Stroll Through Memory Lane Part III: Master of Disguise
With the exception of maybe two of my friends, I was the youngest person hanging in our crew. Some were 18; most were older. That used to make going places with them such a huge pain in the ass for me. My sonar was always able to detect the words “club” and “drink” from a mile away. Those words tripped my internal alarm and very quickly let me know I wasn’t hanging for the night. Barry White always narrated my inner monologue. Don’t ask me why because I have absolutely no fucking idea why. I’d like to tell you I was making that up for comedic effect but I would be lying and The Sultan of Sensuality would never do that, baby. When full realization that I was hanging at home alone settled in, all I could say was “Baby, that’s not silky smooth”. I left it at that.
I would always hear about their nights the next morning. Never mind that it was written all over the aching faces belonging to bodies now metastasizing ungodly amounts of alcohol; tales of the previous nights’ shenanigans were re-told by sluggish braggarts with an enthusiasm that alternated in intensity between bouts of nausea and dizziness. At that point in my life I didn’t care for alcohol so tales about “legendary drinking” never impressed me.
One morning the shop was buzzing with talk of hitting up an after hours club called Sum. It opened at 2am and you needed to be 18 to enter. Already my inner Barry was muttering “Another Sweet Night Alone” when Ratmony chimed in that she could get a hold of a fake I.D. for me. She was younger than me but she had her sisters I.D. to get into clubs. I could never find someone of age who looked anything remotely like me so that I may have used his I.D. “Ratmony, you are one cool lady” said my inner Barry. For once I was going to be able to hang after-hours.
That night I rode with Willie to pick Ratmony up. I called her before we left and she assured me that she had an I.D. I could use. I was elated. My mind was already wandering into ridiculous self-imagined egocentric tales of glorious debauchery and limitless older women fawning over my charm and rendered powerless by my animal magnetism. I was already planning on how I would give my then girlfriend the speech that I had met an older woman and she planned to take care of me for life. I didn’t know what I was going to say in the speech except I planned on punctuating a few points with a “BOOYAH”. I knew my dad would approve of dating an older woman. Mom, probably not so much but given a few years and grandbabies later, she’d warm up to her. I figured it was pretty much a done deal; I was going to be fighting women off with a stick.
Ratmony hopped in the car and handed me the I.D. Quickly, all my hopes faded. The wedding bells stopped ringing, babies quit being born; my future faded quickly.
She handed her brother Vicheth’s I.D.
Maybe I never made this abundantly clear in any of my last posts but Vicheth and I looked as much alike as Laurel and Hardy. For instance, Vicheth was of Cambodian descent; I am of Latino descent. He was 5’7”; I was 5’10”. He weighed 150lbs; I was pushing 170lbs at that time. My eyes are brown; his were black as midnight. Vicheth rocked a fade; I shaved the sides of my head and had all my hair growing from the top of my skull with long blonde bangs. Ratmony might as well given me an I.D. with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it since I looked about as much as him as I did Vicheth. My inner Barry was not pleased. It was the first time inner Barry used the words “holy fucking shit” in a context that did not involve coitus. And you know what? I gotta say it: our eyes looked nothing alike. I could have smoked pounds and pounds of weed and never get my eyes to set in such a way as to give the impression that yes, I just might be of Asian descent.
Of course there was always the possibility that the bouncer at the front door would either a) not care I had a fake I.D. and let me in anyway or b) be too stupid to notice. I had that small possibility going for me. There was however one GLARING discrepancy noted on the I.D. that I didn’t know how to handle. It clearly stated that the holder of the I.D. was hearing impaired or deaf. What that meant to me was even if I could somehow convince security that this was indeed I on the I.D., I would have to play deaf to be totally convincing. I felt my heart drop through my pants down through the ground past the core of the earth where it, poetically might I add, dug it’s way to Cambodia.
I asked Ratmony politely “WHAT THE FUCK?” The answer was take it or go home. So I took it and prayed they let me in or be forced to sit in the car until 6am when the club let out. The whole time we stood in line I was sweating bullets. There was a healthy quantity of friends present and being turned away at the door would be an embarrassing affair. My inner Barry White talked to me.
