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.
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