Episode 2: The Lost Boys
The fun is over, I thought to myself as I sat, hung over, watching the sun, slowly and painfully come up through the metal slits, covering the outside of the window.
What the fuck, am I doing here?
I was sweating and dirty, and I smelled awful. Desperately dehydrated, I was reticent to drink from the toilet, which is where the water fountain was located, built into top of the back of the bowl, part of a stainless steel, one-piece, unit.
My neck hurt and the back of my head was sore from where the cops had beat me with their batons.
I felt claustrophobic as I sat across from a stinking hobo, who was snoring and farting loudly, as he slept it off, lying on his side on a stainless steel bench. He was facing the wall with his back towards me as he continued to pollute the room with heinous odors, born from the booze, drugs and gutter-foods, that were working their way through his twisted guts.
Somewhere along the way, I had followed an escalating series of bad decision in my life, that had led me to this dungeon.
I don’t belong here, I told myself, I’m a valuable member of society!
I shivered and brought my knees in, towards my chest. I was sitting up against the concrete wall, on a cold, hard metal bench. I embraced a tiny, thin, green blanket they had given me, as the unbreakable glass on the wall of my cell was doing very little to insulate me, and keep out the icy, winter air.
Clinging to the blanket was the only way I had been able to make it through the night and retain even the slightest semblance of my sanity.
It’s green like the earth, I sailed off in my mind, like the sea. The blanket, keeps me warm, keeps me company, it’s my only friend.
I rubbed my hands together to keep my blood from freezing.
Of all the daring, high stakes chances I had taken in my time, from selling illegal drugs to hitchhiking through the deep south, this might have been the dumbest and most foolish thing that I had ever done. And that was saying a lot for me…
Later that morning, a guard came and moved me to a new room in a group pod. I had graduated from the drunk tank, and was on my way up in the world!
I was taken to a cell with three old black men sitting on bunk beds that were along both walls of the room. There was a toilet on the back wall in between them and on the other end of the cage there were bars that were retracted, opening up to the hallway outside.
The CO left me to settle in, and I stood in uncomfortable silence for a minute. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I turned to my new bunk mates, leveling with them.
“Hey guys,” I interrupted a game of cards they were playing on a cardboard box, “I hate to do this, but… I really need to take a dump.”
“Just go.” One of the guys said without looking up.
“I can’t go in front of other people.” I protested.
“Then you ain’t, gonna’ shit!” he informed me, impatiently.
I had no choice but to excrementize my anxieties, and undergo this unpleasant and humiliating ordeal. After I took care of my sordid, below-the-belt business, I washed my hands with a bar of soap. I was grateful that we had plenty of bars of soap in this room. It was a little victory that mattered, after my hazing experience with the abrasive powered soap they had subjected me to the night before.
To celebrate the abundance of bar-soaps, and to alleviate my incredible boredom, I walked out to the edge of my cube on the second-floor where I wouldn’t bother anyone, and I started juggling three of the packaged bars of soap. I had a good run going for a while as I looked out over the balcony at about a dozen prisoners down below, playing checkers, chess, cards and dominoes.
This is kind of like a summer camp, for crackheads, I drifted into thought as one of the bar-soaps slipped from my fingers and bounced onto the metal walkway ringing the second level of the pod.
I watched helplessly in horror, as the soap slid over the edge of the floor, and flew through the air and down below, landing and bouncing off the gigantic bald head of a monstrously large black man.
I’ve committed the cardinal sin of prison, I panicked, I dropped the soap!
I noted that the humungous, angry inmate, must have been about 6’5’ and over four-hundred pounds as he stood up from his bench and glared menacingly up at me.
I’ve got to stop getting into these situations, I chastised myself. How did my orientation in life, go so terribly, terribly askew?
* * *
Big-Mike stumbled out of the door of the bus and nearly faceplanted out into the parking lot.
“Jesus, man,” I admonished him as we grabbed our packs out of the luggage compartment on side of the bus, “it’s not even 10am, yet!”
“I’m in my happy place,” Big Mike slurred, “You don’t want to see me, if I’m not in my…unghh… if I’m not, innma… bwlaghhhhhh…”
Big-Mike puked into a tree planter, savagely vomiting up bottom-shelf whisky and coke, which he had been sipping on for hours on the bus, from a paper soda cup.
“Hey!” A driver pointed accusingly, “have you kids been drinking on the bus?”
“No sir,” I handled it, “everything’s fine, my friend just gets car sick from long trips.”