Barry: Cool out brother man. It ain’t cool actin’ like a jive turkey this close to Thanksgiving.
Me: I’m trying man, really I am! But what if I get turned away from the door? What do I do then?
Barry: Young blood, just keep your self cooler than Miles Davis sippin’ a milkshake in a snowstorm and you’ll see, everything gon’ be alright.
Me: But I’m worried Barry! I’M WORRIED!!!
Barry: Listen Jack, CUT THAT MOTHEFUCKIN’ CRYIN’! Don’t make a brother slap the stupid out of you! You keep talkin’ all that yang and you gon’ get us both caught! Remember, snitches get stitches, mama didn’t raise no fool and papa was a rolling stone. Now GET IN THERE!
Me: Wow, you’re right Barry. Thanks for the pep talk.
Barry: Ain’t no thang but a chicken wang. Stay Black!
Me: Yeah you too Barry!
It was my turn in line. My inner Barry was singing the lead on Eye of the Tiger. I was ready.
I handed the bouncer my I.D. He glanced it over quickly, noticed the restriction and flipped it over to see what it was. That was when he cracked a slight grin and what may or may not have been a guffaw. He handed the I.D. back to me Very slowly he commenced talking to me while holding up 5 fingers.
Bouncer: Oooookkkkkaaayyyy buuuuudddyyyy. Ffffiiiivvvveeee doooollllaaarrrsss…
Then he pointed to the cashier to the side of me. I replied.
Me: Daaang yoo!!!
Then I gave him the thumbs up. As I turned to pay the cashier I over heard the bouncer ask one of the security guards.
Bouncer: Why would a deaf guy want to go to a rave club?
My friend Jennifer leaned over and told him
Jen: He just likes to sit on the speakers because he loves the feel of the thumping bass on his ass.
I wanted to laugh until my ribs broke but my training had paid off and I didn’t blow my cover. It took all the discipline I had instilled within me not to laugh. It was a clutch moment for me. When I got in the club the first thing I did was use the bathroom. When I was washing up I glanced in the mirror and there was Barry with his coifed locks and gold suit on. His gold chains sparkled under the low illumination of the bathroom light. He cracked a smile and shot me thumbs up. I shot him one too. We partied as though the year was 1999.
Stroll Through Memory Lane (Part II)
A long, long, long time ago my cousin Bolo became part owner of a local pizza shop. In turn he hired a shit ton (or maybe even 2 shit tons) of our friends to work there. I started working there one day after being fired from a little hellhole called Exhilirhama. I was actually fired on my day off. True story. This was before the movie “Friday” came out. One of the managers called my house and roused me out of my beauty sleep. She said I was on schedule to work and I told her “no fucking way”. She responded that if I didn’t show up I would be “terminated”. I told her there was no reason to get Arnold Schwarzenegger involved and that I knew where to find Sarah Connor.
I don’t think she liked my joke.
My cousin put in a good word for me with his business partner; a lovely man named Al. He was a gritty shit-talking curmudgeon with all the charm of a 12-gauge shotgun and a porn-stache. Al looked like someone you would peg as having no problem murdering you slowly and enjoying it. His voice sounded like his throat was lined with gravel and soaked in bourbon. He told me to come in the next morning and learn how to make the pizza dough. When I got there the next day, he hadn’t shown up yet. I went to the back where the mixer was and just started looking around. I opened the mixer and inside was what I initially thought was a cigar. It turned out to be a baseball bat of a blunt. I didn’t know what to make of it. Before I could make a decision on what to do with it, Al walked in. I was afraid he was going to think the blunt was mine so I started to explain right away that I had found it. He picked it up, looked it over and said “Damn, THAT’S where I left it!” Then he fired it up, took a few drags and handed it to me. “Ready to make some dough?” One puff and I was already starting to like this place.
