time?” G asked.

“I forget,” I said.

My mind had vacated the multi-colored room it had just been occupying and was off wandering through endless fields of wild flowers. The words the curator of substance induced dreams floated in big balloon letters across the metallic sky in my mind. I looked down and there was a full can of Guinness in my hand. I looked away and back to my hand and the Guinness was gone. Time lost all meaning as we slipped between the cracks of the here and now and I was transported to the netherworld of my own chemical rendering.

Eventually the Escalade slowed to a stop behind a broken down warehouse and I gripped the edges of my seat trying to get my bearing.

“What is the nature of this stop?” I asked Dane. A question I should have asked beforehand but was afraid knowing the answer to would put a damper on our evening.

“You know I raise Pit Bulls. Well, I sell them under the condition people can’t use them to fight. They pump them full of steroids and beat the shit out of them. I won’t stand for that. I love the tenacity of these dogs but I don’t like them to hurt other dogs or other people.”

I thought Dane’s philosophy was just a tad misguided like building atomic bombs because you like their destructive capabilities but when you sold them you expected others not to use them but to merely admire them from a distance for the same reasons you did.

“This sounds dangerous,” G said.

“It’s not. I know most of these people,” Dane said.

“I will go,” Paco said. “I love dogs.”

“Let’s go,” Erica said.

We went around the unlit building with Dane leading the way with a flashlight. He lead us to a graffiti marked garage door and pulled it up. Light and noise poured out and engulfed us. A crowd of people surrounded a pit and two pit bulls were tearing each other apart in the center of it.

“Come on,” Dane said and we followed.

I felt comfortable with Dane leading the way. He could beat the shit out of just about anyone and his massive frame would stop bullets and give me time to escape.

We approached the pit and the spectators surrounding it and I tried to take in what I was witnessing but it all seemed so surreal. I couldn’t believe people were this cruel my conscience would allow for it. It would take a lot of self medicating to erase a scene like this and I considered myself an amateur doctor at best not at all adept to wipe something like this from my cognitive slate.

“Hey, Nicholas,” Dane cried.

A very tall man with a thin nose and long straw like hair looked up. Sweat pooled in the pits of his acne scarred face and his bulging eyes twitched. The way in which he looked at Dane was part fear and part disgust. I knew then that they weren’t friends, at least not at that moment.

“What do you want?” Nicholas said and inhaled on a moist cigarillo.

“You know I said no fighting my dogs. That looks like one of my dogs right there,” Dane said.

I watched the Pit Bulls, a grey one and a black and white one, tearing at one another’s necks. They seemed to be attacking at hyper warp speed but the people surrounding the pit, screaming and yelling seemed slowed to a point where it felt like I actually knew what their next move was going to be before they made it. The grey dog latched onto the black and white one’s neck and he thrashed violently back and forth and then suddenly it stopped and backed away from its lifeless opponent’s body.

“That’s your baby right there,” Nicholas said. He laughed and I saw his rotted teeth and his grey tongue. He pulled back his red leather jacket to expose a gun in the waistband of his light blue polyester pants.

“That’s the last one,” Dane said.

The spectators gathered around the pit slowly began to turn their attention away from the pit and to the escalating confrontation between Dane and Nicholas.

“You just don’t listen do you Nicholas?” Dane said.

Paco wove his way through the crowed of people and then climbed down into the pit. I knew my brother would never forgive me if Paco got hurt so I hurried after him.

“Paco, what in the Hell are you doing? That dog will kill you,” I said leaning over the edge of the pit.

“I have a special way with dogs,” Paco said.

The heavily muscled beast stood in the middle of the pit over the corpse of his fallen adversary; his body spasmed, the hair on his spine rose up, he snorted and tore at the ground with his paws. Paco approached cautiously.

“Nice doggy,” Paco said.

The dog bared its teeth and blood spilled out of its mouth. It coiled up on its hind legs readying to strike. I knew then that I would have to do something or poor Paco would become this dog’s next victim. I jumped into the pit and just as I did the dog lunged at Paco. Luckily I had enough momentum built up so that I was able to tackle the beast and keep it from Paco’s neck. I then quickly jumped to my feet and the dog backed up. It was shaking, frightened, exhausted and scared. I knew I couldn’t bring myself to hurt it that in this dog I saw myself.

“You tore the matador’s jacket,” Paco said.

“It’s too goddamn tight,” I said.

Slowly, facing the dog, we backed up as the dog readied to attack again.

“Give me the duster,” I said.

“No, I gave you the matador’s jacket,” Paco said, “we are even.”

“I’m not going to keep it. I’ll give the damn thing back,” I said.

“No, I don’t know you well enough,” Paco said. “You could run off and I’d never see you again and then you would have two jackets.

“You know me well enough to take my jacket. Now give it to me before I have to get nasty,” I said.

“Okay, no need to get testy” Paco said, slipping out of the jacket and handing it to me.

The dog reared back on its haunches and I held the jacket out like a matador would hold his cape.

“Torro, Torro,” I cried.

“No, that isn’t a bull,” Paco said, “This is a dog. Yell Perro, Perro.”

“Perro, Perro,” I cried and the dug shot across the pit, saliva and blood spraying from the sides of its mouth.

Just as the dog reached the duster I pulled it away and he ran into the other side of the pit.

“Bravo,” Paco cried. “You are a natural.”

The dog turned quickly and came at me again but this time he was coming at me directly and I couldn’t sidestep him so I pulled the duster up and he shot between my legs.

“Pero, Pero,” I cried, waving the duster triumphantly in the air.

As I turned back to face the dog I quickly scanned the bewildered crowd and to my utter amazement there she was, my American dream girl or at least someone that looked like her…no, it had to be her but how could she have ended up here? I was high and drunk and the lines were blurring and I couldn’t stay focused. It was as if I was looking through my grandmother’s reading glasses, visions of her came to me so clearly and then were gone. Maybe it wasn’t her. No, it couldn’t be her. In this world I believed anything was possible as long as I was crazy enough to make it happen but this was just too strange to be true.

“Hey,” I cried.

“Who are you calling?” Paco asked.

It was a mistake to take my eye off the pit bull because I was out of position when he charged again. This time he didn’t miss and ripped into my side, tearing a piece of the matador’s jacket.

“Bastard,” I yelled. “I’m trying to save your life.”

“Over here,” Paco called, distracting the dog with a strange little dance in which he hopped up and down while throwing his elbows to the sides wildly.

“‘Over here Benji,” I called, waving the duster in the air.

The dog spun on its paws and lunged at me.

Paco scrambled out of the pit and it was just me and the dog. I glanced up again in the crowd of faces but I didn’t see my American dream girl. Had she been an allusion brought on by the funky stuff I’d smoked? Or had she somehow managed to find her way to this God forsaken place? I wanted to say that I had just been seeing things but she looked so damn real..

“Get out of there,” Erica called. It seemed she might have been yelling at me for a while but it was the first time I really heard her.

The dog sat at the other end of the pit. People were throwing things at him. He looked at me sadly and his chest heaved up and down.

“Stop it you bastards,” I yelled.

