I'm anxious all the time, now. This isn't much of a change except for the constant persistence of it. The prying, holding weight that's constantly pressing into my chest. A sense of foreboding that's relentless. I create my own nervousness, my own delusions and realities. It's been less than a week since I pounced on a man in his cell and beat him until he whimpered and bled onto the fire-resistant mattress. A mattress that doesn't allow blood to soak into it. The fluid just puddles and holds in the indentations my knees make as I straddle his chest. Both of us breathing heavy, my arms splattered to the elbows. I am not proud. I'm shaken and upset. I'm shaken because my brain is working overtime, a million scenarios at once; how do I leave this man's cell unnoticed, is he going to lay in and take this like a man or tell, did I really beat this man like this over $5 street money or was it the $100 prison money it was worth? How do I proceed from this spot? I get off of him like a spent lover dismounting. Maybe it's more like rape judging from the look I'm getting from this man's one open eye, his breathing heavy and sort of mewing.
How did I get to here? I thought that this would turn out to be a blog about the actions of others, a reflection on a prison life I witness while I wait out this bit. Things haven't turned out like I hoped. I can't beat my nature, I can't out-maneuver it. I feel like a monster and I can't deny the power of that feeling. It's exhilarating. I imagine it's how a lion must feel strolling the veldt.
I was never like this. Don't get me wrong, I am not a stranger to violence and I'm handy in a fist fight, but I never felt like I was an instigator. I never felt like I was a predator. I never felt boss. Situations were always dealt to me as a matter of fact, things fell my way and I dealt with them as I felt appropriate. I have never been directly confrontational.
I feel like this place may be changing me fundamentally. It isn't good and I'm in a sort of confused state of remorse and excitement. I've got to decide that this animalistic behavior is a barrier to my return to civilization. If I keep at this I'm afraid that it might be too hard to return to normal operations once I'm released or a non-issue if I'm fucking killed. I'm not exaggerating. I'm going too far. I won't explain about what's going on in depth, but most of you know already.
As to that, from here on out I'm shutting it down. What I though was easy money was anything but. Ain't shit free on Planet E. I thought I was providing for my family, but at what cost? A few dollars for my soul?
I can't piss in peace. I shower ready for anything. My enemies have become numerous. These things aren't what scare me, though. If you can believe it, it's the thought of never seeing my children again. OR if I do, I'm afraid I'll be caught in the perpetual motion machine of the Michigan Prison system. I don't want that for them.
I push through the week just to see them on visit. To hear their stories and 5-year old perceptions. It just isn't an option to fail them any more than I already have.
So I've decided to tighten it up and get my shit together. There might be some backlash but I don't foresee much aside from maybe some revenge, maybe not even that. With my confession and plan for change out of the way I'll discuss some nasty little particulars.
If you've been owed money or whatever for a sufficient length of time and when talking isn't getting it done, it is recommended that you use violence. Unless of course you decide to cur up and get out of whatever hustle you've just gotten beat at. Anyways, if violence is in order you have got to prove a point, if not to the surrounding inmates then to the person of interest and to yourself. If you don't plan on stabbing the person you had better make him wish you had. What I'm saying is that you have to make this person scared to retaliate. You have to have him so scared of another beating that he either pays or keeps it moving. This is sometimes hard to come to terms with because it's so personal. The person in question is somebody you obviously thought was cool and probably kicked it with often. For whatever reason he's decided that paying you wasn't going to happen so you have to make a move. You can not let this go. It's impossible to stay in operation if you do, at any rate. The best way to go about this is to play it cool. You have to be a good actor. You pretend to be friends, reassure him you believe he's going to pay you, continue to play cards or dominoes or what have you. This can be referred to as, "rocking him to sleep."
If the guy is bigger and stronger, my advice is to catch him at his most vulnerable, preferably while he's showering or taking a shit. You can also use your ID as a key, break into his cell, shake him and ask him if he's woke, and then beat the living shit out of him. This is one of the better ways. You've got a lot more time to commence to ass kicking and there's little chance of getting caught. Keeping risk to a minimum should be of utmost concern. You have to understand that you can't just give the guy a couple of jabs and walk away. You have got to make the man scared. This part is hard because the guy in question is not going to want you punching away at him.
If he's laying in his bunk, straddle him and try to hold his power arm at the shoulder. Most likely, this will be his right arm. Holding the wrist isn't as effective as the shoulder, as this is where the power of a punch is generated.
NOTE: When in a bar fight, wrap the shirt up at the right shoulder of your opponent with your fist and swing and continue to advance with your right. Remember to focus on his shoulders while punching at the sides and lower jaw and neck. If you try to look right at what you're trying to punch, you'll miss it more times than not. My dad can probably fill in the mechanics of this to anyone interested as he boxed. I only try to go with what works best for me.
Anyways, with your opponent's power controlled and using the leverage you have by sitting at his waist, start punching. Hit all the soft delicate spots. Nose, eyes, temple, chin, and lower back half of the jaw. You need to do this even after he's begged you to stop. It's probably safe to quit once he starts crying; you've got to use your judgement here. The point is this guy has to fear you. He has to be so upset by this ass-whipping that he second guesses retaliation.
Retaliation by his friends is a non-issue if you don't fuck with gang bangers which, as a general rule of thumb, is a good idea.
So much for my third party testimonies. I have sent myself the cease and desist order and hopefully I can do it. I've always lived reckless but this is becoming something that is actually making me stop and consider or weigh the amount of Monster to Man ratio that wasn't there before. It all seems so easy until there's a knock on my cell with the offer of a $100 Western Union. I try to trick myself into thinking things will be different this time. It's like a fucking battered woman movie on Lifetime. The underlying theme there is always the same. He's going to continue beating you. He won't change. He can't.
I've been on a huge Bruce Springsteen kick lately thanks to John. I've especially been into the Greetings From Asbury Park album. There's a line that's been stuck in my head since I heard it a couple of weeks ago. I've been moving it around in my mouth and it tastes fine. It has nothing to do with anything I've written here, I guess I just feel like sharing it.
"You're not man enough to hate, you're not woman enough for kissing."
After writing it, maybe it does pertain to me. I might be that middle of the road ambiguous not much. This isn't a self-deprecating statement as much as on of fact. I don't feel like I'm that bad but I'm really not that good. Being in the middle is probably worst of all. Who knows, thanks for all the confusion, Bruce. I'll be thinking on it some more.
PS - I received a really great letter from my dad recently and I'm wanting to share it (with some things omitted i.e. Lauren stuff) but I'd better ask permission, so with getting two birds stoned in mind (a Trailer Park Boys reference John should enjoy) I'm asking for it here. I've only got four stamps till the next store. It's a very enjoyable piece of writing. It should also show where I get my unique sense of humor and cynicism from.
Night. XOXO,
Ryan
26. Part Five - How A Resurrection Really Feels
Catch up with PART FOUR before you read PART FIVE.
I got to the city and headed to Thompson Square Park where Sada had been spending her days. I wont go into any diatribes about this city because there's nothing interesting there. It's all too impersonal and big. I guess I like my filth and degeneracy condensed, I don't know. New York didn't impress me. I met up with Sada and I knew right away that everything was different. Sometimes it's just that simple. There just wasn't anything there and it was okay. We wandered the city for awhile and she told me she was staying across the river with some nice cocaine dealers who offered her a place to stay. Good for her. We wandered and saw colorfully interesting people, all oblivious to everything around them. We broke into a door in an alley that we thought might make a good squat and it happened to be the downstairs to a bar. All this liquor was just there behind a chicken wire cage. I emptied my pack of the unimportant stuff like clothes and food and loaded it with whiskey.
I'm sorry if it seems like I'm being intentionally vague about New York, but to be totally honest I only remember it in fractured segments. I either died or came close to it that night and everything directly before it is pretty fuzzy.
I drank, I got drunk. I was a stumbling mess. Sada told me nobody was allowed to stay with her on account of the cocaine dealing. She told me I could stay in the East River Park and that she'd see me the next day. I recall walking around the park and running into some other travelling kids. It turns out they were a train gang out of West Virginia called Back Alley Ruckus. Fucking brutes. They guy who seemed to be the leader talked with me for a while and I became drunk sober. A state you can come to while drunk when a situation becomes incredibly tense. He asked if I'd ever been to prison. I told him I'd been locked up a good deal. He asked if I ran with the Aryan Nation. I told him that I look out for myself. He asked if I was a good boxer. I told him, 'fair.' He asked if I could take 'him', and pointed to a blonde-haired hulk and I didn't say anything. Before I knew it, I was in a fight.