Slowly many of my high school friends began working there. Vicheth was my homeboy in dough. I knew his sister Ratmony from school and from dating my OTHER cousin, Marco. Vicheth was a character. I knew he was deaf before working with him, so I was a little concerned as to how we would communicate with each other. After the first day I was no longer concerned. He could hear ever so slightly but more than that he could read lips. He taught me all the dirty words in sign language and I started teaching him how to pop-lock. If you ask me that’s a fair trade. Everyone loved him. Sometimes for shits and giggles Vicheth would answer the phones with his heavily affected voice. A couple of months later after we both moved out a from making the dough and making the actual pizzas, I went with him on a delivery. As we drove, he turned the radio on as loud as he could. The Boyz II Men song “End of the Road” was playing and with his very limited hearing ability, he began to sing the chorus to the song. It is by far one of the top 5 funniest moments of my life. He knew what he was doing. He just liked to see people laugh.
The day Al showed me how to make a pizza goes in the top 5 spot as well. He appeared to be perpetually hung over and in a bad mood so when he told me to get over there, he punctuated the sentence with a “motherfucking quickly”. When I arrived, Al had donned an apron stained with pizza sauce. He had a cigarette in his mouth that he had just lit. “Let’s make some fucking pizza” was all he said when he commenced. As he rolled out the dough he carefully explained everything he was doing. All while the lit cigarette in his mouth continued to burn. It was as though it had been surgically attached to his lips. The ash grew longer and longer and despite how much it bounced up and down from his talking, it never once broke off into the pizza. He noticed me staring and said “What the fuck is your problem?” I pointed out that his cigarette ash was dangerously close to falling off and that maybe he should ash it before it fell in the pizza. He stopped what he was doing, looked me dead in the eye and took a drag off the cigarette that brought the ash all the way down to the filter. It was cartoon like. When he finally spoke he said, “Don’t worry about the fucking ash. I’m a fucking expert!”
Indeed he was.
One of Al’s long time employees was a driver named Mark but everyone called him “Blade”. Can you guess why? He must have been in his 50’s when I met him. He was rotund, cocky and had a face that told the story of many fights. I remember one night I got a big delivery ready for him and helped him load the car. When he came back he had all the pizza still with him. Al was about to lose his shit thinking Blade was late and the customer no longer wanted the food. Instead, Blade handed Al all money due for the order and then opened a box to grab a slice. The people who ordered the food tried to rob Blade of the food. Blade, in turn, robbed them of all the money they had. He kept the rest of the money for himself and gave us 4 boxes of pizza to split amongst ourselves while he went home with “dinner for 3 nights” as he put it. If I remember correctly, Blade was originally from Brooklyn. That would explain a lot.
The actual business had been around for almost 20 years by that point, with Al owning it for the past 15. Over the years Al had built a loyal customer base and we were busy beyond belief. The pandemonium that engulfed the place was maddening at times. There were nights when we had to take the phones off the hook just so we could keep up with all the orders. I was making what for a 16 year old was a lot of money for basically hanging out with my friends and making pizza. We pushed ourselves hard though. We worked like dogs. The weekends were the busiest of course. By the end of the night we would be exhausted, drained and damn near delirious. So we did what any normal group of people would do: we got fucked up. Royally.
We partied hard those days. There was plenty of weed making the rounds. It was something almost everyone did. Pills, poppers, uppers, downers; they had their fans. Alcohol was not as prevalent but occasionally we’d have the freezer well stocked with it. Hallucinogens also had their place. It was during this time that I began and ended my very unsuccessful stint as a dealer. I just plain sucked at it. Too trusting was what it was. I fronted anyone and everyone. I also broke one of the Ten Crack Commandments, which clearly states “Never get high off your own supply”. I loved acid and mushrooms, what can I say?