The dog snapped and barked. I looked up and saw Nicholas pull a gun out from underneath his trench coat. He took aim and fired. The Pit Bull fell to the ground lifeless. In the next instant Dane’s fist connected with the side of Nicholas’s acne scared face and he too dropped to the ground. There was chaos as spectators ran in every direction trying to escape.

I pulled myself out of the pit and I looked down towards the garage door. Erica, Paco, and my brother were standing their calmly amongst the chaos and were looking at me with something close to admiration, which was a rare thing indeed.

“Let’s get out of here,” Dane said, grabbing me by my collar and pulling me towards the garage door.

“I still want that duster,” Paco said, as Dane lifted the garage door.

I looked back at the dog and a tear rolled down my cheek.

“Come on,” G said, and we ran from the building as police sirens wailed in the background.


* * *

We ended the night in a string of bars in Georgetown but don’t ask me the names of them or to explain the faces I saw. The night is a blur in which I see myself raising tequila shots and groping Erica while she was trying to talk to G. Sometime during the night Dane disappeared without a good-bye which is his style. He never wants people to get too tight a hold on him.

The next morning I awoke sprawled out on the floor in front of my brother’s door, using the matador’s jacket as a pillow. When I went to the kitchen looking for a beer I found everyone else there drinking coffee. Paco was wearing the blood and sweat stained duster, cowboy hat, and boots. Erica was encircled in my brother’s arms but I didn’t give a shit. I ruffled my brother’s hair and picked up a cup of coffee and drank.

“This isn’t the life I read so much about as a kid,” I said, “it’s shorter and more painful than the storybook version.”

“Your life is fine you’ll find your American dream girl,” Erica said.

“You could have been the American dream girl but now you’re just another girl I knew,” I said. “Love me or hate me but don’t like me,” I said. “I don’t want to be liked.”

“Why don’t your friends set you up with someone?” G asked.

“I’m not that kind of friend. How do you explain me to mom and dad?” I said, opening the front door.

“That would be kind of hard,” Paco said, with a smile.

“I’m going to see if the American dream girl is hanging out in that Hawaiian theme bar this weekend and remember that if you want to find me just follow the trail of beer bottles, they lead straight to my heart,” I said.

“Always be yourself. Don’t you ever change not for anybody,” Erica said.

“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” I said and shut the door behind me.

I wanted to ask her to wait for me, to tell her I could be everything to her if she just gave me time but that horse had already ridden off into the sunset and I was weary. In knew that in this end it was just me and I knew then that this was the way it might always be, that success hadn’t come fast enough and that the things people want in their lives have expiration dates and that I’d missed the deadline on many of them but that in the world I now occupied there were new and vast plains that only the most insane of nomadic cowboy clowns could conquer and that I was such a cowboy clown.

I drove home with my head throbbing and I had to stop twice to puke but I had the Ramones blaring and all would be good again.

Later in the day I met the Weasel downtown for a liquid lunch and we discussed plans. Yes, the two of us desperados, the Weasel and I, were off in a week to Canada and in the summer my brother and I were to embark on a European tour and maybe there I would find her and maybe she wasn’t American at all but a German with hairy armpits and braids down to her calves but that was what I was going to have to find out for good or for bad. Maybe I was looking for the European Dream Girl? Maybe I was just blind to all the good things around me because I was always moving too fast to be able to see them and maybe just maybe in a drunken flurry I walked right by her. Whatever the case you will always know that I’m just working hard at trying nothing else other than to be myself because in the end what else is there?

P.S. Dane, you bastard if you are out there and on the Internet and run across this look me up. I’m still at the old gym and could kick your ass. You’re not as bad as you think you are. I’m two of you stuffed into a smaller and more refined version of perfection. Until we meet again throw a steak to the Pit Bulls for me. Later.
From the curator of substance induced dreams,
Me

On the Road Again: J.K. Style Part I

I thought I could change, stop and smell the plastic roses in the vase on my fireplace mantle (which by the way smelled like wet wool and Swiss cheese), say shucks instead of fuck when I shanked a drive on the golf course, wave happily to someone instead of flipping them off when they cut me off in traffic, but it was too much for my highly agitated DNA to assimilate.

If traced my ancestry shows a unique pattern of acceleration, of movers and shakers that ultimately ran themselves off of cliffs or into the ground. It’s a wonder I’m here at all. In the world of natural selection I am artificially motivated, driven by the substances I ingest and by the quest to know and become all. I can no more remain stationary than the earth can stop rotating, or the Bush administration can stop lying. There is only the moment and that moment is slipping off my heels as I catapult into my next adventure.

And so I found myself contemplating my next move. Most of the old desperado group was going or gone, some of us physically, some of us mentally, but I realized this was no reason for me to hang up my Burmese Jungle boots, no, my mission was not complete. The Weasel had somehow managed to escape the conditions of his probation and didn’t have to teach badminton to senior citizens at night anymore and since we were both feeling like the world was closing in on us we decided to call Monzi in Toronto and made plans to join her for New Years but in the meantime I needed to stretch my legs so I called Erica. I made her a probationary member of our group and told her she would have to pay her dues, which was a practice in excess. She seemed to be working out just fine. I’d managed to patch things up with her after she gave up on D.B., due to his excessive flatulence, and after a workout Tuesday evening on one of the tanning beds at the gym we took off for DC.

I looked at Erica in the passenger’s seat. It was December but she was wearing shorts and her long brown legs seemed to stretch on for miles. I laid my hand on her thigh.

“You’re hands are cold,” she said, and swallowed.

For being a fitness chick she sure drank a lot. She’d brought a thermos filled with vodka and tomato juice and sipped from it using the little thermos cup.

“Why the Hell do you pretend at being healthy and then drowned yourself in that liver juice?” I said.

“I workout so I can live forever. I drink because I want to die.”

“Makes sense. I don’t even bother with the working out part and no I don’t want to die. I figure my body has enough trouble dispensing of the toxins I put in it without me wearing it out in the gym.”

I cranked up the Ramone’s Beat on the Brat with a Baseball Bat on my Clarion ProAudio VRX935VD, which the Weasel had installed for me. He insisted I drop over a grand on this receiver with a 7 inch LCD screen and after teaching badminton at night he would come over and go lie in the back and look up at the stars, wondering what had happened to the girl he’d loved. He wanted to be buried in my Cherokee. I’d see what I could do.

“Why are you leaving?” Erica asked.

“Because the world is bigger than this, because my heart is bigger than that. I can’t be fenced in. Do you know barbed wire killed the cowboy?”

“What do you mean?”

“The invention of barbed wire shut down the open range. The cowboys had nowhere to drive and graze their cattle. I feel like I’m a cowboy of liberties and democracy and that this government is fencing me in with their theology. Soon I will have nowhere to roam.”

“You don’t even have a cowboy hat,” Erica said.

“True, but I’ve got a gun and it’s pointed at you.”

“Is it loaded?”

“Always.”

I lit up a RYJ Hermosos Exhibiciόn No. 4, a box of which “Igor” sent me from New Orleans. He wished me a Merry Christmas and “accidentally” left the receipt in the bag which was for $646 dollars. For all the cigars he'd sent me over the years I figured I owed him somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 dollars which would make reciprocation a problem since I didn't have the pocket change to purchase him a Hummer.

“Pull out those instructions, Sweet Pea,” I said. “Which exit do I want next?”

