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20. Part Two - In Which The Author Finds Soul In The Glow Of A Crack Pipe, Reflected From The Mascara Running Down A Dude's Face

Catch up by reading PART ONE before you read PART TWO

Okay, guys. where were we?  Leaving New Mexico I believe.  I really liked New Mexico.  It was all really hippy.  There were these co-ops where aging hippies would buy you all this food made from twigs and brush and shit.  As if any of us need any more difficulties, add sandy bowel movements to the equation and it was a laugh-a-minute.

We met some interesting people and did a ton of illegal things and then left before they caught our scent.  Shad and Heather were in a hurry to meet up with some of her friends in West Hollywood. and I was game for anything.

We took off into the desert and it is not as cool as the tv would lead you to believe.  It's hot and miserable and I was worried that we didn't have nearly enough luxuries like water and gas.  The towns were so small and far between that it took almost two days to get through the fucking thing.  We couldn't really steal gas because the towns consisted of five dudes with shotguns, so we'd limp in and beg a couple of dollars here and there to lube up the tank.  God, it sucked.  Do you put $3 in the tank and (hopefully) get almost to the next level of Dante's inferno or buy a couple of slushies to cool your dick off in?  I tell you it was ridiculous and surreal on a Dali level.  Time melted and just sitting in those gas stations for hours was murder.  My head baked and constantly throbbed and after a time you'd just have to laugh cause the heat made you delirious and nobody within 100 miles even wanted you there, sitting on the curb telling dirty jokes with a biblically-ugly linebacker with tits.  It was like Young Guns when whoever says, "Why ain't they killin' us?" and then what's his face says, "Cause were in the spirit world, asshole."  It was like that but without the sitting on the couch, comfortable and wondering why Emilio Estevez didn't change his name to Sheen when everyone knows that his acting chops couldn't carry his pretentiousness.  Yeah, it got confusing like that.

We did finally get out of there, though, and it was good.  On the third day, there was West Hollywood.  Holy fucking West Hollywood.  Remember when  told you that I loved crazy people?  Well gang, this is where they're all from.  It was like a drive-through insane asylum.  They really know their crazy there.  We got into town and kinda drove around aimlessly because we didn't know where the fuck we were.  Heather had talked to her friends on the phone and had come up with a vague meeting place by a YMCA that we had no idea even existed let alone where it was located.  The logical assumption here would be to find YMCA-y type people.  While this is ultimately the best case scenario for me, it was frustrating for Shad and Heather.  I drove until we found a relatively quiet residential area to leave the car and decided to walk a bit.

Did you know that there's two Melroses?  OH Christ.  There's Melrose Place and there the Melrose we found that kinda looked like Detroit's East side but with trannies stumbling around on broken heels with balls hanging out of their short skirts.  Trannies with five-o'clock shadow and leg hair, deep voices trying to 'come hither' you.  Would you have guessed the glow from a crack pipe reflecting off of the mascara running down a dude's face could be soulful?  It was the Devil's Ray-Bans.  It was getting late so we found this squat (an abandoned house or building filled with degenerates, deviants, and the all-around maladjusted) and decided to hunker down for the night.  Now we had no idea that on the other side of the large brick wall next to the squat was an elementary school, nor did we know that these guys had been throwing dirty needles and shit over it, but the cops did.  We hadn't been there a couple of hours when they raided it full-on Cops style.  There was fucking helicopters shining lights everywhere, guys in riot gear screaming and chasing trannies and junkies all over hell and back, bull horns squelching and blaring.  It was chaos and blindingly bright.  That's what really made it something - how bright it was.  You don't ever really grasp how dark a place is until someone shines a light on it, usually unannounced and uninvited.  It's then that you see the things you'd have rather not seen.  The dead and rotting body of a rat only feet from where you were laying.  The used and sad condoms and bent needles discarded only because they were so clogged with infected blood that they refused to work any longer.  All the receipts for nothing but the cheapest beer or wine in the largest bottles, broken bracelets that had been unwillingly torn from somebody's wrist, four kittens huddled in a corner, too scared to even mew.  These are the narrow places, gang, it's where it gets really heavy.