I remember lying on my bedroom floor, mushrooms digesting and walls melting, when I had my first endocentric experience. The language I could use to describe it is full of silly, corny, hippy-groovy-far-out-man-words but that doesn’t detract from its truth. It was ascension to the unknown where the mind no longer made distinctions between itself and what it experienced. It was the surreptitious unseen connection of being linked to billions of other beings and not being able to grasp a sense of self-identity apart from being one with everything. It was the overwhelming and crushing cosmic love of letting the id, the self and the ego blast off to destinations unknown, never caring if they made it home. It was the affirmation of what Dr. Michio Kaku so eloquently postulated: humans as being “Music in the Mind of God”. In the context of Cartesian Dualism, it was meeting the man in the theatre of the mind and asking him how he was enjoying the show. I could have taken every beautiful moment I’d had up until that time and even if I could have somehow combined them so as to re-experience them at once, they wouldn’t have been a blip on the radar of happiness to what I was experiencing at that moment. My body lay on the floor and my mind was light years beyond the nearest galaxy. It was the warm embrace of feeling that somewhere beyond my cognitive abilities to understand and interpret logic, there was a Supreme Being that defied rationality and that Being loved me to my core.
If you don’t understand any of that, don’t worry; I don’t either.
One of my high school friends, Big Mike, was a delivery driver for us. At first he drove a little blue piece of shit car that I can’t even remember the make of. He drove it like a stuntman. The first time I ever went on a delivery with him, it made me contemplate my relationship with God and ask for forgiveness. There is no human explanation for it; we should have been dead at least a good 5 times before we made it back. We didn’t even go far. A mile or two tops. Mike was not opposed to driving on the sidewalk either. As was his style, he drove a la Ace Ventura, with his head and upper torso out of the driver’s side window. I was riding back to the pizzeria with him one night. Bolo was in the passenger seat, I was in the back and Mike was making our lives miserable from behind the wheel. He was having a blast torturing us with his driving when suddenly and very unexpectedly he hit something in the road. Almost instantly his entire face and upper torso was covered in blood and debris. For a moment, I thought he had been shot. It turned out that he had run over a possum and the force of the impact cause the innards of the possum to explode onto Mikes face. He stopped the car in the middle of the street and when the smell hit him, he puked violently. Bolo and I laughed so hard I thought we would faint from oxygen depravation. In the back of my mind, it was the Supreme Being turning the tables on Mike. I felt loved again.
Almost anyone who’s tried pot has eaten a pot brownie. We had plenty of times. It was Bolo though he took it to the next level amongst our crew. He created our first Pot Pizza. I can look back on 15 years of smoking pot and never once have I ever been as high as I was when we ate those. It was bordering hallucinogenic. Christmas night one year, Bolo had eaten almost half a whole Pot Pizza by himself and drank a six-pack of Coronas. I ate some of the pizza also. When it came time to go downstairs to open presents, Bolo told me he thought his heart was going to stop. He moved with the grace of a paraplegic cheetah. By the time we got downstairs, the pizza had kicked in for me as well. My dad demanded to know “why the fuck won’t you stop giggling?” I was so far gone; operating a doorknob was an extreme mechanical exercise. I somehow opened a present to reveal a pair of jeans. “I don’t think these are going to fit me Mom!!!”, I exclaimed. She said, “That’s because they’re for your sister dummy!!!” I laughed myself to sleep, under the Christmas tree and covered in wrappings. I know my sister has a picture of it somewhere.
The absolute highest moment from Pot Pizza was during a summer night. Mike, Bolo and I were to close up shop and head for a club called Tantric. Before going into work, Bolo and I ran into our friend Jake who occasionally sold the stuff. He said he was all out but he had some shake we could just have. He held up a bag that must have been at least a half-ounce of shake. Never ones to turn down free anything, we took him up on the offer. “We’ll just make some Pizza” Bolo said. When the night had calmed down enough, we made the pizza and split it three ways. Because Mike was never content to be on one substance at a time, he also dropped 3 hits of acid under his tongue. I was sitting on a prep table when it started to hit me. Giggling is always the first sign quickly followed by cottonmouth and a permanent smile that aches the muscles of the face. I can hear Bolo giggling; it was hitting him too. Mike comes hurtling out of the back room and passes me on the prep table. He jumps as high as his 6’4” frame will allow him and he levels out horizontally before landing in a belly flop on the hard linoleum floor. He almost ruined my high. I panicked and yelled to see if he was ok. It was then that Mike commenced to do the breaststroke while still laying on his stomach. All he said was “I’m fine man, I’m fine, I just wanted to jump in the pool.” “You do know we are still in the pizzeria, right?” I asked. “Yea and I’m so excited we got a pool in here!!!” he yelled.