“That one there,” Erica said, excitedly.

I whipped in front of a semi, my tires squealing. I drove up on to the median but managed to reel my road hog back into its proper slot.

“That was fun,” Erica said.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“How old do you think I am?”

“Twenty-one,” I said.

As every male knows you always guess five years below what you think a woman’s age is and then take away three more years just in case.

“Twenty-nine,” she said.

Bingo! My formula rarely fails.

“Have you ever been in love?” Erica asked, as she painted her nails.

“Love?”

“Who is this American dream girl I heard D.B. talking about? He says that’s why you’re always moving and doing stupid things.”

“D.B told you about her? I’ll have to have a talk with him. I’ve been chasing her for some time and she continually turns me down.”

“He explained her more like an ideal than a real person,” Erica said. “Maybe the reason you can’t find her is because she doesn’t exist.”

“She Goddamn exists. I met her in a Hawaiian theme bar and she really truly dug me and then…well, it gets hazy after that but she will one day be mine.”

“She’s your muse isn’t she?”

“She’s my muse, she’s the warm tingle of the beer buzz, a moment of sanity in the center of my chaotic existence, she’s the third leg to my bar stool, without her I’d topple over with beer in hand.”

“She doesn’t even know does she?”

“She knows…maybe she doesn’t know. At best she’s indifferent.”

“Don’t give up.”

“I don’t know what that means anymore. I’m moving too fast to notice the details. If I slow then I’m afraid I’ll never get moving again. Giving up is a stationary concept so by nature I'm unable to throw in the towel even if I want to.”

“What does she look like?”

“Right now she looks a lot like you,” I said, blowing smoke out the window. “Does that make sense?”

“Nothing about you makes sense and that’s what attracts me to you and what ultimately will drive me away from you.”

“It’s too bad I am who I am, we might make a hell of a couple me and you,” I said.

“I don’t know there’s not match to like about you is there?” Erica said, smiling.

“No, not really I keep trying to make a list of my likeable qualities but get stuck after number one which is always smells like leather.”

“Yet, I like you.”

“You would,” I said and toked on my cigar. “There’s the Watergate.”

The place gave me the creeps. I could have sworn that I saw Nixon’s ghost on the roof pushing a mop methodically back and forth. He was dressed in an English school boy’s uniform with short pants and wore a beanie.

“There it is,” I said, “my brother’s building.”

It was a white, cylindrical structure that went up and up. If I had to build buildings none of them would be rectangular, all of them would be shaped like beer cans and be set up like six packs.

I drove up over the shrubbery and parked in a spot that said: Private.

“Here we are sweet cakes,” I said, tumbling out of the Cherokee and spilling my beer on my suede duster. “Damn it ruined another good coat.”

My brother was standing out front of his apartment complex dressed in a dark blue corporate suit. If there was a black sheep of our family it was me. I stumbled through high school, tripped over college, and landed in graduate school where I made a name for myself as someone that wasn't going to make a name for himself.

“You look good, like George W. Bush if he were handsome and smart,” I said, as I approached my brother.

“Is that a compliment?” my brother asked, encircling me in his arms.

“You know I don’t give compliments,” I said.

Erica cleared her throat and tossed her black hair back.

“Oh, yeah and this is Erica,” I said.

“Hi, I’m Guerrero, everyone calls me G.”

I lost sight of my brother and focused on Erica’s cleavage, which was pushed up with a lace halter which made her breasts look like freshly baked muffins. Suddenly I had a hankering for coffee.

My brother extended his hand and Erica’s disappeared in his. Her eyes misted up with lust and I knew she’d be under his spell if I didn’t do something soon.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said, walking into their outstretched hands and breaking them in two.

“What are you wearing?” G asked me when we were in the elevator going up to his apartment.

“An authentic 19th century duster. The cowboys used to wear them.”

“I doubt that. You look like you’re dressed in one of grandma’s coats with all the fur peeled off,” G said.

Erica giggled which irritated me. I considered myself a pretty sharp dresser. I was the first on my block to wear Burmese jungle boots.

“Here, we are,” G said and exited the elevator.

His apartment was layered in post modern furniture, paintings and rugs. I guessed my spool coffee table wasn’t quite as nice but it served its purpose. Everyone always knew he’d be more successful than me and I’d set out to prove them right. It was hard keeping up my lifestyle but I managed to repeatedly fuck things up so that success of any sort was virtually impossible. I’d set out to teach them that their self-fulfilling prophecies could become reality if only I didn’t try hard enough.

“Sit and I’ll get you two a drink,” G said.

I sat on his couch and sank up to my hips in it. Suddenly I felt the presence of someone else beside me and for the first time noticed a little Mexican sitting beside me. Startled I jumped up off the couch.

“Ahhhhhhhhhh,” I yelled.

“Calm down,” G said, “that’s my roommate, Paco.”

“Nice to meet you, Paco,” Erica said.

It was hard to make out his features because his end of the couch was dark but I could make out the glowing ember of a cigarette.

“Hola,” he said in a gravely voice.

“Is there someone sitting beside you?” I asked.

“Si, it is my girlfriend, Meredith,” Paco said.

This was getting weird.

“Paco worked in the Mexican Embassy to America. Now he’s going to law school,” G said handing me a Troegs Hopback. I’d sent him several dozen cases for his birthday.

“Super,” I said. “Can we turn on some lights?”
“No, don’t do that,” G said. “Paco doesn’t like lights.”

“Right,” I said.

“I like your jacket,” Paco said.

At least I think it was Paco, I couldn’t really see him.

“Well, Hell Paco, you can have it,” I said, taking off my suede duster. “An ex-love interest gave it to me. It’s got a giant beer stain on it.”

Paco stood and emerged from the shadows. He wasn’t really as small as he’d seemed sitting on the couch. He took the duster from me and put it on.

“I feel like a part of the Dalton gang,’ Paco said, his thin mustache arching over a smile. “And I have something for you.”

He went to the closet beside the front door and brought out a black jacket with ornate stitching.

“This is a matador’s jacket. It was given to me by a very powerful man. I want you to have it.”

It was a damn fine jacket but I wasn’t sure I could pull off something like this without looking just slightly odd.

“That’s a beauty but I really couldn’t take it,” I said, running my hand down the sleeve of the jacket.

“Take it,” Paco said as if scolding me.

“Okay,” I said, taking the jacket and sliding it on. “How do I look?”

“Dashing,” Erica said, covering a smile with her hand.

I looked at my watch.

“Oh, man, it’s almost seven. I’m supposed to meet an old friend of mine in front of the Watergate at seven,” I said.

“Okay, well, let’s go,” G said.


P.S. AG, I think you left your spandex halter top in my Jeep when you were showing me your abs. My E-mail is Rubenvelor@aol.com. Send my E-mail address so I can send witty and inspiring responses. And this is not the Big Blue Blog, that's Luch's blog.