We were all rounded up and sat down.  The cops asked if any of us had ID then laughed and began to give us all a lecture on the virtues of adulthood while wearing riot gear and pointing assault rifles.  I know there's something poignant or maybe ironic there but i'll be damned if I'm going to give it a go.  I'd probably be wrong anyways, who am I the fuck to say, right?  Everything ever worth taking has always been done so and the end of a gun, but were they taking of giving?  Can someone in the depth of such a state be drawn back to the realities they've hoped to run from with threats?  These equally violent overweight brutes couldn't possibly have had more guts than us.  This guy who's teaching a class here in this prison would probably call this deluded thinking.  So far he'd lay it all out as that, but I don't know.  I don't think it's so simple.  I ask questions in his class but if the answer isn't in the manual that they gave him after his hard won two years he seems awfully vague or directly hostile, but I guess that's not what we were talking about.

We moved on and found this little place where Hollywood Blvd. ends at the 101 that feeds the homeless and sometimes gives you clean works if you're a junkie.  Mostly it's a safe place for younger runaways.  It's clean and the people who worked there were pretty up & up.  If parents called looking for their children the place kept it's word of anonymity and wouldn't tell them if they were there or not, but would take a message.  Nobody looks too hard for lost children, though.  I found a note on that board from my aunt Cindy, though. I never called here based on that note but I always did wonder how she found the place.  That woman helped me through some heavy places, but that's a different story I suppose.

Shad, Heather, and I used that place as our base of operations so to speak.  The gave you something to eat a couple of times a day and it was the one place we knew we could go to regroup.  Shad and Heather would go out to find her friends and I'd leave to wander around and find the twists and knots.  There's a hotdog stand that's run by transvestites.  Mustard with grilled onions and a bitching place to score meth if speed and tough hand jobs was your thing.  Most of the liquor stores that were in the "inside" (kind of a behind-the-street street, dirt swept under the rug) all had small walls outside to sit on so you could drink your beer and argue with fat Mexican girls.

I never looked for Marilyn Monroe's star but that whole town was her grave, only every time air from a grate blew up a dress I swear to Christ there was a dick under it.  I have to stop here.  I'll continue next with meeting Shad and Heather's friends and some other fun and gross shit.  Till then, hugs and kisses.

-Ryan

19. Number Nineteen, In Which Our Author Hops Trains And Kicks Teeth

I got a bug up my ass to travel once.  I had close friends who used to ride trains around the country and I thought that was where it was at.  I still envy these kids, I really do.  It almost killed me.  By the way, that's literal, not a cheap THS rip-off.

My close friend, Shad, was in town on a break from travelling.  He'd brought this ugly scary chick he'd found at some homeless camp in Canada.  She was filthy and built like an ox.  Her face looked like a child crying in a sandbox and her pores looked three times as large because of the coal dust crammed in them.

She was a masterpiece and so goddamned ugly I could appreciate the women of the rennaisance paintings.  Our idea was to ride a train out to West Hollywood to meet up with some of Heather's friends.  After about four bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 I came to driving through Nebraska in my mother's car.

None of us had any money or food or clothes.  I had about five days worth of morphine which I made last a whole three days.

Even being sick and having stolen my mother's car, this was a great time.  Like outlaws we stopped in small town off the map and stole gas or we'd wait behind a pizza joint at closing and the teenage kids would give us their throw-away pizza.  You can also go through the garbage of a fast food chain and dig out a bag, take the receipt inside and claim you didn't receive a couple of the items.

I saw a lot of the country with zero dollars.  Always staying off the expressways if we could, listening to the three crust punk and one Willie Nelson tape that we had.  At this time, right around Georgia, Shad wanted to get back to riding trains and the gorilla he'd brought with him was thinking the same.  As much as I wanted to I did have my mother's car and just didn't feel comfortable leaving it on some Georgia back road to be accosted by gypsy moss and the slow, dragging heat.  It just didn't seem fair.  My conscience works overtime at the  most inconvenient of moments.  We agreed to stay together till Hollywood.  I told Heather she could get out at any time and that she was ugly to boot.  You remember the movie Cry Baby with Johnny Depp?  She was Hatchet Face with tangled brown hair and shaped like an odd dwarf, everything proportionate except her short arms and personality.