We were standing at the front of the shop, minutes away from leaving for the club when the full power of the pizza hit me. It was the first and only time in my life when being high on weed actually made me scared. I thought I had fallen asleep and that I was dreaming. I kept asking Bolo “Yo man, did I fall asleep?? Am I dreaming this??” He laughed really hard for about one second and then I saw the terror come over his face too. “Oh shit man, something ain’t right” he said. We made a split second decision to forgo the club and simply go home. Mike panicked. “You guys can’t go!!! I’M TOO FUCKED UP TO DRIVE!!!” A good friend would have brought him to his house so he could have a place to stay. There were no good friends that night. Mike sat in his car, deciding whether or not to risk the ride home. It took Bolo and I almost an hour to leave the shop. We would get in the car and look inside and say something like “Yo did we turn the ovens off? I think they’re moving!” or “Did we turn on the alarm?” For almost 60 minutes we kept ourselves hostage because our minds had gone on vacation and we couldn’t’ remember the simplest of tasks being finished, even if they had been done within minutes of each other.
As we headed towards the house a lowrider called pulled up beside us. Our friend Mickey and Willie were inside. Mickey had installed a neon light on the inside of his car and it bathed everything in a brilliant blue. I turned my head to look at them and all I can recall is seeing a black guy with long dreds and glowing blue teeth and eyes sitting next to a Filipino guy with the same glowing blue eyes and teeth. I almost lost control of my bodily functions. Instead of going home, we followed them to Willie’s house, which was in the neighborhood across from mine. I can’t tell you what we talked about or how long we stayed there because my mind was never set to record at that moment. I just knew that the normal time it took me to get from Willie’s to my house was 3 minutes, tops. When we left, we didn’t get home until 45 minutes later. When we came to work the next morning, there was Mike, still sitting in his car, still fucked up, still deciding whether or not to go home. “Bitch you can’t go home, you got to work!” And with that, Mike got out of the car and started folding pizza boxes. He was back on the clock.
To be continued…
Stroll Through Memory Lane (Part I in a series)
So it’s one day into my 30th year inhabiting this planet and…so far so good. I haven’t had to kill anyone yet unlike my 29th birthday when I had to put down an ungodly amount of people due to contractual obligations. What can I say; the mob doesn’t give you any days off. With the onset of October 12, 2009, I completed a milestone in life; I made it to 30. I took some time in between shots of Jagermiester and sips of Negro Modelo to think about what I was doing 10 years ago. When I remembered, I hastily shortened the temporal intervals between shots.
At 20, I was still at the Art Institute of Houston working on my Associates Degree in Multimedia. I left high school a few years earlier, sans Diploma. SURPRISE!! I dropped out. G.E.D. in tow, I applied and was accepted to the Art Institute. Unlike high school I actually liked going. Also unlike high school I didn’t have much of a social nightlife. Most of my friends and I would get so blunted during the day that nighttimes only function was to recuperate ones self. I’d smoke myself blurry eyed. The cast of characters that made up my friends was as a motley crew of DJ’s, emcees, wanna-be porn stars and technological whiz kids all suffering from identity crisis, myself included.
Sam was an Irish cat Maui and I met while there. A former punk rock drummer turned hip-hop DJ; Sam introduced me to the awesomness that is DJ Krush, DJ Shadow and those of the same ilk. It wasn’t unusual to have about 10 heads in his bedroom where he had his turntable setup. He rigged a pair of headphones into a microphone. Those headphones would make a steady rotation amongst the people in the room, everyone trying to freestyle over the instrumentals he’d throw on. I always thought Sam was one of those people “looking for something”, as the saying goes. Sam went from being Catholic to Buddhist to Taoist to Muslim in a short time span. I remember one day while Maui and I were at his apartment that he told us he was changing his name to “Ali” in accordance with his new Muslim faith. Maui and I clowned him hard and it was the only time I ever saw him get mad. The last time I ever saw him I was dropping him off at a Mosque. I wonder what ever happened to him.