We had each other by the throat and we were both punching, hammering, the other's face. It went on for what seemed like forever, just punching away at each other with little scuffle or movement. If left alone he would have surely won. He outweighed me and stood taller, his pain tolerance the same as mine. It wasn't left that way, though. They descended on me like a pack of feral dogs kicking and punching. It was like being tossed around in an ocean wave - moments of clarity only to be pushed back under where everything gets hazy. Then there was nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
I usually refer to this as 'going to my happy place' or being knocked out, but it wasn't a sleep. It was a nothing. Just no goddamn way to explain it. Nothing. I probably was just knocked out, who knows? I couldn't have been all the way dead because I'm writing about this but it wasn't anything I'd experienced. Not the unrememberance of overdose or the hazy in-out of unconsciousness. No floating, no sense of weightlessness. There was no color, no emotion, no wonder, but I remember it. Does that make sense? I didn't find gods or demons, nor answers to questions. I just all of a sudden heard a girls voice say, "Leave him alone, he's dead already."
I heard that and all the devils inside me responded. Not me, not here, not at the hands of monsters like me, made like me, smelling like me. No fucking way. I was awake and with it and got up. I got to the big fence separating the park and the freeway when they noticed me and returned, beating me into unconsciousness vicious knees an kicks. I woke up again sitting on the sidewalk with blood pouring between my feet in a river. It was like a never-ending faucet and a kid sat my pack next to me and told me that someone called an ambulance.
I don't remember anything until the next day. I woke up in Bellevue feeling like I'd been hit by a train. When I did move, it was in a sort of dried blood everywhere crackling sort of way that busy doctors leave you in when they believe it's your own fault. Medical tape plastered everywhere ripping my hair out wherever it was stuck. The nurse came in and told me that six of my ribs were broken, as was my nose and cheeks. My ear was ripped along with my scalp.
Nobody offered me a mirror, but I could feel every place on my face distended and swollen. I could see my cheeks and lips from the swelling. I was, as they say, a fucking mess. I was informed that they didn't have enough bed space to keep me, but I could stay until I felt that I could walk without falling. They had cut off my clothes and offered me donated clothes that were too big even for my swollen body. There's no revelation here, it's a clear case of you win some, you lose some. Who could I even be mad at? I'd left people in the same condition. Sometimes dogs bite each others' faces.
The pain wasn't the worst but I was far from okay. I was given a prescription of Ibuprofen to be picked up for free from the hospital's pharmacy. After looking for what seemed like forever I gave up. My chest felt like fire and I had to drag my pack. I walked outside and rolled a cigarette and gently sat down. People walked around me like I was the elephant man. I had to have looked like him, all lumpy but with dried and caked blood to boot. Fuck'em. I just sat and smoked. I made the 15 blocks back to Thompkins Square Park. I met up with a cold and distant Sada.
I tried to see it out, sleeping on the park bench trying to heal. I couldn't do it. After the third day I called my grandparents. I just couldn't move. It took me 20 minutes to sit up. Walking was almost impossible, the pain had quadrupled now that it had all set in. I couldn't tough it out and it made me angry. I called my grandfather and he just said, "Where are you?" I told him and he didn't sound exasperated. He just said, "I'm coming to get you." He and my grandmother drove to New York City, came through the traffic and the picked me up. No questions. He just came and got me and didn't question it. I'm crying right now and I can't explain the enormity of that action. His saving me. His unwavering love for me. I crawled in to the van and I slept all the way back to Michigan. My uncle has never forgiven me for having my grandfather come get me in that city. I don't blame him.
My grandfather is the bravest man I know.
I got to the city and headed to Thompson Square Park where Sada had been spending her days. I wont go into any diatribes about this city because there's nothing interesting there. It's all too impersonal and big. I guess I like my filth and degeneracy condensed, I don't know. New York didn't impress me. I met up with Sada and I knew right away that everything was different. Sometimes it's just that simple. There just wasn't anything there and it was okay. We wandered the city for awhile and she told me she was staying across the river with some nice cocaine dealers who offered her a place to stay. Good for her. We wandered and saw colorfully interesting people, all oblivious to everything around them. We broke into a door in an alley that we thought might make a good squat and it happened to be the downstairs to a bar. All this liquor was just there behind a chicken wire cage. I emptied my pack of the unimportant stuff like clothes and food and loaded it with whiskey.
I'm sorry if it seems like I'm being intentionally vague about New York, but to be totally honest I only remember it in fractured segments. I either died or came close to it that night and everything directly before it is pretty fuzzy.
I drank, I got drunk. I was a stumbling mess. Sada told me nobody was allowed to stay with her on account of the cocaine dealing. She told me I could stay in the East River Park and that she'd see me the next day. I recall walking around the park and running into some other travelling kids. It turns out they were a train gang out of West Virginia called Back Alley Ruckus. Fucking brutes. They guy who seemed to be the leader talked with me for a while and I became drunk sober. A state you can come to while drunk when a situation becomes incredibly tense. He asked if I'd ever been to prison. I told him I'd been locked up a good deal. He asked if I ran with the Aryan Nation. I told him that I look out for myself. He asked if I was a good boxer. I told him, 'fair.' He asked if I could take 'him', and pointed to a blonde-haired hulk and I didn't say anything. Before I knew it, I was in a fight.
We had each other by the throat and we were both punching, hammering, the other's face. It went on for what seemed like forever, just punching away at each other with little scuffle or movement. If left alone he would have surely won. He outweighed me and stood taller, his pain tolerance the same as mine. It wasn't left that way, though. They descended on me like a pack of feral dogs kicking and punching. It was like being tossed around in an ocean wave - moments of clarity only to be pushed back under where everything gets hazy. Then there was nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
I usually refer to this as 'going to my happy place' or being knocked out, but it wasn't a sleep. It was a nothing. Just no goddamn way to explain it. Nothing. I probably was just knocked out, who knows? I couldn't have been all the way dead because I'm writing about this but it wasn't anything I'd experienced. Not the unrememberance of overdose or the hazy in-out of unconsciousness. No floating, no sense of weightlessness. There was no color, no emotion, no wonder, but I remember it. Does that make sense? I didn't find gods or demons, nor answers to questions. I just all of a sudden heard a girls voice say, "Leave him alone, he's dead already."
I heard that and all the devils inside me responded. Not me, not here, not at the hands of monsters like me, made like me, smelling like me. No fucking way. I was awake and with it and got up. I got to the big fence separating the park and the freeway when they noticed me and returned, beating me into unconsciousness vicious knees an kicks. I woke up again sitting on the sidewalk with blood pouring between my feet in a river. It was like a never-ending faucet and a kid sat my pack next to me and told me that someone called an ambulance.
I don't remember anything until the next day. I woke up in Bellevue feeling like I'd been hit by a train. When I did move, it was in a sort of dried blood everywhere crackling sort of way that busy doctors leave you in when they believe it's your own fault. Medical tape plastered everywhere ripping my hair out wherever it was stuck. The nurse came in and told me that six of my ribs were broken, as was my nose and cheeks. My ear was ripped along with my scalp.
Nobody offered me a mirror, but I could feel every place on my face distended and swollen. I could see my cheeks and lips from the swelling. I was, as they say, a fucking mess. I was informed that they didn't have enough bed space to keep me, but I could stay until I felt that I could walk without falling. They had cut off my clothes and offered me donated clothes that were too big even for my swollen body. There's no revelation here, it's a clear case of you win some, you lose some. Who could I even be mad at? I'd left people in the same condition. Sometimes dogs bite each others' faces.
The pain wasn't the worst but I was far from okay. I was given a prescription of Ibuprofen to be picked up for free from the hospital's pharmacy. After looking for what seemed like forever I gave up. My chest felt like fire and I had to drag my pack. I walked outside and rolled a cigarette and gently sat down. People walked around me like I was the elephant man. I had to have looked like him, all lumpy but with dried and caked blood to boot. Fuck'em. I just sat and smoked. I made the 15 blocks back to Thompkins Square Park. I met up with a cold and distant Sada.