“Fuck you pig!” Big Mike snarled as sucked in his sinuses, and then spit out a huge, sickening wad, of saliva, snot and throw up particulates, all over the pavement in front of him.
“What do you care?” Big-Mike dared the driver, “we’re not getting back on that hell-hound, anyway!”
“Stay right there,” the driver scurried off inside, towards the station, “I’m going to get security.”
Yeah, stay right here, and wait for security, I saluted sarcastically at his backside, good one.
I turned back around to Big-Mike.
Or… maybe, we will, wait here, for security?
Big-Mike was now lying, legs-up in the tree in the planter, wallowing in a pool of his own regurgitation.
“Dude, let’s go!” I implored him.
“I’ll murder all, of these motherfu… these, mothbwhlaaaahhh…”
He continued to evacuate all around him.
“Christ,” I castigated him, “Hurry up, let’s go!” I helped Big-Mike to his feet.
He slowly ambled around the corner, where we were able to quickly escape, cloaked on the packed street, and obfuscated, under the cover of other pedestrians on Pacific Ave.
I’m starting to think that Big-Mike, may have a drinking problem. I had a moment of clarity as we approached Pizza My Heart, and it’s possible, albeit, probable, that I’m at least partially to blame…
Our path soon became blocked, and we were unable to continue walking as we were obstructed by a large, angry group of clowns, maybe two hundred or more, that had converged in front of the New Leaf health food store. One of them, who was possibly the chief clown, was speaking to the group with a megaphone, though it was too loud around us, to make out what he was saying.
I was puzzled as I processed clowns holding up picket signs and protesting against an unknown adversary. Some of them held placards and posters which announced their angst, with slogans like, “What’s so f%^ing funny?” and, “We’re not laughing on the inside!”
From my experience there were almost always protests going on in Santa Cruz. I couldn’t tell if these were really disgruntled clowns, or bored anarchists in disguise, that were just doing this to cause trouble and for absurdity’s sake.
“I don’t like clowns…” Big-Mike’s eyes grew cold and still. He kind of smiled, but he definitely wasn’t laughing, “just to let you know… I think, I’m going to kill, a clown today.”
Big-Mike is just fucking around, I analyzed the situation, he’s not being serious, he’s just trying to be funny… I mean… he is, right?
I had met Big-Mike the summer before, at a Memorial Day Music Festival in Ohio. I had been rolling around with a renaissance faire friend, and we stayed after the show ended, to work on the clean-up crew, catching many great ground-scores, while we were getting paid. In the process, we made friends with a fellow garbage-groupie; a huge, hulking, hippie named Big-Mike. He ended up side-kicking it with me, all summer, until we split up over the fall in Santa Cruz, after he got caught up with a radical, environmental activist group, called, Earth First.
Big-Mike was talked into taking part in a tree-sitting protest and ended up as the fall man, for multiple felonies. His parents bailed him out eventually, and he went back home to Ohio to wait for his next date in court, way back out west.
In the meantime, while Big-Mike was busy being a martyr, I had been touring from Santa Cruz to San Felipe, Mexico, and then all the way back up to Vancouver Island, Canada; before taking a train from Seattle to New Jersey just in time for my older sister’s wedding, in September.
I had been inspired by Big-Mike’s self-sacrifice for the trees, and I didn’t have anything better going on, so when he called me around Christmas, and asked me to accompany him on a Greyhound back to Santa Cruz, I figured I would keep him company in Capitola, and try to do a better job this time around, of helping him stay out of trouble.
I also couldn’t help but feel at least partially responsible for his predicament, and I was cognizant of the fact, that I had almost certainly been, a bad influence on his behavior.
When I had first met Big-Mike, he didn’t drink at all, and now, after less than a year of hanging out with me, he had become a pathetically dysfunctional alcoholic.
I might have to rethink my career, as a motivational speaker. I did a self-assessment.
I had shared with him my humorous anti-establishment worldview and while my glorification of anti-heroes and class warfare had been merely intended to contribute to a comical and jocular atmosphere, it seemed that Big-Mike may have taken much of it to heart, even as he had been evolving, right underneath my eyes, into a hardened, veteran anarchist.
“I have an idea,” I tried to divert Big-Mike’s attention away from the clowns, “why don’t we head down to the beach?”
“Yes master,” Big-Mike pulled his skateboard from a web on the side of his pack, and with the heavy bag, still strapped on his shoulders, he took off, back the way that we had come.