Then there was Rodney, also more famously known as Dred. Maui and I used to call him “YeaNaw” because it never failed that he would verbally juxtapose those two words in almost every sentence. It made asking him binary questions counter productive. Dred was the “hook-up” around school. Come to think of it, I don’t even think he really went to the Art Institute; he was just always there. The first time I met him he handed me a blunt that was longer than my arm. Dred also wins the distinction of having the dirtiest apartment/townhouse I have ever stepped foot in. It wasn’t uncommon for him to have piles and piles and piles of dried tobacco leaves from opened blunts just occupying the shit out of his coffee table. I used his bathroom one time to relieve myself. Instead I used it to throw up in. The place was that dirty. But he was surprisingly lucid for someone who spent most of his day smoking copious amounts of the sticky icky. He was an elusive guy. To pin him down in a single spot for more than an hour he would usually have to be comatose and even then, that wasn’t guaranteed. I’d call him a half hour ahead of time to tell him I was coming by and he would always say “YeaNaw boy, just come through”. 9 times out of 10 he wouldn’t be there when I got there. All I could do was curse his name and try again another time. I can’t recall when was the last time I saw him. A few years ago I woke up early from a hard night of drinking and the TV was already on. Right as I brought the world into focus, the news was running a story about a man who had been shot dead in his apartment who had the exact same name as Dred. I remembered one of the last times I talked to Dred, someone he knew had came into his apartment, beat him, tied him up and then robbed him of over 30lbs of Mary Jane. Even now I wonder if that was him who got killed.
Giovanni was hip-hop to the bone. He was Mr. Hip-Hop. His pants were always tucked into his boots, he carried himself with swagger and he smoked more than any of us put together. Geo, as we called him, also had a fascination with martial arts and Asian culture in general. I remember the first time I went to his apartment and noticed there were no couches or seats. It wasn’t by accident it was by design. You would remove your shoes before stepping onto the bamboo walkway and sitting down around the tea table for some sake. You would do that and you would like it or else he would pull out the katana blade he kept razor sharp and force you to change your mind. Occasionally his accent made it difficult to understand him. One day he told me his cousin was “a buu-fucka”. I said, “What the hell is a buu-fucka?” “You know man, BUU-FUCKA man, BUU-FUCKA!!!” It wasn’t until I got my Captain Crunch decoder ring that I realized he was trying to tell me his cousin was “a butt-fucker”. It was Geo’s way of telling me his cousin was gay. Lesson learned. The first time I ever tried sushi was with Geo and Maui and yes he did have to use the katana to “persuade” me to change my mind. I’m thankful now that I did because I could eat sushi all day, errrday. The last time I ever saw him he was on his way to Saudia Arabia to help design the roof to a then new soccer stadium being built. Geo was a smart cat. I hope he is well wherever he is.
Jay was…well I don’t really remember too much about him anymore. He disappeared off my radar a year after leaving AI. He was a hyper Mexican-American who was smooth with the ladies. Granted, not all the ladies were what you would consider attractive but his motto was the same as that of the 7-11 convenience store; he might not always be doing business but he was always open. He was one of two singers for his rock band that I never had the pleasure of seeing live. I heard some of the recordings that I dug but never heard it live where it matters the most. One day I saw him in the parking garage when he stopped me to regale me with a re-cap of his weekend. Nothing he said jumped out at me until he said “and then I went to this studio and auditioned to be a male porn actor”. A triple take later I asked him to repeat himself. I did not audibly hallucinate; he auditioned to work in porn. When I asked him what it meant to “audition”, he shot me a look that said it all. When I asked him what prompted him to do that, all he said was “Come on man, ITS PORN!” Case closed. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing else to consider. From that point forward all he talked about was getting his porn career off the ground. He dropped out a few months later. I don’t know what ever happened to him. For my sake, I hope he didn’t pursue his porn career. I watch porn and the last thing I want is to look at the screen and say “YO I used to go to school with him!”