Surprise for Luch

Surprise for Luch from the soon to be pieced together book; American Dream Woman: Waxed Parts

In a penthouse suite in the Hilton in downtown Harrisburg, as the early evening gave way to the darkness called night or as the polish call it Wieczór późny, thirty people commixed for the reason of bidding a fair adieu to our friend Luch who was to set sail for distant lands, i.e. Iraq, in two weeks time. Yes, it would be memorable event but not for the reasons normally associated with such affairs. No, it would not be a night of cordial introductions and gently sipping Chablis, my friends would not and could not let a party of this nature proceed in a boring, civilized manor. It isn’t their nature or mine. There would have to be mayhem, intoxication, carousing and at least one fight to complete the evening. I’m just grateful no one fell off the balcony, although several came close and other than the broken furniture, salsa and popcorn ground into the carpet and the bathtub full of people that overflowed no real damage was done. It is all so vivid in my mind…well, the part before I started drinking but I think I can more or less recall what happened after that.

“We’re getting in the elevator now,” my friend the Weasel said, into his cell phone.

“I’ll see you in a minute,” I said, closing my cell phone. “Okay, everyone Luch is on his way up, go hide on the balcony.”

The thirty or so guests that had attended shuffled from the parlor out onto the balcony.

Amongst the guests were nine of Luch’s family members, including his grandmother who smoked a corncob pipe and swore like a coal miner and his uncle who flew in from California on a military transport. His uncle, Champ, was a former CIA operative and was decked out in full camouflage and combat boots. He didn’t follow the rest of the guests out onto the balcony but instead walked around the table of food poking at various appetizers with a large Rambo knife.

“Do you want to hide?” I asked.

“I don’t hide,” Champ said, running his hand through his salt and pepper flat top.

“Right,” I said. “Would you like a fork?”

“Never use them,” he said, stabbing a cheese ball with his Rambo knife and biting it like an apple.

“Right,” I said. “You don’t want crackers with that do you?”

“Do I look like a cracker eater to you boy?”

The way Champ stared at me with his cobalt blue eyes made me feel, exposed, vulnerable, and naked. No doubt this was taught to him for interrogation purposes while he was an undercover operative in the CIA. Luch had mentioned something about him having spent a lot of time in South America and torturing people with ABBA records.

“Okay, D.B, Wilson, assume slovenly positions on various pieces of furniture.

It had been my idea to keep only the scruffiest and oldest of Luch’s friends, who included me, visible for the grand entrance. He would be let down when he saw only us, the usual rowdy crowd, sitting there drinking beer and then when he was at his lowest we’d lead him out to the balcony where everyone else was hiding.

The door burst open and Luch and the Weasel stepped into the parlor of the suite.

“Surprise,” D.B. said, holding his beer up above his head.

The crooked smile that had been stretched across his face disappeared, replaced by a look of bewilderment. It was obvious he was under whelmed.

“To Luch,” I said, raising my beer.

“Surprise,” the Weasel said, twirling an American flag.

“Whatever,” Luch said and cracked open a Coors Light.

“Don’t get too excited it can cause heart palpitations,” I said.

“Everything’s a ha ha with you people,” he said taking a healthy slurp from the Coors Light that had magically appeared in his hand.

“Drop the military speak your starting to freak me out,” I said.

“What’s wrong with military speak,” Champ said, setting his cheese ball and knife down on the table.

“Champ what are you doing here?” Luch asked his uncle.

“I heard you were having a party. So I came,” Champ said. .

“From California? This is weird,” Luch said, “where are the chicks? The least you could’ve done is gotten some strippers.”

“Better yet how would you like to see your grandmother naked?” D.B said. “Because she’s out on the balcony.”

Before I knew what was happening Champ had leaped across the table of food and was strangling D.B.

The balcony doors flew open. “Surprise,” everyone yelled.

“Help,” D.B cried.

“That’s my mother you’re talking about,” Champ said as he tried to strangle D.B.

It took several of us to pry Champ off D.B. I was just thankful that he hadn’t had his Rambo knife when he attacked. Wilson, a veritable pharmaceutical warehouse, slipped a tranquilizer in a beer and gave it to Champ who guzzled it without stopping for a breath. This seemed to calm him somewhat and he sank back into a plush chair and gnawed on his cheeseball.

The evening from that point on progressed without a hitch. There was much back slapping and pledges to write to Luch and he grinned his crooked grin and drained Coors Light after Coors Light. And then there was a loud knock on the door. Woops, did I say the evening progressed without a hitch?

D.B. did the Mic Jagger chicken dance all the way to the door and opened it.

“Hi there security we followed a trail of crushed peanuts back to your room,” a security guard in a captain’s suit said. “Evidently someone is hiding an elephant up here or being very goddamn sloppy. We also have noise complaints.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” D.B. said.

“That’s because you’re the ones making the noise,” the security guard said.

“Oh, right,” I said. I folded up a twenty dollar bill and slipped it into the security guard’s hand. .

“Thank-you sir,” he said, stuffing the bill into his blue polyester pants.

“Hey, what are you doing?” a guy standing along the wall said. “They’re being noisy and bothering us.”

The complainer was a rather husky individual, with three chins and coconut sized man boobs. I wasn’t scared but respected the immovable force that he might be if I tried one of my patented Karate styled kicks on him; I might lose one of my Burmese jungle boots between the rolls that hung from his sides. There was also the matter of his blubbery entourage which totaled two but on a Richter scale might have caused a 3.0 if deck they were standing on gave way.

“It’s under control,” the hotel security guard said.

“The fuck it is,” the guy said.

The Weasel, about five nine and one-hundred and thirty pounds lunged at the guy. Luckily I was close enough to grab hold of him before he flung himself in front of what was tantamount to a speeding eighteen wheeler.

“Ho there big guy,” I said.

The Weasel’s legs spun madly as I held him around the waist.

“Okay, let’s get back to our rooms,” the security guard said.

“This isn’t over,” the big burly guy said. “I will be back.”

“Oh, it’s over,” Champ said, pointing his Rambo knife with the cheeseball on the end at them.

“And who do you think you’re going to do scrub brush?” the big guy said, hitching up his khakis.

“I’ll carve that blubber off your sides with my knife, wring it out and use the oil to power my Skidoo when I trek across the Himalayas next winter,” Champ said.

“Come on lets get out of here. These guys are crazy,” the big guy said.

“That’s right, I’m crazy,” the Weasel said.

“Thanks again,” I said, to the security guard.

We went back inside and gathered everyone together. We had planned to take the party out on the town for a few hours and then end the party back at the room. Since I had the keys Luch, Champ, and I were the last ones to leave the room.

“Okay, let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Those cocksuckers can’t tell us to be quiet,” Champ uncle said. “Come on.”

Luch and I followed him out in the hallway to the elevators. He looked up to a service panel in the ceiling.

“Boost me up,” Champ said to Luch.

Luch obliged and boosted his uncle up to the ceiling panel in front of the elevators. Champ quickly removed the screws and climbed up inside.

“What are you doing?” Luch asked.

“Payback. Now hand me my bag,” Champ said.

I hoisted his bag up. He turned on a flashlight.

“We’ll be at the Hardware bar if you want to come down. His arm shot out of the hole poised in the thumbs up sign and then quickly disappeared and the panel slid back into place.

“Let’s get the Hell out of here,” Luch said. “We don’t want to be around when he has his revenge. It’s never pretty.”