He disappeared out of sight on Cathcart St, but I didn’t bother running to catch up with him. When I rounded the corner, he was already coming back again, priming his plank, in my direction.
Wobbling a little, under the weight of his backpack, he suddenly kicked up his wheels. Getting air with the board, he came down to try and do a grind on a concrete planter, and landed hard on the corner, immediately eating shit.
As Big-Mike’s legs slipped out from under him, he flung the board with his foot, sending it sailing sideways in the path of pedestrians that were strolling by on the sidewalk.
A cop had seen what happened and came over. He pointed to a sign that clearly stated that there was “No Skateboarding on the Sidewalk.”
The police officer asked Big-Mike for his name and social security number, and had him wait, while the cop called in a background check.
A moment later, the officer got word back on his radio, that Big-Mike had a bench warrant, which was apparently, somehow still related to his tree-sitting fiasco.
The cop carted Big-Mike off to the clink, and once again, I found myself broke and by myself, stranded solo, in a strange city.
Truth be told, I hadn’t come out here with a plan, other than to shadow Big-Mike and to try to help him stay out of the slammer, which I had already failed at, spectacularly.
Need some help with your project?
What is my destination? I wondered, as I wandered the streets of Santa Cruz; lost, alone, and listless. What direction, am I even, walking in?
What was starting to come into focus, was the fact that I had come to a dead end, in more ways than one. Demoralized, I continued to drift down the road, in the direction of the beach.
Where, am I going with all of this? I continued to search my soul, What is my motivation, in this episode, of my life-story?
I set up to busk on a bench, over by the boardwalk. I opened my guitar case and pulled out a heap of papers, full of lyrics and chords, that I had printed out from the public library.
I awkwardly pinned down Tangled Up in Blue by Bob Dylan, between my thigh and the bottom of the acoustic guitar. It was uncomfortable though, as I started to strum, and I had to lean over my instrument to scan the song-sheet.
I was an abysmally bad singer, and mostly only played Dylan cover songs, but even still, I was making Bob Dylan, look like Andrea Bocelli. To that point, no one was giving me any money to show their appreciation, and a home-bum who was sitting nearby, on the next bench over, seemed to be cracking up, and laughing at me.
Well at least my music is providing some form of entertainment, I tried to look on the bright side.
“…and I was standing on the side of the road…” I painfully squalled out of tune and out of rhythm, as I erratically plucked the chords, “…rain falling off of my shoes, heading out for the east coast, lord knows I’ve pa-“
“Hey!” The husky, Hispanic hobo, broke my balls, “how much do you charge, to not sing?”
Frustrated, I stood up and set out to source a new spot, where I could continue to play in peace without being further harangued by homeless music critics…
* * *
Things are not going well, I realized, as I lifelessly, and soullessly strummed on my strings, while sitting on the sidewalk. It’s time to rethink my approach…
Just as I was about to wrap it up for the night, and go off in search of a hidden, private patch of sand to set up my sleeping bag, I was harassed, by a diminutive, blond, white-boy with dreadlocks.
I had seen him earlier, hanging around on Pacific Ave with the pack of scene kids in front of the health food store and seemed to be one of the lead derelicts.
“You’re a terrible musician, you know? Like, God-awful.”
“Thank you,” I bowed my head, “always appreciate the chance to connect with my fans.”
Ok… this is a sign from the universe, I read the tea leaves, I need to find something else to do with myself…
It was hubris, to think that I was truly in control, or pulling the strings in the plot, of my own life-story. After all, my path as an adventurer, had already been predetermined for me…
* * *
As a child, my parents were perpetually uprooting us in search of work and meaning. This journey would bring my family and I to move 16 times, by the time I was 16 years old, to a variety of locations in Connecticut, Texas, Israel, Florida, and New Jersey.
By my junior year of high school, I was ready to play to my pathology, and escape again. I poured gasoline on this fire burning within me, one day when I took LSD for the first time, during lunch break before sociology class.
Even as my teacher became a muppet, and his face melted before my eyes, I was inspired by his words, as I learned more about and connected with the counterculture movement of the 60’s. I decided that day that I would drop out of high school to travel around the country and become a writer.
I left home, driving my car with a fellow dropout friend of mine, to Florida. My cohort, Tyler, though, was underage, and his mother had put out a missing person’s report on him. I got pulled over for running a red-light, late one night, and Tyler was forced to fly back home, abandoning me by myself in Miami Beach.