We decided  that we wanted to stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico after we had a grand old time in Denver and New Orleans.  (I didn't even want to talk about New Orleans.  Alison and I went back there not to long ago and it was a much more relaxing time, except for the stupid phone call that I made to Eron.  I apologize still, not only to Eron, but to Steve, EJ, (Was EJ there?) that chicks tight pants and her husband.)

Denver, though, was beautiful as was the Garden of the Gods.  All those rocks with flowers planted around them by people who aren't gods.  I should think that the gods would be less concerned with pretty areas of land and more concerned with the amount of retarded babies they're making.  Besides my cynical observation it was beautiful and we got drunk as fuck up there and probably left a few bottles of King Cobra around to prove it.  Nobody gets mad when there's a 40 bottle laying on Mack Ave. even with it's extraordinary architecture, but leave one King Cobra bottle among a bunch of rocks and flowers and you're a real piece of shit.

On our way to New Mexico we needed to stop for gas and the only place that was close enough was this fucking huge mega truck stop.  I pulled in and it was chaos.  About five acres of trucks in the lot, 15 pumps all being used, and last but not least - four cops parked outside a restaurant attached to the service station.  All of them were inside but I was still nervous.  Nervous like an altar boy.  No, it was less sexual than that.  I was nervous like a child who has thought about returning the candy bar to the store shelf but said "fuck it.  In for a penny, in for a pound."

Anyways, we're all scared shitless and nobody wants to pump.  I decided to do it because it's my mother's car.  Where I came to the moral or ethical decision that I should be the one to pump the gas just because I was the one who had stolen the car, I'm not entirely sure, but I started pumping.  Okay, so rule one when stealing gas is to look nonchalant.  Now, if you're within view of four cop cars I DARE you to look non-fucking-chalant, especially if you look like I look when you're just regular old chalant.  Needless to say, I was shook and because of this my reasoning told me to just put in a few gallons, like that made any goddamn difference.  I then gently took the nozzle out of the gas hole (that's an Eron term. "Get your nose hole away from the gas hole," regarding me smelling how much if any gas was in Pinky.) like any small click or noise would alert the guards, and then rested it on top of the pump itself.

Fact:  If you steal gas and then hang up the nozzle it will beep inside to let the cashier know that you're finished pumping.   Don't steal gas, friends.  Listen to that little cop on the sticker on the pump.

I got back into the car and Shad and Heather were crammed in to the back seat like I was a fucking bomb or something.  I told the to stop being pussies so I'd stop feeling like a pussy and tore off a little too fast and a little bit in the wrong direction.

I ended up lost in the lot full of semi-trucks and I couldn't figure out how to get out.  It seemed like I circled that lot for an hour thinking that those cops would be blocking the entrance if I ever found the fucking thing.  Every lap or so I could still see the cops parked at the restaurant.  I finally found a hole and took it.  It wasn't necessarily an exit hole but it got us out of there and, just so you know, a 90's Lumina can take some serious air and be okay.  We entered into traffic Dukes of Hazzard style with an impressive fishtail that fizzled out too quick for my taste thanks to front wheel drive, ran a red light, and jumped on the expressway like five gallons richer.  For forty minutes we thought the State Police would be behind us at any minute.  That little restaurant in New Mexico must have had some really good food.  I don't think that any of those cops budged unless they were some elaborate decoys or something.

We made it to Albuquerque.  We were there to meet up with some of Shad's train-hopping buddies for some R and R and general rowdiness.  I'd never been to the desert before this and I'd probably be okay with myself if I never do again.  If I ever hear somebody say "Yeah, it's hot but it's a dry heat." I'm gonna punch their face and say, "Yeah, it's a punch, but it's a dry punch."  So, it's hot and there's no grass yards.  People rake their dirt.  I'm not shitting you, these people are all crazy.  The one plus is that all the bars and shit are outside and they have this system where it mists on you from pipes hung overhead.  It's so hot that you never get wet, it just cools you off.  If you don't have any money, you can walk along the sidewalk and benefit from this mist - and get drunk snatching drinks off the table while the people at it are staring at your friends' facial tattoos.  Win-win in my book.