We went down the elevator and burst out into the cold night air. Everyone else from the party had already headed out to the bars downtown. Thanks to his whacky uncle Luch was missing his own party.
* * *

At the Hardware bar Luch, D.B. the Weasel and I positioned ourselves on the second floor loft which overlooked the dance floor where most of the guests from Luch’s party were dancing. I like to be able to look out over the dance floor and observe people. This night’s scene was another spectacle of the mechanical dance of despair and envy that engulfs the sweating masses. I am not above it but simply outside it. I’ve never been one to dive into the crowd, to follow. And maybe I’m not a leader of many men, which in history makes you great but I am a leader unto myself and have taken myself into life’s battles without the comfort or need to be part of a group. If I fuck up I want all the responsibility if I don’t fuck up I want all the glory because in the end the people around you aren’t going to crawl into the cold dark box with you. Unless one of those closest to you is a necrophiliac and well, I don’t want to go into the details that might accompany such a thought..

“Man I have bad gas,” D.B, said, letting loose a fart that rattled the fixtures on the walls.

“I know I heard you that sounded like a honking goose with its head stuffed in an empty mayonnaise jar. You need to get some Beano or something. That flatulence is starting to wreak havoc on your personal life.”

“My personal life is fine but she will make it better,” D.B. said.

Coming at us was one of the women from our party. She was a slender brunette fitness fanatic with enough energy per square inch in her supple body to pry the lug nuts off a rusty eighteen wheeler with her armpits. She appeared to be crying.

“What’s up you guys,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

“Angela, what’s wrong?” D.B. asked.

“I don’t know. What’s wrong with me? No one likes me. I can’t get a boyfriend,” she said.

“Gee, I wonder why,” D.B. said.

The Weasel stepped between them before Angela bitch slapped him.

“I like you,” the Weasel said.

“I’m the prettiest girl in three counties and look at my abs,” she said pulling up her shirt.

The Weasel ran his fingers across her abs. “Nice,” he said, smiling out of the corner of his mouth.

“Do you want to see this dancing queen shake her abdominals?” she said.

“Yes, yes, I do,” the Weasel said.

They headed down the stairs to the dance floor but I didn’t follow. I was having too good a time watching people and besides if I’d step on someone with my Burmese jungle boots I’d probably crush their toes.

“I should go dance on the bar,” Luch said, slurring his words.

“Guys aren’t allowed to dance on the bar,” D.B. said.

“How much do you want to bet?”

“Fifty bucks.”

“You’re on,” Luch said, downing the rest of his Coors Light.

They took off for the bar and there was but one. Yeah, that’s right, me. I was the one, who as usual was sequestered to the outside of all activities, just where I like it but soon enough I grew tired of watching people twisting like reanimated corpses with some strange outer space bacteria attacking their central nervous systems.

I drained my Guinness and made my way down to the dance floor. D.B. was doing the Mic Jagger chicken dance across the top of it. I’d have to have a talk with D.B. He’d been doing the chicken dance much too much lately and it was beginning to worry me. I swiftly traversed the dance floor careful not to appear as if I was dancing and made my way out the front door.

Immediately upon exiting the Hardware bar I noticed a young lady from the gym where I workout. I remembered from her nametag that her name was Erica. She was crossing the street. I followed and as I crossed to the other side I brushed up against a BMW.

“Watch the car,” the owner of the BMW said.

I smiled and gave him the finger.

Erica entered the Brick House, a German establishment that specializes in waitresses clad in lederhosen and tall frothing glasses of Franzinkaner. I followed.

Once inside I found the place to be packed so I positioned myself at the top of the stairs. I looked far and near and didn’t see her. I began observing the hula-hoop hip gyrations of a twenty-something female dressed tightly in a swatch of wool sateen when the crowd of people on the dance floor parted as if split in half by an invisible snow plow. I wondered what all the ruckus was about until I saw who it was. It was Erica.

Her hips swayed hypnotically like two cantaloupes wrapped in a hammock that was blowing gently in a breeze on some tropical island. I would need all my mental faculties popping in a synchronized fashion if I was going to make this happen. I went deep into a trance and collected myself, picturing a goat on a far away mountain top smoking a hookah. “Ah, ha,” I said, coming out of the trance. The people next to me moved.

“Hey, there,” I called.

She looked up.

“What are you doing here,” she said. “I’ve only ever seen you in the gym.”

“Yes, well, I like the smell of moldy gym socks in the morning, athletes foot, and stair step aerobics.”

“You’ve never done stair step aerobics.”

“I didn’t say I did. I merely said I liked them and that would be in an observational capacity.”

“In fact I’ve never seen you work out,” Erica said, seductively running her index finger along her bottom lip.

“I don’t workout in the strict sense of the word. I like to watch people workout. It keeps the muscle between the ears lubricated.”

You’re going to say something and screw this up aren’t you?” she asked.

“I see my reputation precedes me. I’ll also have to let you know I’m not a dancer. That can sometimes end a relationship before it gets started.”

“I don’t care about dancing.”

She looked down at my Burmese jungle boots and then at the five days of scruff on my face.

“What do you do?”

“I do as little as possible. It’s the American way.”

“I’m tired of liars and cheats.”

“I am neither a liar nor a cheat. In all the infinite ways I can fuck things up I am merely me. I’m not sadistic and I don’t have the energy to be vindictive.”

“It takes up so much energy,” she said.

“It really does. Excuse me,” I said, and turned to pick up my beer on the bar.

In the time that I’d turned to retrieve my beer the guy whose BMW I’d brushed up against outside had moved in on Erica. He looked like he might have been a mannequin in the showroom window at Macy’s, with high angular cheekbones and hair that flowed off his head like flames off a burning ball of gasoline soaked newspaper. I don’t have cheekbones and what little hair I have can hardly be said to flow and therefore I already had two strikes against me.

I watched as this guy gradually backed Erica into a corner. She looked over his shoulder; her eyes wide, as if to say help me. I started to walk away. I knew I wasn’t flashy enough to outdo this guy. I don’t care to be. If there’s one thing I can’t stand its guys that overdo flashy; the cocksuckers that relentlessly hound and badger until women break down to their phony charms. These are the same women that find themselves thirty years later sitting in their local Moose club drinking shitty liquor and wondering what happened to their lives. I’d tell them they ended the minute Mr. Charming opened his mouth and the glint from faux gold teeth blinded them but no one wants to hear that.

“Where the Hell are you going?” D.B. asked.

“D.B., what are you doing here?” I asked. “You were well into the chicken dance when I left the Hardware Bar.”

“We can talk about that later,” D.B. said. “I saw you with Ms. Hotty pants and you let Mr. BMW take her away. What is wrong with you lately?”

“I’ve given up.”

D.B. smacked me hard across the face. Instantly my inner Curly came out and my feet churned as I repeatedly and involuntarily smacked my nearly bald forehead.

“Hey you, BMW cocksucker,” I cried.

“What did you just say?” he asked.

“I said, hey you BMW cocksucker.”

Sweat was poring from ever inch of my body, my Burmese jungle boots were quickly filling up. I hitched up my pants and fondled my brass knuckles belt buckle.

“Fuck you,” he said, taking a step towards me.

“Kick his ass,” D.B, said.

“Is that your BMW being towed over their?” Erica said.

“Oh, my God, my BMW,” he said and rushed down the stairs and out the door.

“Come on let’s get out of here,” Erica said and we fled out the back door and hightailed in back to the Hilton.