Of course there was Ish, a Philadelphia transplant newly converted to Islam. Ish was one of the best emcees I knew personally. I took him to mosque one day and as he was getting out of the car, Hakeem Olajuwon was walking out and waved him to come in. I was blown away. Ish wasn’t fazed in the slightest.
Ronnie was the only Arab who I routinely mistook for Mexican. It wasn’t just the looks; it was the accent. I didn’t know his was Arab until we had a class together and I heard his last name. We were more smoke buddies than anything else. He was cool, had skills on the mic but was not someone I would call whenever I was out of school.
Our band of misfits would all hop in Geo’s car and ride to the top of the 5 story-parking garage. We would all exit the car, keep the doors open while the speakers blared the grittiest of beats and start passing blunts. One day in particular, as we were all well blazed, the security guard came out of the stairwell. We all paused mid motion. He walked towards us slowly; he had thought out what he was going to say. His walk told me he had rehearsed his speech to these “mafuckin potheadz” long before so that when the day finally did arrive he would not stutter, blank nor lose place. As he came within 5 feet of us, Geo tried to speak up. Before he could get more than a syllable out, the security guard waved him off. He grabbed the still smoking blunt out of his hand and took a long drawl off of it. As he cut off the final inhalation, his eyelids relaxed and his body posture slumped a bit. From a professional smoker at the time, you could tell this wasn’t his first time to the rodeo. He handed the blunt back, blew the smoke out of his nose and said “Ya’ll mafucka’s need to let a mafucka know when ya’ll gone be blazin’ so a mafucka can come take a hit of ya’ll”. With that, he turned on his heel and walked back to the stairwell where he disappeared as quickly as he came. We all exchanged looks, no words, and went back to finishing the rotation.
I miss those cats.
On Being Professional: The Testimony of an Oafish Drunkard.
I couldn’t remember. Was it the 3 shots of Goldshlager I had before even sitting down? Was it the shots of Jagermeister? Perhaps it could have been the shots of Patron I chased with a beer back. If anything, I’m sure the Bourbon I had didn’t help either. When you fail to eat dinner, a steady diet of alcohol will only fill the stomach for so long before it makes its exit post haste. Sitting at a table with friends, laughing, smiling, and music blaring through the speakers: it was the last clear memory I had.
My wonderment was short lived. A nano-second tops. What replaced it was the most agonizing pain I had experienced in a long time. Stirring from a drunken slumber always hurts but it’s the pain of dehydration, fatigue and pounding headaches. This was different. It was as though Prometheus himself had brought down the flame of Mount Olympus, which he then used to heat a sword to a glowing red-hot, and then impaled it into each of my hamstrings. My muscles cramped with such ferociousness I felt as though my legs would retract back into my body. I tried with all my might to holler the most visceral scream I could muster. My throat was dry and my scream came out like cheap speaker cackling to life. The pain forced my eyes open. The blurriness waned and my visual clarity returned messages to my brain such as “Where the fuck am I?” and “Whose room is this”. It was 2003 and although I had spent years upon years dabbling with other substances with which to alter the mind, I was a novice drinker. A plebe.