I tried to see it out, sleeping on the park bench trying to heal. I couldn't do it. After the third day I called my grandparents. I just couldn't move. It took me 20 minutes to sit up. Walking was almost impossible, the pain had quadrupled now that it had all set in. I couldn't tough it out and it made me angry. I called my grandfather and he just said, "Where are you?" I told him and he didn't sound exasperated. He just said, "I'm coming to get you." He and my grandmother drove to New York City, came through the traffic and the picked me up. No questions. He just came and got me and didn't question it. I'm crying right now and I can't explain the enormity of that action. His saving me. His unwavering love for me. I crawled in to the van and I slept all the way back to Michigan. My uncle has never forgiven me for having my grandfather come get me in that city. I don't blame him.
My grandfather is the bravest man I know.
25. Part Four - Back To Howell and Off To Jail
Catch up by reading PART THREE before reading PART FOUR.
Okay, I have to close this because I keep forgetting where I am and because of my hate for writing long hand. I can't bring myself to write as long or as detailed as I'd like to, anyhow.
Sada and I crossed back over the desert the same way I'd come. Because of the "puppy" and the violin, things went much more smoothly. There is something to say about the persuasions of women. It's easy, too. A set of tits will get you money for gas long before a set of testicles. Even if you can do cooler shit and pick up heavier stuff. It's a fact and it's never been overlooked, we get it. You can stop bitching about the raw deals you get and ease the lighter away from the lace.
The trip home was much loftier but nothing close to love or lust. It;s difficult to explain the way that this woman was, maybe because she was much like me. We found the same things irreverent and sometimes that can be much better than having too much in common. It definitely make for easier lengths of time staring out into the desert, tossing around the same doubt. Dear God, do you remember the Doors? What was up with them?
We discussed going to New York to meet up with her friend, Neva. We made a plan too tentative, everything was all very nihilistic. She didn't drink. I did -- to excess. The ride through the desert was very Raoul Duke in my mind. In her's it was most likely very annoying and boring. A Lumina is no shiny convertible, but it will still shudder at speed, threatening to turn you ass over tea kettle into the cold desert where the scorpions with sting you just to sting you, like a woman bored with the years and indifference.
We made it back to The Mitten with some gas to spare and I was in a hurry to show her my beloved Detroit. I was home in these neighborhoods. I pointed out my favorite spots and houses and buildings. She mostly just looked sad and far away and lost. The city can turn you off of humanity or turn you on to it's ugly truth. There was a famous smart man who said, "Nothing human ever surprises me." He'd never been to Detroit I'd wager, never been offered a blow job by a 70-year old black lady in a BP gas station parking lot. Never been nervous at a stop light. The rob children and rape reverends and vice versa. It is din. Everyone wants and nothing gives, they are ankle to eyebrow deep in the boiling Grand River of blood. An old black man at a liquor store told me something I'll never forget. His mouth stank and his teeth hung by threads. "That woman," he chuckled, "crossed me like Mack crosses Woodward." (for the uninformed, Mack crosses Woodward twice.) Pointing at a thick-thighed, stretchpants-bound woman wiggling across the street. I don't know what she did, but ain't that the truth of it? Detroit in a nutshell and woman to boot. The old man downed his beer and threw it at her overhand, showering the avenue in ghetto diamonds. I left before she could stab us both.
Sada was unimpressed and uninspired, and it was the sort of let down you feel when a small child opens a present he doesn't like. A half-assed almost appeasement and then discarded in retrospect. You can't make somebody lick a urinal and expect them to tell you that it tasted good. On the other hand, you can make them lick it, and you can make them tell you it's not so bad, but there's no hiding the bad taste that's left in their mouth. That, my friends, is an analogy of my relationship history.
We got to Howell and I dropped the car off behind Mancino's and let my aunt know where my mother could pick it up. I couldn't deal with her yet, I still had some shit to do. I hadn't finished whatever it was that was pushing me over these brinks. I couldn't see the end yet, but I think I knew what was there.
We spent a few nights at a friend's house where I overheard an acquaintance in another room ask why there was a nigger sleeping on the floor. We settled it outside but the fight I wanted didn't happen. I didn't want to be back in that town. Too much about Howell has turned me against her but I can't leave. I'm weak.
We had no money and little direction and slept outside waiting for the train. Hour after hour can pass waiting for those fuckers and I waited an hour too long. While we slid in and out of sleep, police approached us and I had a warrant. They took me to jail and I told Sada to go ahead, I'd catch up to her in New York.
I'm sitting here thinking about what it was that I went to jail for, what I had done to accrue a warrant, and for the life of me I can't remember. I went and spent about a month though. During this stay my mother forgave me like mothers do and I got out and kept it moving. I got a job with my friend Chris doing some tree work to earn a few dollars to get me to New York. I talked to Sada on the phone and she told me she'd found Neva and that they were on the Lower East Side. Fair enough. I put a pack together and I went.
Okay, I have to close this because I keep forgetting where I am and because of my hate for writing long hand. I can't bring myself to write as long or as detailed as I'd like to, anyhow.
Sada and I crossed back over the desert the same way I'd come. Because of the "puppy" and the violin, things went much more smoothly. There is something to say about the persuasions of women. It's easy, too. A set of tits will get you money for gas long before a set of testicles. Even if you can do cooler shit and pick up heavier stuff. It's a fact and it's never been overlooked, we get it. You can stop bitching about the raw deals you get and ease the lighter away from the lace.
The trip home was much loftier but nothing close to love or lust. It;s difficult to explain the way that this woman was, maybe because she was much like me. We found the same things irreverent and sometimes that can be much better than having too much in common. It definitely make for easier lengths of time staring out into the desert, tossing around the same doubt. Dear God, do you remember the Doors? What was up with them?
We discussed going to New York to meet up with her friend, Neva. We made a plan too tentative, everything was all very nihilistic. She didn't drink. I did -- to excess. The ride through the desert was very Raoul Duke in my mind. In her's it was most likely very annoying and boring. A Lumina is no shiny convertible, but it will still shudder at speed, threatening to turn you ass over tea kettle into the cold desert where the scorpions with sting you just to sting you, like a woman bored with the years and indifference.
We made it back to The Mitten with some gas to spare and I was in a hurry to show her my beloved Detroit. I was home in these neighborhoods. I pointed out my favorite spots and houses and buildings. She mostly just looked sad and far away and lost. The city can turn you off of humanity or turn you on to it's ugly truth. There was a famous smart man who said, "Nothing human ever surprises me." He'd never been to Detroit I'd wager, never been offered a blow job by a 70-year old black lady in a BP gas station parking lot. Never been nervous at a stop light. The rob children and rape reverends and vice versa. It is din. Everyone wants and nothing gives, they are ankle to eyebrow deep in the boiling Grand River of blood. An old black man at a liquor store told me something I'll never forget. His mouth stank and his teeth hung by threads. "That woman," he chuckled, "crossed me like Mack crosses Woodward." (for the uninformed, Mack crosses Woodward twice.) Pointing at a thick-thighed, stretchpants-bound woman wiggling across the street. I don't know what she did, but ain't that the truth of it? Detroit in a nutshell and woman to boot. The old man downed his beer and threw it at her overhand, showering the avenue in ghetto diamonds. I left before she could stab us both.
Sada was unimpressed and uninspired, and it was the sort of let down you feel when a small child opens a present he doesn't like. A half-assed almost appeasement and then discarded in retrospect. You can't make somebody lick a urinal and expect them to tell you that it tasted good. On the other hand, you can make them lick it, and you can make them tell you it's not so bad, but there's no hiding the bad taste that's left in their mouth. That, my friends, is an analogy of my relationship history.
We got to Howell and I dropped the car off behind Mancino's and let my aunt know where my mother could pick it up. I couldn't deal with her yet, I still had some shit to do. I hadn't finished whatever it was that was pushing me over these brinks. I couldn't see the end yet, but I think I knew what was there.
We spent a few nights at a friend's house where I overheard an acquaintance in another room ask why there was a nigger sleeping on the floor. We settled it outside but the fight I wanted didn't happen. I didn't want to be back in that town. Too much about Howell has turned me against her but I can't leave. I'm weak.
We had no money and little direction and slept outside waiting for the train. Hour after hour can pass waiting for those fuckers and I waited an hour too long. While we slid in and out of sleep, police approached us and I had a warrant. They took me to jail and I told Sada to go ahead, I'd catch up to her in New York.