* * *

As we waited for the elevator to come down in the lobby the fatty patrol that had bitched about our noise level was getting on the elevator beside us. They were carrying buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and gripping them like they were the last jumbo Dixie cups of fountain of youth water. I growled like a mad dog and they ignored me.

“Come on,” D.B. said let’s get on this one.

D.B. and Erica pushed into an already full elevator and I tried but wouldn’t fit.

“I’ll catch the next one,” I said.

I got in a separate elevator and went up. When I reached our floor my elevator lurched to a stop. The doors didn’t open.

“I’ve got you you fucking punks.”

I knew that voice. It was Champ. It sounded like he was in the elevator shaft somewhere.

“No, it’s me Luch’s friend,” I yelled. I’m one of the people that helped set up the party for him. I’m going back up to rejoin the party now.”

“Shut up you goddamn punk or I’ll cut the cable on this elevator and send you straight to hell,” Champ screamed.

“Was this all because I asked you to hide?” I yelled.

He cackled like a mad man.

“I never hide. I’m always there in plane sight. You just don’t know where to look,” Champ yelled.

“This will teach you to complain to hotel security,” he said.

“I’m not those guys. They went up in another elevator,” I screamed.

The lights went out. I heard Luch’s uncle moving around above me and then it was silent. I opened up my cell phone so I could see and noticed Erica’s cell phone number there which I’d programmed in on the way back from the Brick House.

I pressed send and after about for or five rings she answered.

“Who is this?” she said.

I could hear heavy breathing in the background.

“It’s me.”

“You’ll have to do better than me,” she said.

“I was just with you at the Brick House. I saved you from the guy with the BMW.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. There was silence and I heard the smacking of lips and then a surprisingly loud fart that sound like a honking goose with its head inside an empty mayonnaise jar.

“I’d recognize that fart anywhere,” I said. “D.B. is that you?”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“D.B, I know that goose honking fart sound of yours anywhere,” I said.

“That stinks get out of bed,” Erica said.

“It’s only a fart,” D.B said.

“D.B., it is you,” I said.

The phone went dead and I slumped against the back wall of the elevator. I thought how life is a ultimately a strange tangle of events, like the vines twisting through the tree tops of a jungle canopy, with each bend and break representing choices and opportunities and their consequences. I felt like burning down the jungle.

I noticed a lot of peanuts on the ground and started eating those when my cell phone rang again.
“Hello?” I said.

“It’s me,” Erica said.

“I’m sorry about that. I’ve been drinking a lot. Your friend D.B. was doing that Mic Jagger chicken dance on the end of the bed and I thought it was cute. The next thing I knew we were making out.”

“Damn him and that chicken dance,” I said.

“I want you to come up here,” she said.

“I would but I can’t I’m trapped in an elevator.”

“If you don’t want to come up just say so. You don’t need to make up excuses.”

“No, I’m not really. I’m really trapped in an elevator.”

“You know I really tried to get past what people say about you but you won’t let me. You just can’t be straight with anyone can you?”

“No, I am I’m being straight. Luch’s uncle did something to the elevator and trapped me in here.”

“Don’t call me again,” she said.

“Wait,” I said but it was too late the battery on my phone died. I hadn’t even called anyone to get me out of the elevator.

I jumped to my feet and started pounding on the elevator doors. “Let me out of here,” I cried. I pounded on the doors for a minute or two and then exhausted I fell to the ground, curled up and fell asleep.

* * *

The next morning I awoke on the floor of the elevator as the door opened. A group of Boy Scouts stood outside staring at me. They were there for some sort of fire starting competition.

“I have a bad case of vertigo,” I said jumping to my feet.

“He’s drunk,” I heard one of the boys say.

“Yeah, and you little cocksuckers discriminate against gays. You sold cookies outside the ACLU because they called you on your homophobic views. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Why won’t you let a gay kid build a popsicle log cabin and make pinecone Christmas ornaments with you? Are you afraid they might be better than yours?”

Some of the kids started to cry and I ran out of the hotel and onto the street and the new day’s sun warmed my face. I looked up at the hotel and new that another chapter of my life had ended. Luch was going to Iraq, Wilson was headed to Florida, D.B. had already moved down around Philly and the Weasel was busy teaching senior citizens badminton six nights a week at the YMCA as a condition of his probation.

Me, I am off to D.C. on Wednesday to meet up with my brother. He told me he’s gotten in with a group of friends that will keep me on my toes and that he knows a certain blond secretary that seems just crazy enough to tame me. I’ll believe it when I see it.

So goodbye to the old group, you’ll all still be in my dreams and D.B. I think Philadelphia might be a good place to get in trouble, so pencil me in for an upcoming spree of debauchery. Like I’ve said all along I need to keep moving. In fact I want to build up so much momentum that I kick through this earthly canvas and into dimensions unknown. Maybe then I can slow and will know peace. Until then remember that you’ll never know me as well as you think you do. I won’t allow for it. I like being on the outside looking in. The joke is that I am the joke.

P.S. Erica you left your spandex halter top in my Jeep. I’m outta here.

The X-mas Party

In the late night habitat that is my permanent weekend home I found myself immersed in the goings on of a social gathering somewhere in the not so vast city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This particular evening of merrymaking was to be a tribute to the commercialized institution known as Christmas. A largely thirty-something crowd, wearing ridiculous red and green sweaters adorned with snow flakes and reindeer, sipped bourbon laced eggnog, while the Yule log crackled in the fireplace and a Muzak version of Jingle Bells emanated from CD player sitting on top of the Victrola in the den. I was well on my way to intoxication, having scoffed three hash brownies and more than a few Sierra Nevada Celebration Ales when it occurred to me that amongst all the merriment someone had forgotten the most sexual of Christmas garnishes, the mistletoe. I would never have it be said of me that I neglected such detail, especially detail of a sexual nature. So, I took it upon myself to remedy the problem and set about trying to find a clump of what in Old High English was known as zein twig.

I searched all through the two story brownstone but alas there was not an ounce of mistletoe to be found. So, I improvised and took a sprig of parsley off one of the cheese platters, a length of dental floss from the upstairs medicine cabinet, and a thumb tack from the corkboard in the kitchen and hung my pseudo mistletoe in the entry way that led from the kitchen to the living room. I then positioned myself beside the door, smeared my lips with chap stick and waited to see who would come through.

My friend Luch was the first to pass by. He stopped and looked up at the greenery hanging in the doorframe.

“Why is there parsley hanging from the doorframe?” he asked.

“Get out of the way you nincompoop,” I said.

“Whatever, dickhead,” he said and headed towards a tray of assorted holiday sausages.

I’d heard the young lady I’d been taken with several weeks earlier at a Hawaiian theme bar and who had subsequently turned down my awkward advances was to attend this holiday shin dig. I pictured this blond beauty walking slowly up and gazing at the parsley and then at me. I’d smile. She’d beckon me over and I’d walk to her. “Kiss me,” she’d say, closing her eyes and I’d keep walking right on by.

This is what I’ve been gearing up to do my whole life, not the parsley and the girl but the keep walking part. I plan to keep walking and then to run, to build up so much momentum that when my heart finally stops I will continue on for thousands of years. Not until the ozone layer is finally peeled away and this earth is a baron ball of burning sand will I slow to and end but by then there won’t be anybody around to care and so neither will I.