We met up with Sid, John, and this other kid - I can't remember his name.  They were part of train gang called The Outlaw Rail Riders.  I can tell you with all honesty that these kids are 10 times more scary than any colored gang or motorcycle club by far.  These guys and girls leave home at 12 or 13 years old and live on these trains going town to town like goddamn hurricanes.  You don't know much about them and you've probably never seen one unless you live in a major city.  They're rarely dangerous to anyone that's not a traveler, but among themselves their like warring tribes.

Now if you consider the normal gangs, they sound dangerous.  They are, and that's why we love them, just not out loud.  It's just that their danger is more mythical.  These big gangs can become infamous as the result of one publicized incident and ride that out for years with just small pockets of violence to keep the myth rolling.  These train kids, they're the real deal and they don't want you to know it.

In the life there's different castes, so to speak.  Train kids who just like to travel and are crusty and dirty can be violent and drunk but they're not always murderous.  There's hobos, these are the original train hoppers.  Some are absolute wet heads from drinking wine that comes by the gallon for so long that they're harmless in a scary insane way.  Then there's the others who would kill you as soon as look at you.  Lastly, there's the train gangs - young, indiscriminate killers but also, coincidentally, really fun to party with.

These guys live in a way most will never experience and that I only got a glimpse of and ultimately was at the receiving en of.  One minute we're partying, having a good time, the next someone's gulping for air with that scared, long away look and everyone's slowly walking away.  There was no argument, no screaming and fighting, and no "fleeing" the scene.  There, in fact, was no scene because we were literally in the middle of nowhere because the train had stopped in the middle of nowhere.  There are hundreds of faces on milk cartons that at one time matched the scared, gulping face of a kid who just didn't know what he'd gotten himself into.  When the young murder, it's more primitive than moral.  It just is and it feels that way.  When you see it, it feels like a ritual in some way.  Like Inuits pushing the elderly out onto ice floes.

Sid, John, and the guy who's name I can't remember were alright, though.  Shad had traveled with them before and they had a pretty good repoire.  They were still pretty stand-offish with me for a while, especially Sid.  Sid was 16 and his face was completely covered in pseudo-Maori tattoos and random train signs everywhere else.  This kid had absolutely no regard for anything, living or dead.  It was like walking around with an untrained and un-diapered spider monkey.  It was an example of barbarism that can only be exercised by hungry youth.  We spent two days together camped out in the back yard of some crazy guy who walked around with a grocery cart full of junk and claimed to be the manager of GG Allin.  It must have been true, he DID have a GG Allin shirt.  In those three days I witnessed Sid punch two college kids for no reason and got into a rumble with him one night drinking Early Times.  Sid was on my team.

The six of us had stolen a fifth of Early Times at the grocery store and were sitting in a circle, passing it around.  an hour or so into this peace pipe-type drinking session, four kids happened along.  Among the train kids they're called House Punks (the punk rock kids who have homes). and the ones who want to be more but try too hard are considered "oogles".  They are hated.  They are from a weaker tribe, an invading tribe.  These kids sat down and we drank and things got impressively tense.  One of the guys had no shirt on, a pair of suspenders, and the word "oogle" spray-painted on his back.

After I've been drinking I can become violent.  There's never any doubting that.  When I am violent it's usually over a slight I've perceived as being at myself or a friend.  I had been with these people long enough. I started to become entrenched in their ideology.  The mindless violence for violence's sake.  The way these kids would tattoo their faces and become murderously violent unprovoked might have been a preemptive measure.  It might not have.  I do know it was contagious.

For no reason I got up from the circle we were all sitting in and with my steel toed Carolinas I kicked that oogle dead in the mouth with a football-style punt.  His mouth exploded and he tipped over backward, bleeding and choking on teeth.  Before I could even decide what to do next, this kid's friend and I were fist fighting.  When I think back on it I'm glad someone cared enough to risk major bodily harm to keep his friend out of a coma.  If this guy hadn't jumped up and started swinging at me I'm sure I would have continued to stomp and kick at the downed kid.

Now here's where the unflagging loyalty of like people shows itself and has been something that has never left me.  While I was one on one fighting, the downed kid's friend and his other friends had circled me.  they had no time to accomplish revenge.  Sid had already smashed the whiskey bottle over my opponent's head and was moving to the others.  There was a general melee that happened faster than I can recall and then they all ran, Sid and John not allowing them to collect their fallen friend.  This guy I'd kicked, unprovoked, in the face was dragged and left in a ditch.