With nothing better to do, I agreed to give an affable bum a ride back to Cambridge Massachusetts, where I hung out for the summer, in Harvard Square, camping out in a public park, slinging pot to hippies, and selling original handwritten poems on the street, that I mostly wrote on acid.
Even though I had fun that summer, I still hadn’t found the object of my quest, whatever that was. I thought that maybe, whatever I was looking for though, might be waiting for me, out on the west coast.
I took a hellish, six-and-a-half day long Greyhound bus trip, from New Jersey to California and got off in San Francisco with only $20 in my pocket!
From there, I started hitchhiking around the country, getting by, playing guitar for spare change, in between seasonal gigs, working odd-jobs at renaissance festivals; and passing the time engaged in other debaucherous and meandering endeavors; endlessly in search of something, that I couldn’t even define…
* * *
“What’s your deal?” The dreadlocked-delinquent quizzed me.
“What do you mean?” I didn’t think that I had a deal. That was kind of my problem.
“Are you a cop?” He asked point blank.
“I’ve done too much acid,” I laughed, “they would never trust me with a gun.”
The tiny trouble-maker, introduced himself as, Zip.
“Then I don’t get it?” Zip continued to query me, “why aren’t you working trees, like all of the other street kids out here?”
“What do you mean?” I collected a pathetic $.87 in change from my guitar case, which is all that I had made over the last two hours of performing, if you could even call it that.
“I’ve been watching you pointlessly lingering all day,” Zip observed, “what in God’s name are you doing?”
I didn’t have a great answer.
“Why aren’t you working flowers?” Zip continued to probe, “Is your brain, like, fried?”
“Money isn’t that important to me,” I waxed idealistically.
“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Zip berated me, “you eat food, someone has to make it, someone has to pay for it. Nobody likes a bum.”
A drug dealing street urchin, was now calling me out, for being lazy.
“I’m a writer… I guess.” I attempted to justify my existence.
“What kind of writing do you do?” Zip was skeptical.
“I’m editing a bizarre, rambling, and manic memoir,” I begrudgingly showed him my rolled up manuscript, “it’s called, The Weirdos of Evolution.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Zip gave me credit, “do you want some work then, I mean, just in the meantime, until you hit it big as a writer?”
Maybe my pilgrimage had a purpose at some point, but I had lost track of it, and I was ready to try something new.
What do I have, to lose?
* * *
Zip took me under his wing, and we ended up partnering together to build a bankroll, selling pot at the beach. I had sold weed when I was younger, but Zip connected and introduced me to the inner-workings of the ‘Hippie-Mafia’, that underpinned much of the supply chain for the domestically produced US cannabis market at the time.
The Hippie-Mafia, known to others as ‘The Family’, was a scene and lifestyle that could incorporate many different groups and subcultures, but was mostly defined by connections to acid, the grateful dead, and drug dealing in general. Additionally, there was a loose hippie code of conduct, that was not really codified anywhere that I was aware of, but could basically be distilled down to the following religious tenants- be kind to others, never steal or rat on anyone, and don’t be a pervert. If you committed serious harm, you might find justice in the form of being tied up naked to a tree and dosed with over a thousand hits of LSD, to reflect on your misconduct.
Most importantly though, of all the things that I learned from Zip, one night he taught me how to make cannabis butter.
I took notes in amazement, as we spent $50 on trim and unsalted vegan butter, and turned it into four jars of dark green goo that equated to around $2000 worth of rice crispy treats, that we could make to sell at concerts and music festivals, the following month.
Just in the nick of time, to join us on that train, Big-Mike was finally scheduled to get out of the gulag again. I had been in touch with his lawyer who was associated with Earth-First and found out his approximate time of release, so I went to go meet him outside the county jail.
It had been almost a month now and Big-Mike looked really distant when I finally saw him walk around the corner, carrying his pack over his shoulder.
I had been holding onto his skateboard for him and I extended it out to him.
He took the skateboard from me and turned it over in his hands. He ran his fingers over the wax lines that had been shredded through the skateboard company logo around the trucks of the wheelbase.
“Are you ok, man?” I reached up to give him a hug which he half-heartedly returned.
“I don’t know.” Big-Mike had a silly smile on his face, and a vacant look in his eyes.
Something happened to him in there. This was Big-Mike’s second trip to the joint, and he wasn’t the same kid that I had known from the previous summer, anymore.
It was frightening to envision how our happily-go-lucky lifestyle, could lead us, to being locked up, behind bars. I could only imagine. what terrors might await me, in there. I shuddered to think of experiences so potentially scarring and deeply disturbing, that they could drive someone to come completely undone, and be born-again, into their traumas.