I tilted my Sierra Nevada and drained it.

“I heard eating celery before oral sex makes it much better,” Luch said, to a small group gathered around him.

I opened another Sierra Nevada and scanned the room.

“You know those things your grandparents cleaned their glasses with?” a guy wearing a red and green bow tie and blue suit asked two women standing beside him.

“Old underwear?” I said.

“Not underwear,” the guy said, disgust in his voice.

Perhaps my grandparents aren’t conventional, a possibility I pondered early on when they encouraged me to runaway and join the circus after I said I admired clowns. They were also products of the Great Depression which would explain their thrift and the materials with which they chose to clean their glasses.

“You mean those little squares of tissue paper?” one of the women asked.

“Tissue paper is for wusses,” I said. “In medieval times they used dried bull scrotums to clean their glasses. They were absorbent and such practice was thought to restore virility to the sexually downtrodden.”

“They didn’t have glasses back then,” the bow tie guy said.

“Didn’t have glasses? They had glasses long before that. How do you think Jesus, who by the way was nearly blind, was able to pick the weevils out of his disciple’s beards?”

It was then that I spied her standing under my parsley, a black haired beauty in a tight wool skirt and patent leather shoes. Her skin was the color of coffee with just enough cream. Her eyes were electric blue green and lit up the room with a luminescence that might have been powered with the energy harvested from plugging into the mainframe of an acid trip.

“What is that?” she asked, poking my parsley with her index finger.

“Parselytoe, cousin to mistletoe, brother to stubbed toe,” I said.

“You’re funny,” she said, drunkenly.

“I’m funnier with my clothes off,” I said.

“Come here,” she said.

YES! It was just like my daydream and I obliged but unlike my daydream I didn’t walk on by. I met her under the parsleytoe and she gently took my head in her hands and then rammed her tongue down my throat. Our tongues tussled in one another’s mouths like two electric eels trapped in a breadbox.

“By God that was extraordinary,” I said, pulling back.

“I’m done with this party,” she said. “Want to come to another party and party with me.”

I dumped my eggnog in the nearby planter of a rubber tree. I hadn’t seen my dream girl and odds were she’d be with the fraternity type I’d seen her with the past weekend if she decide to show up at all. And so in that moment I would let any lingering daydreams of the blond dream girl go, which is my nature. She might have walked into that room wearing nothing but a tea towel and a smile and thrown herself at me and I would have walked away…okay, let’s not get crazy. Let’s just say I was done actively lusting after her. She had her chance and as they say life is short.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Where are you going?” my friend the Weasel asked.

“To party with this little vixen,” I said, wrapping my arm around her svelte waste.

“Want to come along?” she asked. “I have a really cute friend.”

“Sure,” the Weasel said.

“Cool,” she said. “I’m Mindy.”

“Right,” I said, grabbing a plate of hash brownies and stuffing them in pockets of my leather jacket.

* * *

We pulled up in front of a dilapidated duplex in what was considered one of the seediest neighborhoods in Harrisburg. It occurred to me then that following my parsleytoe love interest without evaluating her personality and potential for erratic behavior was a serious miscalculation in late night partying strategy. If need be I would have to feign illness and hightail it back to the Christmas party where at the very least a tray of assorted holiday sausages and bucket of bourbon laced eggnog awaited me.

“You live here?” I asked, finishing off the last of another bottle of Sierra Nevada.

“No, I don’t live here. This place is a dump. My friend told me there was a party here. “Come on,” she said hopping out of my Cherokee.

“This place is nasty,” the Weasel said.

“Don’t judge a slum by it sluminess,” I said. “There could be good folks behind that door that’s falling down over there.”

“That place is condemned,” the Weasel said.

“Oh,” I said.

“What the Hell. I can have fun at any party,” the Weasel said.

It’s the Weasel’s nature to go with the flow, to be as socially smooth as butter and melt effortlessly into the frying pan of conversation. My entrances often engender the sensation of lurching forward in an automobile after slamming on the brakes to avoid hitting a bag lady pushing a shopping cart full of aluminum cans. It’s the head snapping inevitability of my actions, my unexpected mannerisms and meandering tongue that leave me on the outside of those cozy little circles that predictably form during the course of a social gathering. You would think it would make me feel like an outsider. It does and I like it.

“Yeah, what the Hell, a party is a party-”

Somewhere I heard what sounded like a scream followed by what sounded like a gunshot. I was glad I’d foregone the fashion statement of aesthetically pleasing belt ornamentation and worn my brass knuckles belt buckle.

“Then again,” the Weasel said.

“Come on,” Mindy said.

We followed hesitantly and before we could get to the front door it burst open.

“Hurry up get in here,” a big redhead said, ushering us quickly inside.

In a sleeveless white T-shirt and with green tattoos up and down his arms our host looked like a grown up Howdy Doody gone bad. If Buffalo Bob were still alive he would have gagged him with his red handkerchief, put him over his knee and beat the snot out of him. Or perhaps these were just the feelings I’d fostered for the red headed marionette and was displacing them on our host, for I never liked Howdy Doody and as a child often awoke screaming from a reoccuring nightmare in which Howdy Doody chased me with a hairdryer that shot flames.

“Where’s Sue?” Mindy asked.

“In the bathroom, she’ll be out in a minute. Come on in we can wait in the living room,” the grown Howdy Doody said, motioning us forward. His actions were quick and agitated, abrupt. He was pure twitching force, and from the get go I didn’t like him.

I looked at the Weasel and he shrugged. Doody led us into the living room which was a lit by a single naked bulb. The glow cast by this flickering bulb was scarcely enough to light the room and in fact left the corners powdered in a surreal blackness that revealed only the edges of pizza boxes, crushed cans, and other debris.

“Hey nice to meet you,” Howdy Doody said. He grasped my hand and squeezed hard. I squeezed back and he relented. I pulled back my jacket and exposed my brass knuckle belt buckle. He pretended not to see it and grabbed the Weasel’s hand.

Trance music, mixed with a thick bass beat and spiraling pipe organs, emanated from a massive pair of speakers on the far side of the room. Doody caught me staring at them.

“Those are Polk Audio LSi25’s. Those babies were twenty-five hundred a pair. I bought them with my combat pay.”

“Good purchase,” the Weasel said, rolling his eyes.

The speakers seemed so out of place amongst the Sanford and Son junk heap that surrounded us. The stereo itself, composed of high end Denon components, also seemed out of place. For one it was immense and looked like a towering alien civilization and secondly it was spotless, no doubt lovingly cleaned by the husky redhead. It even looked like the carpet around the stereo was vacuumed but only a space several feet in diameter surrounding it. I knew then that Doody was definitely mad.

“Sue,” Doody cried.

A thin but shapely brunette dressed in a white mini-T that said Pornstar on the front appeared in the room. Her mouth was incredibly large, so large in fact that it seemed she’d borrowed Julia Robert’s lips and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s teeth to go out on the town that night. Despite the obvious mismatch of Sue’s mouth to her face, when melded with a small and slightly upturned nose and bottomless blue eyes, the effect was visually dazzling. She was a stone cold cutie and I knew the Weasel would approve.