Being so deeply entrenched in this lifestyle I felt no remorse for him.  I wont lie, I still don't.  Men fall, some don't.  It could have just as easily been me.  As a matter of fact it was me.  I was probably left worse.  We're not there yet, though.

17. Did You Just Hit Me With A Fucking Lock?

Remember when I mentioned that I got into a tangle with another convict and won?  Well, you never really win.  Yesterday, Thursday the 19th to you, I had just gotten off of a really good visit with my cousins.  Alexa brought Meghan, my cousin from RI, whom I've previously mentioned, up for a visit.  We drank coffee and bullshitted and gossiped.  They left and Officer Handsy got me naked while talking about his wife and himself going to see the movie, Mirror, Mirror.

I left out of the shakedown room in a fairly good mood aside from the shame of spreading my ass cheeks so someone can look at your asshole and proceeded to hit the bathroom for a piss.  I was minding my own business, staring at the wall and whistling "Hoodrat Friend" by The Hold Steady when lightning went off in my head.  It staggered me some and the momentum made me surge forward and, as a result, piss all over myself.  I knew I'd been hit.  It's not a sensation that I am unfamiliar with.  I spun around while trying to stuff my stuff back in and expecting more.  If you're not knocked out snoring there's always more.  Now this next part is surreal, or was to me.  I saw the guy I'd fought with's friend standing there and he was kinda just looking through me, looking at some place back in my head.  His lack of forward moving aggression stopped me from advancing and I asked him calmly, "Did you just fucking hit me with a lock?" which was a stupid question as he was standing there holding a sock with a lock tied to the end.  (NOTE: Locks are rarely stuffed into a sock for hitting.  When you get to swinging it like that it will shift around inside too much making it less effective.  The lock is either tied to the end of the sock or to a belt.)

He had only hit me with a glancing blow not causing too much damage.  There was the usual head wound blood but he didn't put me away like he'd hoped.  He stood there looking at me and then just like a comedy movie he did the quick turn around and RAN.  SHOOM, he was out.  I took off after him but it was a short race.  You come out of the bathroom and can go left, which will run you straight into the guards, or right which leads you down a short dead-end hall lined with our cells.  He juked right and b-lined for his cell.  And made it.  It was a situation that, had I not just been hit with a lock, I would have laughed at.  As I rounded out of the bathroom he was trying to get his key into the lock on his cell like a b-movie actor in a zombie film.  By the time I got there he had shut his cell and just stood there looking at me.  Are you fucking kidding me?  As I stood there looking back at him a random guy comes out of his cell and says, "Hey honkey, you're bleedin', bro."  Uh, no shit.  Now, I wanted to scream  and yell death threats at this dude, (the dude who hit me, not the observant convict.) but if I'd done that the guards would get curious about the commotion and come down to check it out, ruining any chance I'd have to get at this asshole.  I wagged my finger at him instead in a 'well-played, sir." type of manner and went to wipe my head off.

There wasn't an excessive amount of blood at all and it left only a small nick.  It was the point of the thing that really pissed me off.  In my mind I was planning to kick the shit out of him at the next available chance.  In his mind he was probably thinking, "This honkey's gonna stab me."  He'd be correct if this was a situation where I had any more than just a year to do.  That would definitely be something I'd consider.  Not in this situation, though.  He did out fox me.  He didn't leave his cell the rest of the evening and after lock down he shot a kite requesting to be put into protective custody.

The only positive thing I can say is he didn't snitch (even though it would just be on himself).  His bunky told me that he wrote that he owed out too much money on the tables.  (gambling tables: a no-no, but generally overlooked)  I was at his cell waiting for him first thing in the morning.  He was already gone.  The most positive thing to come out of this is that there's nobody to retaliate against.  The guy I'd originally fought had rose out to another joint because of an unrelated incident, and now this guy's locked up.  If I had retaliated, and I would have, there's no way around it, it would have become an unending circle.  I mean it really would have got to sucking.  So at least it's over.  I can piss in peace.  It did ruin my good visit but as I'm writing this I know Al is bringing my boys to see me tomorrow so I have that.  That and probably total enlightenment on my deathbed.