“Do you want me to buy you some lunch?” I offered. I had been planning to have a sit down with him and tell him about the booming underground enterprise that I had started with Zip.
“Why don’t we just have a tea party instead?” Big-Mike growled back, “what do I look like, to you? Get me, some fucking whisky.”
I was 22 years old and Big-Mike was only 20, so I was in charge of buying the booze.
“Ok, let’s go for a walk to the liquor store,” I grabbed my backpack and we started heading in that direction.
“Hey listen,” I read him in on my progress, as we started walking, “I teamed up with some kid, Zip. We’ve been selling trees, and we’re slowly but surely, starting to come up.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed with that?” Big-Mike barked.
“I just want you to be a part of it, is all.”
“You want me, to get a job?” He sniggered down at me disdain, “wow man, I was only gone for a month, and you sold out faster than a salt vendor, at a pretzel convention.”
“Look,” I argued with him, “it’s surely better than begging for a living. Just give it a try?”
Zip was reluctant to agree when I broke the news, that I wanted to cut Big-Mike in on our action.
“Something’s wrong with that guy’s head?” Zip chided me, “he’s obviously not playing with a full deck, and all of the cards he does have, are all jokers. What, do you have blinders on?”
“Yes,” I conceded, “I do have blinders on, so I can’t see, where you’re going, with this analogy…”
Zip finally agreed to give Big-Mike a chance but would only let him start with two eighths of weed.
I hooked Big-Mike up with the work in the afternoon, and returned later that evening to check in on him. I was shocked to find him sitting by the boardwalk, wildly inebriated and panhandling.
“What are you doing?” I interrogated him.
“Just spang-ing for beer-money,” Big-Mike burped, falling over as he tried to sit Indian style and crane his neck to look at me, “I’m trying to get another forty.”
“I don’t get it,” I was incredulous, “what about the weed we gave you to sell?
“I traded it.” He said.
I was getting increasingly irritated, as Big-Mike’s schtick was wearing thin.
“You what?”
“I traded it.”
I was beside myself, as I stared below me at Big-Mike’s face beaming back up at me from the gutter.
“What did you trade it for?” I demanded.
He pulled out a quartz crystal, and a pocketknife with a wooden handle.
“That’s, what you traded a quarter ounce of flowers for?” I grilled him.
“He also gave me five, klonopins.”
“You’re fired.” I shook my head, in disgust.
“I don’t care.” Big-Mike shrugged, completely unphased by the news.
“I’m washing my hands of you,” I put him on notice, “you’re on your own now.”
“Fuck you, yuppie!” Big-Mike taunted me, as I walked away.
Festival season was finally at hand, and Zip and I were about to head out of town with Gomer, who was a pot supplier one rung above our heads on the Santa Cruz, cannabis food chain.
As I left Big-Mike behind in Santa Cruz, slipping off the deep end, I felt like he was my Frankenstein monster. I had a feeling, that it was only matter of time, before this creature would return to haunt any number of sequels to my story.
Even though Jerry Garcia had already been dead for seven years, Zip, Gomer and I were all grateful that there were still some members of the Dead, that remained alive, and we took off to go see them play in Denver, for the first planned stop on our tour.
We had mixed up our dates though, and we got into the Mile High City, a day early. With nothing better to do, we started getting wasted first thing in the morning in our hotel room.
Although there was no Dead-lot that night, we had time to kill and drugs to sell, so we decided to try our luck finding customers at a No Doubt concert that was going on nearby.
Gomer got arrested almost right away, trying to sell mushroom chocolates to an undercover cop, which was a real buzzkill. To combat this anti-effect, I got increasingly smashed, drinking vodka straight from the bottle.
In a moment of poor planning, and ill-fated, intoxication induced, execution, I became inspired to sneak in, to see No Doubt play. I walked casually up to the front of the line of patrons, waiting to have their tickets taken. Taking a deep breath, I steeled my nerves, and then suddenly, I darted out right past the checkers and the security guards. Like a lightning bolt, I booked it, blowing by them through the open doors, as I ran straight into the venue…
I was feeling pretty proud of myself and thought that I would be able to easily evade security by disappearing into the crowd. I would emerge later that night, with the bragging rights to a great story.