I'm sitting here thinking about what it was that I went to jail for, what I had done to accrue a warrant, and for the life of me I can't remember. I went and spent about a month though. During this stay my mother forgave me like mothers do and I got out and kept it moving. I got a job with my friend Chris doing some tree work to earn a few dollars to get me to New York. I talked to Sada on the phone and she told me she'd found Neva and that they were on the Lower East Side. Fair enough. I put a pack together and I went.
24. Prison Glossary pt. 2
The Thriller; That Situation; The Stunner; Banger: n.
Slang for a shank or a peeko (I guess a peeko is slang for a shank, also.). If a convict is wearing a winter coat in the yard in July, he's probably got 'that situation.'
Honeybun Hit: phrase
If you pay somebody in store items to take care of business for you, it could be called a honeybun hit. I love this one because of the absurdity of beating or stabbing somebody for 10 or 20 dollars worth of commissary items. Awesome.
White Meat: n.
This is what is referred to when someone is cut to the bone or the bright fat under the skin. "Dude got at him with the the thriller and cut him to the white meat.
Sweet As Bear Meat; Wouldn't Bust A Grape If His Middle Name Was Welches; Soft As Charmin (sometimes with 'twice as absorbent' if you want to throw in a gay 'slip'): phrases.
Used in reference to how soft or weak a guy is. Not really effective, but really funny.
Slip: v.
This is the act of sliding in a gay innuendo on a guy during conversation. If you pull it off, you've effectively 'slipped' him. Men tend to have an inherent ability to act gay or accuse each other of being gay, so the act of 'slipping' shouldn't be foreign to many of you. EX - "Dude talked slick to me, but I handled that shit." "I bet you handled it, probably two-handed with a masterful stroke."
Predadactyl 3000s: n.
I came up with this one myself. It's a reference to the glasses that the State Of Michigan will issue you if you have no money. No matter how cool you are, once you have these on you automatically look like a predator / cho-mo (Cho-Mo: n. Child molester.) ready to swoop down on somebody. They're better than those Groucho Marx glasses.
Punt Faked or Pump Faked: v.
To trick somebody into acting a certain way by deliberate deception. Lets say that the guard announces to the unit that there's going to be a shakedown (cell search) and you dispose of all your contraband. If the guard never shakes down, you've been successfully 'pump faked.' "That bitch pump faked the shit outta me." "Yeah, it's going to take forever to collect all those dick pictures and ass lube again."
That was a pump fake into a slip demonstration. Later.
Slang for a shank or a peeko (I guess a peeko is slang for a shank, also.). If a convict is wearing a winter coat in the yard in July, he's probably got 'that situation.'
Honeybun Hit: phrase
If you pay somebody in store items to take care of business for you, it could be called a honeybun hit. I love this one because of the absurdity of beating or stabbing somebody for 10 or 20 dollars worth of commissary items. Awesome.
White Meat: n.
This is what is referred to when someone is cut to the bone or the bright fat under the skin. "Dude got at him with the the thriller and cut him to the white meat.
Sweet As Bear Meat; Wouldn't Bust A Grape If His Middle Name Was Welches; Soft As Charmin (sometimes with 'twice as absorbent' if you want to throw in a gay 'slip'): phrases.
Used in reference to how soft or weak a guy is. Not really effective, but really funny.
Slip: v.
This is the act of sliding in a gay innuendo on a guy during conversation. If you pull it off, you've effectively 'slipped' him. Men tend to have an inherent ability to act gay or accuse each other of being gay, so the act of 'slipping' shouldn't be foreign to many of you. EX - "Dude talked slick to me, but I handled that shit." "I bet you handled it, probably two-handed with a masterful stroke."
Predadactyl 3000s: n.
I came up with this one myself. It's a reference to the glasses that the State Of Michigan will issue you if you have no money. No matter how cool you are, once you have these on you automatically look like a predator / cho-mo (Cho-Mo: n. Child molester.) ready to swoop down on somebody. They're better than those Groucho Marx glasses.
Punt Faked or Pump Faked: v.
To trick somebody into acting a certain way by deliberate deception. Lets say that the guard announces to the unit that there's going to be a shakedown (cell search) and you dispose of all your contraband. If the guard never shakes down, you've been successfully 'pump faked.' "That bitch pump faked the shit outta me." "Yeah, it's going to take forever to collect all those dick pictures and ass lube again."
That was a pump fake into a slip demonstration. Later.
"Sleepy Tobias" for Georgia Scout
Editor's note: The following is a story written by the Jailbird for his cousin's daughter, Georgia. He expressed interest in sharing it with the readers of askajailbird.com. Enjoy.
I knew about a mouse once, Georgia. A little grey mouse with a black spot around his eye. His name was Tobias. He knew about you too, you know? He used to tell me about you in this very cell. Tobias was a special sort of mouse. He could move about from place to place as he pleased but never forward or backward in time. Maybe he was a magical mouse, then again maybe he wasn't. Who am I to say?
Tobias lived here in this prison and he got along pretty well. To Tobias, this place wasn't any worse or better than another, but then again Tobias could leave whenever he pleased. He would travel to the most nonsensical of places. Sometimes he would pop up at the animal shelter to rile up the cats. Other times he would pop up amongst the un-knockoverable bottles at a field fair in some forgettable town. He would wiggle into the weighted bottles and make them tumble onto the floor - before any ball were even thrown! Often times, he would pop up right in your very room so he could report to me all the fun things that you get up to. Maybe you saw him in your shelves when you played in your room on rainy days. You would have had to look close, he was a slippery, shimmering thing.
Tobias had a great sense of humor. After he had gone cell to cell getting little bits of bread or cheese he would come to mine and cheat at cards or dice. He had some funny jokes, too, but they were a little blue so I'll save those for another time. Tobias would tell me about all of the places he went and what he did. "The greatest part," Tobias would tell me, is that the never had to be a reason for him to be where he was at any time. "Nobody ever notices me," he would say, "and I dig that just fine." He thought there was a sense of being bigger than all of it. Nobody acted different because to them he was never there. He saw the good side of people but also the natural ugly side. He saw the side that picks their nose and wipes it on the couch. He saw the side that pulled on a puppies ear to hear it whine.
Tobias told me he saw these things and it was so human that it was animal and that in it's self made it less of an atrocity. He liked to taunt cats, remember? He said these people's mean streaks usually never outweighed the niceness that they showed. "Usually," he said.
Tobias had a pretty good grip on it. He would sometimes go and comfort other convicts when it got to the heavy places. He could sit with them and speak softly into their ears, sometimes tickling them with his jittery whiskers. He once told me when I was in a particularly narrow place that as long as you still experience the stars as something "above you" you lack the eye of knowledge. Tobias knew that I knew it was a quote from Nietzsche. He also knew that I would get through that narrow place deciphering it.
Like I said, he really had a hold on it, man.
You know, I wasn't even sad when Tobias stopped coming to see me. I'm not sure where he ended up, maybe you still see the old boy. He's sometimes known to whisper in the ears of sleepers tugging at the dream until it's a thing of bright tiger's eye. I'm not saying he's a magical mouse, but I ain't saying he isn't. You just keep watch for him, George. Keep a sharp eye.
I knew about a mouse once, Georgia. A little grey mouse with a black spot around his eye. His name was Tobias. He knew about you too, you know? He used to tell me about you in this very cell. Tobias was a special sort of mouse. He could move about from place to place as he pleased but never forward or backward in time. Maybe he was a magical mouse, then again maybe he wasn't. Who am I to say?
Tobias lived here in this prison and he got along pretty well. To Tobias, this place wasn't any worse or better than another, but then again Tobias could leave whenever he pleased. He would travel to the most nonsensical of places. Sometimes he would pop up at the animal shelter to rile up the cats. Other times he would pop up amongst the un-knockoverable bottles at a field fair in some forgettable town. He would wiggle into the weighted bottles and make them tumble onto the floor - before any ball were even thrown! Often times, he would pop up right in your very room so he could report to me all the fun things that you get up to. Maybe you saw him in your shelves when you played in your room on rainy days. You would have had to look close, he was a slippery, shimmering thing.