“Sue, you and Mindy are going to score some coke, heroin and ecstasy,” Doody said, his mouth moving so fast his lips and teeth blurred.

“That sounds like the sing songy rhyme thing from the Wizard of Oz. You know, Lions and tigers and bears oh my. Heroin, coke and ecstasy oh my…You’re not going to do all that stuff together? That sounds sort of dangerous. Why don’t we pass on the hard stuff tonight. I’ll run down the road and grab a couple of six-packs,” I said.

Doody ignored me. He angrily wiped his nose with the back of his fist. The phony good manners he’d been displaying were quickly disappearing.

“Yeah, cool,” Sue said, shakily lighting a cigarette.

“I’m going with you,” Mindy said.

“Maybe we ought to go,” the Weasel said.

If the Weasel meant we ought to go back to the Christmas party I was all for it. There was no way I was going on any drug deal. My luck would place us smack dab in the center of the city’s biggest drug bust.

Mindy came up beside me and whispered in my ear. “I’m sorry I thought there was going to be other people here. I didn’t know he would be here. Please stay. We’ll be right back.”

I nodded. I noticed a photocopied picture on the floor beside the coffee table. It was of a bloated body lying in a street and it was being torn at by wild dogs. It wondered what in the Hell this macabre display indicated about Doody’s ID. Did it have a flat tire and was it spinning madly in circles over images of self hate? Were there bodies stored under the floor boards? Was there an arm and leg casserole in the refrigerator? I grasped my brass knuckles belt buckle.

“Okay,” Sue said, “Let’s go.”

The girls hurried off. The front door slammed shut.

“You know about the drugs. You’re part of the family now…you do want to be part of the family don’t you?”

“Sure I love families. We’re not going to have Christmas dinner together are we? I haven’t had time to shop for gifts,” I said.

He pulled up his white T-shirt and pulled a gun out and pointed it between my eyes. I could fell the cold steel of the barrel pressing against my skin. I needed to get the fuck out of that place but knew that this lunatic would just assume shoot us as let us go.

“Whoa, watch that gun big guy,” the Weasel said.

“Ha,” Doody screamed. I nearly jumped out of my Burmese jungle boots. “I like you, you’re funny.” He smiled but in an instant it disappeared from his face. The gun returned to my forehead. “Don’t ever fuck me over.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said. “Fucking people over is overrated. I prefer to negotiate, to get to the essence of the matter. You’ll never catch me running out on anyone…unless, there’s an opossum involved. Those things freak me out.”

“Opossums are ugly,” the Weasel said.

Doody put the gun back in his waistband and picked up sword lying on the coffee table. He leaned over the coffee table and cut a line of coke as long as a cereal box and then positioned his huge nostril over it and inhaled. He shot up from the table his eyes watering.

“You really stove pipe that stuff in,” I said. “You’re making a lot of Columbians very happy right now.”

I noticed another photocopied photo of a dead body on the side of the television and several on the walls.

“You have an odd decorating sense,” I said. “Post-modern…what’s up with all the dead bodies?”

“I’m a Marine. They’re all the people I killed in Iraq. You see that one on the side of the TV? I held my gun up to that bitch’s temple and blew a hole in her head.”

“Well you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” I said, examining the room for possible escape routes.

The Weasel’s eyes were wide. He was discreetly gesturing towards the door with his thumb.

“I don’t even know if she was the enemy,” Doody said. “She jumped right out in front of me and I just reacted.”

He spun with the sword in his hand and hit a stack of pizza boxes. Cardboard and pizza crusts scattered across the room.

“Whoa, watch it there Captain Kidd you’re liable to cut something vital off,” I said, taking a step back.

Doody laid his sword on the coffee table and walked over to the Weasel. I knew better than to flinch or look away, these are signs of weakness and animals like this guy can smell weakness from a mile away.

He put his arm around the Weasel’s shoulders. Tears were streaming down his face. This guy was a fucking mess. He massaged the Weasel’s shoulders in a way that made me uncomfortable.

“That’s quite a grip,” the Weasel said. “You know it doesn’t seem like the girls are coming back I think we’d better get going.”

Doody jumped back as if he’d been bitten in the ass by a Schnauzer.

“You can’t go out the front door,” he said reaching into his waistband. “This place is under surveillance. Didn’t you see that panel van parked outside?”

“No, I didn’t see a panel van. What’s the back door look like?” I asked.

“No, that’s no good,” he said, looking about madly, “Wait here.”

Doody grabbed his sword and sprinted up the stairs.

“I say we get the fuck out of here before we get stabbed or shot,” the Weasel said. He lit a Camel and drew on it heavily.

“I’m worried if we leave this loon will come after us,” I said. “If we take some of his drugs maybe he’ll let us go without incident. I’ve never done ecstasy.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind? Did you see the way he was groping me? I am not going to take ecstasy and especially not around this guy.”

The sound of heavy boots coming down the stairs four at a time let us know Doody was on his way back.

“They’re here. I saw the cops. They’re in a panel van down the street. They’re here to bust me. I opened the window in the bathroom upstairs we’ll have to jump out into a tree and shimmy down it.”

He bent down, snorted another long line of coke. “Come on,” he cried pointing his sword towards the steps.

I wasn’t sure whether or not Doody was just being paranoid or whether there actually were cops outside but I wasn’t waiting around to find out. At the very least we would be able to get out of the house and away from him.

“What the Hell are we going to do?” the Weasel asked.

“We’ll go out the window. Here eat these,” I said, shoving hash brownies at him.

“What do you want me to do with all these?”

“Eat them. If there are cops out there and we get caught with them we’ll end up in a jail cell with this loon.”

I didn’t need to say anything else. We both began stuffing hash brownies.

“What are you eating?” Doody asked when we reached the open window at the top of the stairs.

“Brownies want some?”

“I never put that poison in my body,” he said and hoisted himself out the window and into the tree.

We watched as Doody climbed down the tree. By the time he hit the ground we’d finished the last of the brownies.

“Okay, you’re turn, I said.

“My turn? That must be fifty feet down.”

“I know but if I go first who will be here to call an ambulance if you fall.”

The Weasel pondered this. He’s a bright guy but the hash and alcohol were working his brain.

“Okay,” he finally said, “I’ll go first.”

I watched as the Weasel made his way out onto the branches of the tree.

“Come on,” he said.

“All right calm down,” I’ll be right out.”

I took a deep breath and hoisted my self out onto a large branch using the frame of the window to steady myself. The Weasel had worked his way to the trunk and then inched down to the next big branch. By the time I made it to the trunk the hash brownies had hit me full force.

“Weasel,” I said, hugging the trunk, “I can’t feel my legs.”

“Me either. I’m afraid to let go of the trunk.”

“Me too. Maybe we should go back.”

“I can’t go back. I can’t move.”

“Me either.”

I chanced a look down and saw that Doody was gone.

“What are we going to do?” the Weasel asked.

“Hang on,” I said.

I looked out over the city, at the dots of light, at the silhouettes of buildings, at the vastness of it all and despite having eaten somewhere in the neighborhood of two pounds of hash brownies the only thing I could think of was food.

“Do you have your cell phone on you?” I asked.

“Why?” the Weasel asked.

“I wanted to order a pizza,” I said.

Local Hero

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