It was really inanely, idiotic though, because they hadn’t even let anyone into the show yet, and once I got inside, I immediately realized my mistake. As I stood in a completely empty stadium with nowhere to run or hide, I threw my hands up, as cops from all directions, converged to tackle me to the hard stadium floor, before beating me with batons and then cuffing my hands behind my back. They hauled me out front and had me lie down in the asphalt while they tried to figure out what to do with me.
Zip spotted me, splayed out on the sidewalk and approached the cops. He knew that I never been to the hoosegow before, and that I was probably getting goosebumps.
“What’s going on?” Zip asked one of the police officers, “what did my friend do, wrong?”
“He was trespassing.” The cop replied shortly, “and your friend exposed his naked rear-end, to our officers while they were attempting to apprehend him.”
I chuckled to myself, even as my head was killing me. I had forgotten, that in all of the excitement, I had mooned the cops earlier, as I had been fleeing from them, and they were hot on my ass.
“Can’t you just look the other way?” Zip pleaded with him, “he’s a good kid.”
“Take a hike or you’re next.” The cop warned.
“That’s fine, arrest me too.” Zip offered out his wrists for the cops to cuff him.
“What?” I could see a police officer who was standing dumbfounded, as he stared over at Zip in disbelief. The other cop had pinned me on the ground, driving his knee into my back, and forcing me down into the pavement. He held his hand over the back of my head, shoving my face into the cold, wet concrete, as sharp, little pieces of rocks and glass, stuck into my cheek.
The peace officer replaced the hard painful, metal handcuffs that were locked around my wrists, with a plastic zip-tie which they use for crowd control. This was about equally, as uncomfortable.
“It’s fine,” Zip challenged the cops, “go ahead and arrest me.”
The two cops exchanged a look and then the one standing next to Zip shrugged. He grabbed Zip abruptly by the shoulders, and then threw him down hard to the ground, next to me.
They zip-tied Zip, as we waited for them to haul us off to the big-house. I couldn’t believe that Zip had willingly gotten himself arrested to keep me company.
Now that’s a true friend! I was touched.
“Don’t worry,” Zip smiled reassuringly at me from the sidewalk, “we’ll be
out of here by tomorrow, time served.”
“What’s wrong with you kids, anyways?” One of the cops looked down at
us, shaking his head.
The paddy wagon finally arrived, and they shoved us into the back. Inside, it was dark; I felt cold metal, hard edges, and corners, as they put shackles around our wrists and feet, chaining us together. The cuffs around my ankles were digging into my skin. I looked below, but I unable to reach over, as blood started dripping down the side of my right sock.
They separated Zip and I at booking, as I was brought into a room to get my fingerprints and mug shot taken. Afterwards, a guard led me to a dingy room where they took away my clothes, and had me spread my cheeks, to make sure I didn’t have any drugs or knives up my ass. Afterwards, they deloused me, pummeling me with powered lye soap that burned my skin and stung my eyes, before hosing me down, like a farm animal with a pressure washer.
I dried off and they gave me an orange jumpsuit to wear…
* * *
“I’m so sorry sir,” I explained down to the mammoth, lumbering lawbreaker, on the first floor as he squinted up at me, “I’m just trying to make the most of my time in jail, by teaching myself how to juggle.”
This gargantuan goliath, is so strong, he can probably snap my neck with his eyelid, I was terrified, as he sized me up.
If I survive this ordeal and ever see the outside world again, I swore to myself, I’m never coming back to this hell-hole…
I saw him glance over at the staircase and then at the second floor. I could tell by the look on his face, that he was trying to decide whether it was worth the effort to climb all the way up the stairs to pummel me to death.
Moreover, I was small, and wiry, which meant he would probably have to break a sweat and chase me all over the place before being able to administer a well-deserved and savage beating.
Seemingly taking all of this hard work and physical exertion into account, with a dour face, he sat back down and spared my life for the time being.
Fortunately, I was saved by circumstance, as a short while later, a correctional officer, came to collect me for court. After merely, another four hours of painstaking, excruciating, waiting; Zip and I, finally stood together in front of a judge…
“Well, you boys had a little too much fun, last night?” The judge accused us.
“Yes, your honor.” I confessed.
I can’t do this anymore; I took a deep breath, it’s time for a change…
“Alright,” he warned us, “don’t let me see you back in this courtroom.”
He ordered us released with time served. Despite the fact that a judge had directed our discharge, it still took them nearly another six hours to process our paperwork and let us out, even though we were already, allegedly, supposed to be free men.