Tobias had a great sense of humor. After he had gone cell to cell getting little bits of bread or cheese he would come to mine and cheat at cards or dice. He had some funny jokes, too, but they were a little blue so I'll save those for another time. Tobias would tell me about all of the places he went and what he did. "The greatest part," Tobias would tell me, is that the never had to be a reason for him to be where he was at any time. "Nobody ever notices me," he would say, "and I dig that just fine." He thought there was a sense of being bigger than all of it. Nobody acted different because to them he was never there. He saw the good side of people but also the natural ugly side. He saw the side that picks their nose and wipes it on the couch. He saw the side that pulled on a puppies ear to hear it whine.
Tobias told me he saw these things and it was so human that it was animal and that in it's self made it less of an atrocity. He liked to taunt cats, remember? He said these people's mean streaks usually never outweighed the niceness that they showed. "Usually," he said.
Tobias had a pretty good grip on it. He would sometimes go and comfort other convicts when it got to the heavy places. He could sit with them and speak softly into their ears, sometimes tickling them with his jittery whiskers. He once told me when I was in a particularly narrow place that as long as you still experience the stars as something "above you" you lack the eye of knowledge. Tobias knew that I knew it was a quote from Nietzsche. He also knew that I would get through that narrow place deciphering it.
Like I said, he really had a hold on it, man.
You know, I wasn't even sad when Tobias stopped coming to see me. I'm not sure where he ended up, maybe you still see the old boy. He's sometimes known to whisper in the ears of sleepers tugging at the dream until it's a thing of bright tiger's eye. I'm not saying he's a magical mouse, but I ain't saying he isn't. You just keep watch for him, George. Keep a sharp eye.
23. Guts
Well, gang, just when I thought nothing interesting was ever going to happen in this shithole again, low and behold I got to see some guts. Guts guts, the insides. I had to go over to the medical building to get a vaccination on Thursday. The medical building is a sort of neutral territory placed right in the middle of levels one, two, and four. (Michigan got rid of level 3's some years ago. I'm not sure why and I don't specifically care, just sayin'.) There's an officer that sits at a desk while convicts of different levels sit in the plastic chairs against the wall like a tiny DMV. Just like any DMV, everybody is angry and most don't have the correct paperwork and will be sent back to their unit empty handed.
The guard has everyone's ID and call-out sheet and when your number is up he'll direct you to either the doctor or the dentist. It's a cattle call and very efficient. There's no time wasted (for them) but you may sit there for hours. Usually, guys from separate units will pass contraband back and forth and gossip. Christ, the gossip. I thought broads liked to gossip but there is no grape vine like a prison grapevine. It's all who is snitching, or who's got basketball numbers for some double rape / homicide, (basketball numbers are when you get a sentence with so many years that it resembles the score for a basketball game.) who's not paying whom, this guys a broad because he said something disrespectful to some other guy, but the disrespected guy didn't do shit, so they're both fucking broads.
There's no end, it goes on and on and it drives me batshit. I don't feed into or spread gossip in the world and I thought, in general, most dudes didn't. I was wrong. It's like a bizzaro episode of Days of Our Lives but with stabbings and tons of ramen noodle soup.
Anyway, the escorting officer brought us into the medical building (which is blessedly cool. There's no air conditioning in this prison. It's a goddamn sauna in here.) and the guard behind the desk says, "You might as well take 'em back. we got a couple of cutters from 7 block coming in." The escorting guard replied, "Fuck 'em, they can wait. I'm going home."
So we sat in the little school-style chairs against the wall and the boys commenced to gossiping. Then they brought in the cutters. 7 block is the unit where all the crazies are housed. I don't mean your average bi-polar or drunk, I'm talking about shit-in-a-box-for-a-pet type crazy. They wheeled them in with wheel chairs and the first guy had cut himself pretty good up and down both his arms and legs. He was a real bleeder. If you've ever seen a significant wound caused by a razor blade you'd understand. An inch-long cut can spread double that wide. There's the white just beneath the skin and then a vivid yellow layer of fat followed by tendon and muscle. It's vicious and bloody but not usually life threatening. unless you're digging for arteries. The longest cut I saw was about three or four inches long and lay wide open along the top of his thigh. He was trailing a spectacular amount of blood and it left tracks from the big wheel chair wheels. It looked like a couple of ten speeds had been drag racing.
Then they brought in the show stopper. This guy was a notorious cutter / puller. He had cut open his abdomen on a separate occasion and had been caught pulling at his intestines. They took him to the hospital to get fixed up and stapled but he had managed to pull the staples out and was digging around in there again. When they brought him in, the guards had handcuffed his hands to the arm rests so he wouldn't be able to keep pulling his guts out but he still had a significant amount of intestine hanging out. The smell was the worst of it. I can't describe the smell of the inside of a human's abdominal cavity and I'm sure you wouldn't want me to try. It could have been from some infection he had developed from his previous gut tugging but I'm not sure that it wouldn't have smelled that way anyway. My cousin Meghan might be able to fill us in on that.
What amazed me most about the scene wasn't the wounded men but the one's watching. The exasperated and bored and irritated looks on the guards' faces. The convicts who tried to look bored or just looked outright terrified. There was no screaming and yelling, the nurses just casually walked out and spoke to the cutters by name in a kind of disappointed motherly sort of manner. The blood was immense, more from the first guy than from the Puller. After a minute it was a confusion of boot prints, wheelchair tread marks, and small, child-like sneaker impressions left by the nurses.
They ushered the men through and all that was left behind was a bunch of gore. The guard let out an exasperated sigh and mumbled something about, "these goddamn lunatics," and got out a spray bottle of 2% bleach and started to wet the blood, turning it an instant black. He looked at us and said, almost apologetically, "I like to spray the blood before the porters get over here cause most of them don't have blood-borne pathogen certificates."
It was all over except for the tar-black bleach-soaked gore that the porters came in a started squeegeeing off of the tile. I got my poo-monia vaccine and kept it moving. Fucking prison, right?
xoxoxo,
Ryan.
PS - I gossiped about it as soon as I got back to my unit. Nobody was really impressed.
The guard has everyone's ID and call-out sheet and when your number is up he'll direct you to either the doctor or the dentist. It's a cattle call and very efficient. There's no time wasted (for them) but you may sit there for hours. Usually, guys from separate units will pass contraband back and forth and gossip. Christ, the gossip. I thought broads liked to gossip but there is no grape vine like a prison grapevine. It's all who is snitching, or who's got basketball numbers for some double rape / homicide, (basketball numbers are when you get a sentence with so many years that it resembles the score for a basketball game.) who's not paying whom, this guys a broad because he said something disrespectful to some other guy, but the disrespected guy didn't do shit, so they're both fucking broads.
There's no end, it goes on and on and it drives me batshit. I don't feed into or spread gossip in the world and I thought, in general, most dudes didn't. I was wrong. It's like a bizzaro episode of Days of Our Lives but with stabbings and tons of ramen noodle soup.
Anyway, the escorting officer brought us into the medical building (which is blessedly cool. There's no air conditioning in this prison. It's a goddamn sauna in here.) and the guard behind the desk says, "You might as well take 'em back. we got a couple of cutters from 7 block coming in." The escorting guard replied, "Fuck 'em, they can wait. I'm going home."
So we sat in the little school-style chairs against the wall and the boys commenced to gossiping. Then they brought in the cutters. 7 block is the unit where all the crazies are housed. I don't mean your average bi-polar or drunk, I'm talking about shit-in-a-box-for-a-pet type crazy. They wheeled them in with wheel chairs and the first guy had cut himself pretty good up and down both his arms and legs. He was a real bleeder. If you've ever seen a significant wound caused by a razor blade you'd understand. An inch-long cut can spread double that wide. There's the white just beneath the skin and then a vivid yellow layer of fat followed by tendon and muscle. It's vicious and bloody but not usually life threatening. unless you're digging for arteries. The longest cut I saw was about three or four inches long and lay wide open along the top of his thigh. He was trailing a spectacular amount of blood and it left tracks from the big wheel chair wheels. It looked like a couple of ten speeds had been drag racing.
Then they brought in the show stopper. This guy was a notorious cutter / puller. He had cut open his abdomen on a separate occasion and had been caught pulling at his intestines. They took him to the hospital to get fixed up and stapled but he had managed to pull the staples out and was digging around in there again. When they brought him in, the guards had handcuffed his hands to the arm rests so he wouldn't be able to keep pulling his guts out but he still had a significant amount of intestine hanging out. The smell was the worst of it. I can't describe the smell of the inside of a human's abdominal cavity and I'm sure you wouldn't want me to try. It could have been from some infection he had developed from his previous gut tugging but I'm not sure that it wouldn't have smelled that way anyway. My cousin Meghan might be able to fill us in on that.
