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
No comments:
Post a Comment