I met back up with Zip, and the first task on our list was to figure out what the f**k to do with Gomer’s truck. Zip had gotten in trouble for a similar situation the year before, for taking off with a friend’s car, after that party was incarcerated, at a concert. Zip wound up getting charged himself, with grand theft auto, and as a result, he still had an outstanding, although luckily, non-extraditing, warrant in Wyoming
We additionally didn’t want to give any of Gomer’s thug friends, the wrong impression, that we had set him up to get popped, and then pinched his wheels.
We reasoned that the right thing to do, was to find somewhere safe to stash it, so that it would be waiting for him, when he got out of prison.
We met an old Deadhead at a bar in Denver who volunteered that he had a big property out in Nederland Colorado, and offered to host the vehicle out there.
We sent Gomer a letter in the pen with the address, and the helpful hippie’s contact information. We then drove out to Ned, a cute little town outside of Boulder, where we dropped off the truck at a small farm.
Unfortunately, the rest of our Santa Cruz friends had already left us behind to head out to Winter Carnival in Vale, and now, we had no ride, and were basically broke again. We did have a few jars of butter left though, so in theory, we still could come up again, if we were somehow able to make it to the next show.
We started hitchhiking and caught a lift to a local pub where we met a liquored up Native-American at a pool table. His name was White Wolf. We shot a few games of billiards together, before he invited us back to his Teepee in the woods to smoke a bowl…
* * *
“You have no balls,” White Wolf shamed me as he erratically waved a glowing red kitchen knife in my face, “You come into my home and disrespect me?”
I was stunned by the ferocity of White-Wolf’s reaction, as I felt like I was doing him a favor.
“You are a sniveling little coward.” he pointed at me with the incandescent, scorching-hot blade.
The air smelled of fire and burnt pine.
Smoke rose from the wood burning stove through the chimney. White Wolf’s Teepee was built into in the side of a hill, which served as a back supporting wall. There was burlap flap in the front, which draped down over the entrance, like the door to a tent.
“Fucking pussy,” White Wolf spit through the doorway onto the dirt outside, “you disgust me.”
For some reason, White Wolf had decided that I was the answer to his problems. As if, what he wanted me to do, would be the cure for his unhappiness.
He has the wrong guy, I was flabbergasted, there’s no way, I’m going through with this madness…
“I’ll do it,” Zip volunteered, his eyes filled with a gleam of evil excitement.
“Zip,” I glanced sharply at him, “are you sure, about that?”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Zip addressed White Wolf, “I’ll cut off your pinky.”
“Thank you, my brother,” White Wolf had tears in his eye. He pitched the hatchet down into a tree stump, and placed the kitchen knife back into the coals of the fire.
He reached out and embraced Zip who disappeared under his massive arms, choked up and swallowed by his bear hug.
In my head, I was still trying to wrap my mind around White Wolf’s strange emotional metamorphosis, and how I had unwittingly, become entangled in it…
* * *
Everything had been going along normal enough, all things considered, as we had passed around a pipe and a bottle of whisky a little while earlier.
All of a sudden White Wolf had fallen to his knees and started to weep.
“Sonya!” He bellowed, “My Sonya! You are my heart and soul, I am nothing without you!”
I got really uncomfortable, and sat in silence, unsure of how to react.
White Wolf elucidated to us that Sonya was a mail order bride from Russia, who had been married to his ex-boss, a mobster whom White Wolf had eventually murdered.
For a little context, he explained that he used to work for the mob as an enforcer, cutting off people’s fingers, toes, hands, and dicks, depending on how much money they owed, and for how long.
“Sonya and I loved each other,” White Wolf shared as he stared into the inferno of fire, “but my boss abused her. So… one night, when I was alone with him, I strangled him with my bare hands,” White Wolf squeezed in the air, reliving the moment in his head.
“We were together for a while,” he reported sadly, “but now she’s left me for another man.”
“That’s horrible,” I offered sympathetically.
“Thank you,” White Wolf took another long pull of whiskey from the bottle, “she said it was because I had a drinking problem.”
That sounds about right. I held my tongue.
“I’ve taken so many lives,” White Wolf shook his head, his eyes sullen and welling with emotion, “so many pinkies…”
I could tell that we were quickly careening towards a dark, dark place.
“I need you to do me a favor.” White Wolf grasped my hand in his own, “I need you to cut off my pinky.”
“What?” I laughed as White Wolf jerked back his arm and rose to his feet.
“It’s not a joke,” White Wolf got offended, “and it’s not funny.”
“I’m sorry,” I apologized nervously, as I slowly came to terms with the fact that he was serious.