What amazed me most about the scene wasn't the wounded men but the one's watching. The exasperated and bored and irritated looks on the guards' faces. The convicts who tried to look bored or just looked outright terrified. There was no screaming and yelling, the nurses just casually walked out and spoke to the cutters by name in a kind of disappointed motherly sort of manner. The blood was immense, more from the first guy than from the Puller. After a minute it was a confusion of boot prints, wheelchair tread marks, and small, child-like sneaker impressions left by the nurses.
They ushered the men through and all that was left behind was a bunch of gore. The guard let out an exasperated sigh and mumbled something about, "these goddamn lunatics," and got out a spray bottle of 2% bleach and started to wet the blood, turning it an instant black. He looked at us and said, almost apologetically, "I like to spray the blood before the porters get over here cause most of them don't have blood-borne pathogen certificates."
It was all over except for the tar-black bleach-soaked gore that the porters came in a started squeegeeing off of the tile. I got my poo-monia vaccine and kept it moving. Fucking prison, right?
xoxoxo,
Ryan.
PS - I gossiped about it as soon as I got back to my unit. Nobody was really impressed.
 |
| This is where John does the typing. |
22. Part Three - Liberace Minus the Piano and a Dog Named Broccoli
Catch up by reading PART TWO before reading PART THREE.
I'm in West Hollywood, where the Boulevard ends. Shad and Heather found Heather's friends, We go down to this - believe it or not - swanky YMCA and go inside to wait for this real faggy dude, "Faust", to get dressed. I've never met a more conceited male in all of my life. Ever. He was a slight, good-looking guy but gave off an air of cockyness that made you want to murder him. He knew he was the King Little Shit of this enterprise or hustle that he had going. There was him, a Giant Mexican named Angel, and this really hot Korean chick who was his girlfriend and the Nemesis of Shad's hideous girlfriend, Heather, who had, "no use for the bitch," as she put it. I knew it was because she was into Faust. I'm not altogether certain as to why, but it probably runs along the line of reasoning my friend Chryssa has on the subject.
His hustle was this - he and his cronies would dress up in fashionable punk rock gear, as in the style please-kick-my-ass punks would wear in the eighties. I guess the correct term would be, "fashion punks." Anyways, the hustle was simple. Tourists paid $5 to have their picture taken with them. It was ingeniously called. . . Pictures With Punks. My-fucking-God it was annoying. While it screamed W. Hollywood, it made me want to gag. If it wasn't for this tiny pretentious prick, Faust, I could almost get behind it, but he was a half-assed Little Richard without the cool and Liberace minus the piano. Angel and the chick, I believe, were on the same page but as with all little Hitler-type monsters, the literature is so good it doesn't even occur to you that you're slaughtering your own soul.
Oh, this fucking guy. What really pissed me off was that Shad's missing-link girlfriend thought this dude was some sort of Sid Vicious Elvis Jerry Lee Fucking Lewis and that we needed to hang out and listen to his bland, cauterized blurtings. It was incestuous dribble and self-masturbation, kinda like these writings, but there just wasn't a laugh. There was no punchline. These guys sat around him cross-legged and he just couldn't give them anything. He was a goddamn Baptist preacher with a really well manicured mohawk. Christ on a stick if it wasn't for the gorilla-sized Mexican, Angel, he lugged around with him I would have smashed him. Goddamn Angel was big. I mean the big sort where it doesn't matter that you've "got this motherfucker right here." That you've used your face and fists. It just doesn't matter when you face a Mexican that fucking big. If you find yourself in that situation, slowly back out of it, certainly don't do what I did, which was to try and fuck Faust's hot Korean girlfriend whose name I can't remember.
It was one of those names that, like most Asian names, sound like a question when you say it. She was really pretty and I wasn't taken or anything. I had actually just gotten out of a long relationship with Shad's sister not long before we left. I wasn't looking to be with anyone, or to remember their difficult as fuck name. I'm going to tell you right now that I didn't bang her. It might be anticlimactic (haha, in a very literal way) but in the interest of honesty I just couldn't pull it off. We'd all been drinking and I must have been not my normal drunk self because she suggested we walk off. I remember that part because I remember wanting to venge-fuck her to piss off Faust. I distinctly recall thinking that while my eyes crawled around on her. I also remember thinking, "no-fucking-way," when she escorted me to a gross abandoned house while everyone was listening to Faust's loutish ramblings. I vaguely remember my really bad attempt at night talk, trying to sound fascinating and original. I had nothing. I had a gut full of cheap malt liquor and this really hot Korean girl whose name I couldn't even pronounce. Everything was dirty and wet. The floor of the squat was strewn about with random pages out of a hard core pron magazine. I remember being really drunk and frustrated that this wasn't what I wanted but was really so much of what I wanted at the same time. I wanted all this filth, I actively spent my life looking for it, hunting it down like the red-eyed dogs that frightened Ralph Steadman so badly. I remember the conflict and then I remember nothing. I guess I let it be too much. I don't remember the things I was saying. I only have this faintly over-romanticized idea of what it should have been, of the things I should have said or done.
Instead, I woke up behind the dumpster outside of the house with my head in her lap. I had began puking and passed out and there, she said, she'd found me. She said she couldn't move me, so she put my head in her lap to keep the maggots off of me. She said that - I wish I had made it up - with the tenderness of a housewife who's kept her husband's dinner warm for him, knowing he'd be home to eat it. These unfailing burdened duties women women feel obligated to do for men. For drunk men who can't get it up out of overindulgence and fear. . . I just sat back to try to figure out how to finish that sentence and it all seems like so much contrivance. It's so fucking hard to give your experiences adjectives that express the fear a man can have laying in the lap of a stunningly beautiful woman just feet away from the things people throw away. It just feels like it should mean more, but it really doesn't. It just didn't mean anything more than a woman too stupid to walk away from a man who's passed out in his own puke. It;s a goddamn horror and may all the Christ Gods bless these women for the extra steps they allow men like us to take. I remember I felt like death and more than a little ashamed. I was also bummed that I'd missed my chance to bang Faust's girlfriend. Isn't that what it really amounts to when you get to the meat of it? That missed chance to invade your enemy's woman. The old folks would say, "C'est la vie."
We spent the day not saying much to each other and sat outside of a liquor store begging for change to catch the bus back. When we got off the bus at the run-away shelter we just kinda looked at each other to acknowledge my ineptitude and went our separate ways. Heather came out and gave me the third degree about where I had went and that if, "I'd fucked that bitch," she'd tell Faust. I couldn't take her seriously. One, I was too fucking hung over and two, I had apparently tried to tattoo her face the night before and stopped mid-tattoo. It was fucking hideous, this primitive-type design that I had probably talked her into that was her whole chin and some shit in her sideburn area and on her goddamn nose! All she was missing was a plate in her lip and a harpoon on her side. Shad was so pissed he said they were headed to the train yard and that was that.
While I was deciding what the fuck to do next, I met a girl named Sada. I had talked to my mother finally to confirm that I had stolen her car. I'm not sure how she'd managed it, but somehow she knew some ex-special forces guy or maybe a helicopter pilot who lived in the area and he came and disabled the car. Now, I'm not making any of this up, maybe she can fill us in in the comments section, but I have no clue how this dude found the car. None. I got to it and it wouldn't start. This guy had gotten the hood open and took a fuse that was vital to the car starting. He wasn't that fucking smart, though. I just replaced it with the air-conditioning fuse. Game. Set. Match.
I'm getting ahead of myself, though. I guess I've got to take you through this brief romance I had with Sada. I met Sada at the runaway shelter. I was sitting out on the bench smoking cigarette butts and trying to decide what to do next. I looked up and there was this mulatto chick wearing Carhartt bib overalls, a tank top, and those stupid fairy wings five-year old girls prance around with. She sat right down next to me and introduced herself. It was a really surreal experience. She was one of those girls who had a gentle naivete to her, one of those rare people who can talk to anyone like they've known them years. She wasn't stunningly beautiful but she was excessively pretty. Carmel skin and dark eyes with long tightly curled hair. Her father, she said, was from Kenya and her mother was Canadian. I didn't care, I was enthralled with her. It was her easy nature that captivated me. It's hard to be that naturally easy going and child-like when you;re living on the streets. It was almost like she pranced and slid around. She leaned over the overpass railing and looked at the 101 like she'd never seen a car. After all that filth and degeneracy I think, at that moment, I needed to be around something that seemed this. . . I hate to say it, pure. I was tired and worn and my faith in civilization was at a breaking point. Sada bandaged that for a while. It, of course, was all smoke and mirrors but like all good magicians, if the illusion is good enough then what the fuck, right?
We wandered the city the whole day, her talking ceaselessly and me listening without saying much. She told me about the shitty poetry she loved and the medieval act she was passionate about. She adored that savagely straight noses all the people seemed to have. We stopped at a laundry and burned a hole through the machine you buy bouncy balls from and filled a bucked with them. We smoked cigarettes and ate free tacos at the clown head place because she knew the boy who worked there. When it got dark she took me back to the place she live, and she lived in the old TAV building. The TAV building was where they used to film Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. I don't know if that's true, but we climbed a fence and went in. She explained to me that I should stay close to her, that she lived a few floors beneath the street level in one of the old studios and it was dark. Godddamned if she wasn't right. I've never been anywhere darker. I remember worrying her flashlight would fail and that we'd be stuck in an eternal purgatory that smelled like wet concrete and asbestos. She led me down hallways and through actual walls that the drywall had rotted off.
There were wine bottles and beer cans everywhere. It wouldn't surprise me if more than one bum had lost their way or if I'd kick their bones. Sada explained that some really nerdy runaways had found the place and had electricity. About the time I started thinking she had taken me to the spot she planned to kill me I could see an outline in one of the walls. I realized the outline was light around a steel door. She opened it up and it was like a fucking apartment. (At this point I wouldn't blame you if you thought I was making this up but I assure you I am not, there are hidden nerds who live underground.) There was light and bean bag chairs and two really classically nerdy-looking guys. They were maybe 19 and obviously unhappy to see me. It was a disappointment that stung of theft or betrayal. Sada either ignored or was oblivious to it. She tornadoed into the room and introduced me like she'd just brought her boyfriend home to meet her brothers for the first time. We stayed two nights and the guys and me maybe said 10 words.
She led me to her "bedroom" which was a huge group shower room that must have been for the employees. It was nothing but these tiny tiles, a sleeping bag, and miscellaneous things girls tend to collect. Shiny bits of glass she intended to use to make something arty, a stuffed cat, jewelry that didn't match, a small collection of books. All these things made me desperately sad. She hung up her fairy wings like a jacket after a hard day at the office and plopped down cross-legged on the sleeping bag. As I stood and looked around the most enormous thing that hit me was the hear. It was terrifyingly hot in there and the only way to cope with it was to be still. Any movement caused your body to pour sweat, it seemed like I was slowly being suffocated but it passed eventually.
You just had to be still. We weren't physical that night, or the next. If it wasn't the heat it was the immensity of the thing, the coming together, for no apparent reason, of two people who don't know where they are or where they need to go. I know it all seems too romantic. Maybe now in retrospect it is, but fuck , it was something.
That night I sat there and Sada played her violin. The instrument had seen many dark places or the player had, either way, she or it sounded beautiful. I couldn't tell you what she played, I never could get into classical music, but it was soft and she would play these long notes where it seemed to take forever for the box to complete it's stroke. I was amazed and awed, this seemingly over-bubbly creature was capable of this music that, in the cave-like atmosphere of the shower stall, sounded like a wet smooth stone. It bounced off the walls and wet my ears. We fell asleep without ever touching one another. Maybe it was heat, maybe it was something else. I just hope it doesn't sound too much like a Pat Benatar song.
We woke up some hours later and assumed it should be light out - it was hard to tell down there - and made our way out to the street. We wandered and talked more, we held hands like sophomores. Sada comandeered an Irish wolfhound puppy and named it broccoli an we dragged that gigantic-pawed brute around the rest of the time I knew her. The dog had no personality. It must have only been a couple of months old but already it was the size of a regular dog. It would walk for about a mile and then just give up. The beast would sit and refuse to move, no amount of coaxing, begging, or yelling made a differance. I would carry the thing through it's tight places, the places where it gave up. I didn't feel like Jesus though, I hated the mongrel.
We needed money. Sada told me she played her violin outside of the very famous rock clubs in Hollywood but that she'd make more money by herself. I agreed and dragged Broccoli with me and sat outside of a not-famous nightclub. I planted myself on the sidewalk and begged for money with the 50lb puppy on my lap. It worked like a 17-year old hooker. Drunk chicks looooove puppies. I was getting fivers all night. I cleared 80 bucks. It was nothing compared to Sada's night. When we met up she had $275 and some change in her violin case. Un-fucking-believable.
I'll try to finish this story with one more entry. My hand's tired and there's a good amount left. Next will be my bringing Sada to Howell and my trip to meet up with her in N.Y. where I get beaten to death. Sweat dreams, XOXOXO.
I'm in West Hollywood, where the Boulevard ends. Shad and Heather found Heather's friends, We go down to this - believe it or not - swanky YMCA and go inside to wait for this real faggy dude, "Faust", to get dressed. I've never met a more conceited male in all of my life. Ever. He was a slight, good-looking guy but gave off an air of cockyness that made you want to murder him. He knew he was the King Little Shit of this enterprise or hustle that he had going. There was him, a Giant Mexican named Angel, and this really hot Korean chick who was his girlfriend and the Nemesis of Shad's hideous girlfriend, Heather, who had, "no use for the bitch," as she put it. I knew it was because she was into Faust. I'm not altogether certain as to why, but it probably runs along the line of reasoning my friend Chryssa has on the subject.
His hustle was this - he and his cronies would dress up in fashionable punk rock gear, as in the style please-kick-my-ass punks would wear in the eighties. I guess the correct term would be, "fashion punks." Anyways, the hustle was simple. Tourists paid $5 to have their picture taken with them. It was ingeniously called. . . Pictures With Punks. My-fucking-God it was annoying. While it screamed W. Hollywood, it made me want to gag. If it wasn't for this tiny pretentious prick, Faust, I could almost get behind it, but he was a half-assed Little Richard without the cool and Liberace minus the piano. Angel and the chick, I believe, were on the same page but as with all little Hitler-type monsters, the literature is so good it doesn't even occur to you that you're slaughtering your own soul.
Oh, this fucking guy. What really pissed me off was that Shad's missing-link girlfriend thought this dude was some sort of Sid Vicious Elvis Jerry Lee Fucking Lewis and that we needed to hang out and listen to his bland, cauterized blurtings. It was incestuous dribble and self-masturbation, kinda like these writings, but there just wasn't a laugh. There was no punchline. These guys sat around him cross-legged and he just couldn't give them anything. He was a goddamn Baptist preacher with a really well manicured mohawk. Christ on a stick if it wasn't for the gorilla-sized Mexican, Angel, he lugged around with him I would have smashed him. Goddamn Angel was big. I mean the big sort where it doesn't matter that you've "got this motherfucker right here." That you've used your face and fists. It just doesn't matter when you face a Mexican that fucking big. If you find yourself in that situation, slowly back out of it, certainly don't do what I did, which was to try and fuck Faust's hot Korean girlfriend whose name I can't remember.
It was one of those names that, like most Asian names, sound like a question when you say it. She was really pretty and I wasn't taken or anything. I had actually just gotten out of a long relationship with Shad's sister not long before we left. I wasn't looking to be with anyone, or to remember their difficult as fuck name. I'm going to tell you right now that I didn't bang her. It might be anticlimactic (haha, in a very literal way) but in the interest of honesty I just couldn't pull it off. We'd all been drinking and I must have been not my normal drunk self because she suggested we walk off. I remember that part because I remember wanting to venge-fuck her to piss off Faust. I distinctly recall thinking that while my eyes crawled around on her. I also remember thinking, "no-fucking-way," when she escorted me to a gross abandoned house while everyone was listening to Faust's loutish ramblings. I vaguely remember my really bad attempt at night talk, trying to sound fascinating and original. I had nothing. I had a gut full of cheap malt liquor and this really hot Korean girl whose name I couldn't even pronounce. Everything was dirty and wet. The floor of the squat was strewn about with random pages out of a hard core pron magazine. I remember being really drunk and frustrated that this wasn't what I wanted but was really so much of what I wanted at the same time. I wanted all this filth, I actively spent my life looking for it, hunting it down like the red-eyed dogs that frightened Ralph Steadman so badly. I remember the conflict and then I remember nothing. I guess I let it be too much. I don't remember the things I was saying. I only have this faintly over-romanticized idea of what it should have been, of the things I should have said or done.