“Why do you want him, to cut off your pinky?” Zip drew his attention.
“I want you guys to send my pinky to Sonya in the mail.” White Wolf casually revealed his plans.
“No,” Zip clarified, “I meant, why did you ask, Gabe, to do it?”
“Well… he seemed like the man,” White Wolf admitted, sharing his reasoning with Zip, “I mean to be honest, I kind of thought you guys were a couple, and… with the hair… I just sort of assumed… you know…”
“Gabe, and I aren’t together!” Appalled by the suggestion that he would be with me, Zip made a point of correcting White Wolf’s mistake.
“I need you to do this…” White Wolf locked eyes with me, “you are saving my soul.”
“I mean, I’m not trying to be negative or anything,” getting antsy, I stood up, “but if we’re being honest, I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”
“Please,” White-Wolf begged me, “it’s my only chance at redemption.”
“I don’t really feel comfortable with this.” I attempted to define my boundaries.
“Why not?” White Wolf pushed me, “I can’t cut off my own finger, and I can’t send it to her myself, my prints will be all over it, this can’t get traced back to me.”
His logic wasn’t adding up.
“What are you talking about?” I quarreled with him, “That doesn’t make any sense. You’re worried about getting fingerprints on your pinky? I hate to tell you this, but your pinky already has a fingerprint on it!”
“We can wash it off with acid first.” White Wolf, had thought of everything.
I considered it for a moment and then shook my head.
“No,” I declined, “we’re all drunk, this is a terrible, terrible idea.”
“Why?” Unrelenting, White Wolf continued to pester me.
“For one thing, you’re probably going to get angry after I do it.”
“I swear on my ancestors, I won’t be mad at you,” White Wolf pledged.
“Well…” I stammered helplessly, “I just don’t think…”
White Wolf grabbed a large kitchen knife from a plastic box on a wooden shelf. He stuck the knife under the coals of the black pipe-stove in the corner of the Teepee, sending sparks flying up onto blankets of dirt that were covering old, faded carpets that were rolled out over the ground.
White Wolf pulled a hatchet out of a stump of wood.
“When the knife is ready,” White-Wolf instructed me, “line it up over my pinky and then hammer down on top of the blade with the back of the hatchet.”
“Dude,” I put him in check, “I’m not cutting off your fucking, finger!”
“You are pathetic,” White-Wolf excoriated me, “your weakness, makes me sick to my stomach…”
* * *
White Wolf released Zip from his massive arms, thrilled beyond joy, that Zip had agreed to mutilate him.
Shaking from the cold and fear, I stood powerless, watching this nightmare scene playout before my very eyes.
That’s it! I told myself, as I was having an existential meltdown, I quit!
I was tired of the constant insanity. There was no future in what I was doing. I didn’t want up grow up to be a drug addicted, alcoholic, recidivist, resident of prison. Moreover, I kept getting myself into these perilous and deranged situations, and eventually, I would stop getting lucky, and one of these deadly debacles, would lead to my undoing.
“I just have to take a quick crap,” White Wolf brought us up to speed, “I don’t want to shit myself from the pain. We’ll start, right after.”
That’s it, I decided, that’s it, that’s It! I had an epiphany, as White-Wolf ran off down a path towards an outhouse in the woods, I’m going… to fucking COLLEGE!
When we were finally alone for a second, I turned to Zip, and whispering loudly, I exhorted him.
“Are you insane?” I scolded him, “what are you doing? You can’t cut off his pinky!”
“Why not?” Zip mocked me, “White Wolf is right, you are a fucking pussy.”
“This is bad, this is very bad.” I anxiously paced around the Teepee.
Now, is our chance to run. I could hear my heart pounding in my chest.
“I can’t believe that White Wolf thought that you were the man, and that I was the bitch.” Zip drunkenly continued to ridicule me, and seemed to be blissfully unaware of the dire and horrendous jeopardy that we were in.
“Can we just get out of here, while we still can?” I begged.
“Come on,” Zip smiled deviously, “when am I going to get another chance to have this experience again? I don’t see what the big deal is?”
“Dude, White-Wolf is like totally, black-out, hammered, drunk right now. He’s going to sober up eventually,” I enlightened Zip, “and then, he’s going to wonder, what the fuck happened to his pinky.”
Zip considered what I was saying. “that’s a pretty good point,” he acknowledged, “ok, let’s scram before he gets back…”
We snuck off to the highway and kept walking all night, through the cold darkness and into daylight, before we caught our next ride.
To be Continued…