Instead, I woke up behind the dumpster outside of the house with my head in her lap. I had began puking and passed out and there, she said, she'd found me. She said she couldn't move me, so she put my head in her lap to keep the maggots off of me. She said that - I wish I had made it up - with the tenderness of a housewife who's kept her husband's dinner warm for him, knowing he'd be home to eat it. These unfailing burdened duties women women feel obligated to do for men. For drunk men who can't get it up out of overindulgence and fear. . . I just sat back to try to figure out how to finish that sentence and it all seems like so much contrivance. It's so fucking hard to give your experiences adjectives that express the fear a man can have laying in the lap of a stunningly beautiful woman just feet away from the things people throw away. It just feels like it should mean more, but it really doesn't. It just didn't mean anything more than a woman too stupid to walk away from a man who's passed out in his own puke. It;s a goddamn horror and may all the Christ Gods bless these women for the extra steps they allow men like us to take. I remember I felt like death and more than a little ashamed. I was also bummed that I'd missed my chance to bang Faust's girlfriend. Isn't that what it really amounts to when you get to the meat of it? That missed chance to invade your enemy's woman. The old folks would say, "C'est la vie."
We spent the day not saying much to each other and sat outside of a liquor store begging for change to catch the bus back. When we got off the bus at the run-away shelter we just kinda looked at each other to acknowledge my ineptitude and went our separate ways. Heather came out and gave me the third degree about where I had went and that if, "I'd fucked that bitch," she'd tell Faust. I couldn't take her seriously. One, I was too fucking hung over and two, I had apparently tried to tattoo her face the night before and stopped mid-tattoo. It was fucking hideous, this primitive-type design that I had probably talked her into that was her whole chin and some shit in her sideburn area and on her goddamn nose! All she was missing was a plate in her lip and a harpoon on her side. Shad was so pissed he said they were headed to the train yard and that was that.
While I was deciding what the fuck to do next, I met a girl named Sada. I had talked to my mother finally to confirm that I had stolen her car. I'm not sure how she'd managed it, but somehow she knew some ex-special forces guy or maybe a helicopter pilot who lived in the area and he came and disabled the car. Now, I'm not making any of this up, maybe she can fill us in in the comments section, but I have no clue how this dude found the car. None. I got to it and it wouldn't start. This guy had gotten the hood open and took a fuse that was vital to the car starting. He wasn't that fucking smart, though. I just replaced it with the air-conditioning fuse. Game. Set. Match.
I'm getting ahead of myself, though. I guess I've got to take you through this brief romance I had with Sada. I met Sada at the runaway shelter. I was sitting out on the bench smoking cigarette butts and trying to decide what to do next. I looked up and there was this mulatto chick wearing Carhartt bib overalls, a tank top, and those stupid fairy wings five-year old girls prance around with. She sat right down next to me and introduced herself. It was a really surreal experience. She was one of those girls who had a gentle naivete to her, one of those rare people who can talk to anyone like they've known them years. She wasn't stunningly beautiful but she was excessively pretty. Carmel skin and dark eyes with long tightly curled hair. Her father, she said, was from Kenya and her mother was Canadian. I didn't care, I was enthralled with her. It was her easy nature that captivated me. It's hard to be that naturally easy going and child-like when you;re living on the streets. It was almost like she pranced and slid around. She leaned over the overpass railing and looked at the 101 like she'd never seen a car. After all that filth and degeneracy I think, at that moment, I needed to be around something that seemed this. . . I hate to say it, pure. I was tired and worn and my faith in civilization was at a breaking point. Sada bandaged that for a while. It, of course, was all smoke and mirrors but like all good magicians, if the illusion is good enough then what the fuck, right?
We wandered the city the whole day, her talking ceaselessly and me listening without saying much. She told me about the shitty poetry she loved and the medieval act she was passionate about. She adored that savagely straight noses all the people seemed to have. We stopped at a laundry and burned a hole through the machine you buy bouncy balls from and filled a bucked with them. We smoked cigarettes and ate free tacos at the clown head place because she knew the boy who worked there. When it got dark she took me back to the place she live, and she lived in the old TAV building. The TAV building was where they used to film Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. I don't know if that's true, but we climbed a fence and went in. She explained to me that I should stay close to her, that she lived a few floors beneath the street level in one of the old studios and it was dark. Godddamned if she wasn't right. I've never been anywhere darker. I remember worrying her flashlight would fail and that we'd be stuck in an eternal purgatory that smelled like wet concrete and asbestos. She led me down hallways and through actual walls that the drywall had rotted off.
There were wine bottles and beer cans everywhere. It wouldn't surprise me if more than one bum had lost their way or if I'd kick their bones. Sada explained that some really nerdy runaways had found the place and had electricity. About the time I started thinking she had taken me to the spot she planned to kill me I could see an outline in one of the walls. I realized the outline was light around a steel door. She opened it up and it was like a fucking apartment. (At this point I wouldn't blame you if you thought I was making this up but I assure you I am not, there are hidden nerds who live underground.) There was light and bean bag chairs and two really classically nerdy-looking guys. They were maybe 19 and obviously unhappy to see me. It was a disappointment that stung of theft or betrayal. Sada either ignored or was oblivious to it. She tornadoed into the room and introduced me like she'd just brought her boyfriend home to meet her brothers for the first time. We stayed two nights and the guys and me maybe said 10 words.
She led me to her "bedroom" which was a huge group shower room that must have been for the employees. It was nothing but these tiny tiles, a sleeping bag, and miscellaneous things girls tend to collect. Shiny bits of glass she intended to use to make something arty, a stuffed cat, jewelry that didn't match, a small collection of books. All these things made me desperately sad. She hung up her fairy wings like a jacket after a hard day at the office and plopped down cross-legged on the sleeping bag. As I stood and looked around the most enormous thing that hit me was the hear. It was terrifyingly hot in there and the only way to cope with it was to be still. Any movement caused your body to pour sweat, it seemed like I was slowly being suffocated but it passed eventually.
You just had to be still. We weren't physical that night, or the next. If it wasn't the heat it was the immensity of the thing, the coming together, for no apparent reason, of two people who don't know where they are or where they need to go. I know it all seems too romantic. Maybe now in retrospect it is, but fuck , it was something.
That night I sat there and Sada played her violin. The instrument had seen many dark places or the player had, either way, she or it sounded beautiful. I couldn't tell you what she played, I never could get into classical music, but it was soft and she would play these long notes where it seemed to take forever for the box to complete it's stroke. I was amazed and awed, this seemingly over-bubbly creature was capable of this music that, in the cave-like atmosphere of the shower stall, sounded like a wet smooth stone. It bounced off the walls and wet my ears. We fell asleep without ever touching one another. Maybe it was heat, maybe it was something else. I just hope it doesn't sound too much like a Pat Benatar song.
We woke up some hours later and assumed it should be light out - it was hard to tell down there - and made our way out to the street. We wandered and talked more, we held hands like sophomores. Sada comandeered an Irish wolfhound puppy and named it broccoli an we dragged that gigantic-pawed brute around the rest of the time I knew her. The dog had no personality. It must have only been a couple of months old but already it was the size of a regular dog. It would walk for about a mile and then just give up. The beast would sit and refuse to move, no amount of coaxing, begging, or yelling made a differance. I would carry the thing through it's tight places, the places where it gave up. I didn't feel like Jesus though, I hated the mongrel.
We needed money. Sada told me she played her violin outside of the very famous rock clubs in Hollywood but that she'd make more money by herself. I agreed and dragged Broccoli with me and sat outside of a not-famous nightclub. I planted myself on the sidewalk and begged for money with the 50lb puppy on my lap. It worked like a 17-year old hooker. Drunk chicks looooove puppies. I was getting fivers all night. I cleared 80 bucks. It was nothing compared to Sada's night. When we met up she had $275 and some change in her violin case. Un-fucking-believable.
I'll try to finish this story with one more entry. My hand's tired and there's a good amount left. Next will be my bringing Sada to Howell and my trip to meet up with her in N.Y. where I get beaten to death. Sweat dreams, XOXOXO.
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