I drank only once in high school. It was near the end of the school year and my girlfriend at the time had bought us matching shirts to wear (I know, I know) when we went to our friend’s house for a party. Trying to keep up with the Jones’ was a bad move. Before that day, I never had a drop of alcohol. On that day, I drank 2 full forty-ounce malt liquor bottles, Mickey’s and Old English respectively. Noticing my pending need to expel the foul elixir from my stomach, my girlfriend and friend Roger helped me to the backyard. One step out the patio and I threw up all over my friends pet rabbit he had in a cage outside. A few more steps and I managed to throw up on another one of my friends who had passed out in the backyard. Finally, I was far from everyone except my girlfriend who was instructing me to stick my head out when I puked again. It didn’t register in time. All I could say was “Shorry” and then hang my head while I puked all over the shirt she had just bought me that day. What can I say? I’m classy like that. My friends threw me in the car and drove me home. Pops wasn’t home yet so I was hoping to sleep it off. When he came home, he ordered me awake so I could go cut the grass. I pleaded. He clenched his fist. I went to mow the lawn. It took me hours to mow because I kept stopping to vomit. When I finally finished, I sat down on the bench outside for a few minutes. My dad came outside and took a sip from his cup. I wanted to cry but there was no moisture left in my body. “What’s the matter son? Can’t hold your liquor?” I looked at him dumbfounded. Of course he knew. “You probably get that shit from your moms side. My family can drink like fish.” No shit, my grandfather (his dad) died a whole ten years before I was even born because he drank like a fish. “Looks like you won’t be pulling that drinking shit again for a long time, right?” I nodded my head with weak neck muscles. He handed me the cup of ice-cold water and I didn’t drink another drop of alcohol for a long time.
When I did drink alcohol, it was only beer. I hadn’t graduated to liquor. Didn’t want to, to be honest. It just wasn’t my thing. And then 2003 dawned on humanity and my liver has never been the same. Kelli and I have been together for 4 and a half years as of this writing but we’ve known each other for about 14 years. She’s met some of my girlfriends and I’ve met some of her boyfriends. The night in question I had gone out with her and a guy she had just started dating. As cool as Joe was, it was as if someone set the dim switch to low illumination when it came to his intellectual prowess. It was as though his mind ran on a 7-minute delay. It was almost amazing. Almost. Despite that though, Joe was a cool person. He didn’t say much and I’m sure Kelli liked it that way. He was built like a brick shit house. I made an off the cuff comment about how guys only get that big in jail. He said he just got out after doing a 3-year stint for armed robbery. I was joking. He wasn’t. “So, how long ago did you get out?” I quipped. “About oh, I don’t know…maybe 3 weeks ago?” he said. “This should be an interesting night,” I thought to myself.
We made our way to the club, blazing a Sherlock pipe packed with the stickiest of the icky. I had 2 beers in me and at that time, it was enough to give me a great buzz. Nothing aggressive. It was a buzz that cleared the mind (or clouded, depending on which soapbox you’re standing on) and lifted the weight of stress off the shoulders. As soon as we strolled in, we each bought a round of Goldschlagger. After 3 rounds, we found a table with some friends. The numbers go out the window right there. It was just a blurry haze of clanking shot glasses, shouting braggarts claiming to possess indestructible drinking powers and a constant harassment of the shot girl to “BRING MORE SHOTS!!! WOOOOOO!!!”
The scenery changes so quickly. It adds to the shock and confusion of being in massive amounts of pain. Just whose fucking room was I in? Why was I missing my dress shirt? OMG IS THIS BLOOD ON MY UNDER SHIRT? I checked myself for my keys, cell phone and wallet. A combination of moves I would form into a routine from that point on whenever I would wake up in unfamiliar surroundings. As my hamstrings ceased their cramping and my mind began to regain focus I did the next logical thing I could think of: open the only door in the room I was in. As I shuffled out of the room, I finally realized where I was. Kelli was just getting out of bed. Joe was still passed out. I put on the saddest puppy dog eyes I could and meekly asked “What…. what happened?” I saw Kelli cycle through her emotions as she quickly went over the events of last night in her head. She was looking for a place to start. The first words out of her mouth were “You owe me, BIG TIME”. She then asked me what was the last thing I remembered. I recounted. She face palmed herself. I started to feel a glimmer of guilt settling in.
Sometime after my last memory I informed everyone at the table that I had to go drain the lizard. I told you I was classy. Kelli said that was at about 10pm. I disappeared until closing time, which was 2am. I had pulled a Saddam Hussein: no one could find me. It wasn’t until the club let out that Kelli and Joe spotted me propping myself up against a wall, checking out the ladies whilst making catcalls and gyrating my hips. They asked me where I had gone. I told them I didn’t know. That’s another 4 hours of my life that are a complete mystery to me. I could have been abducted by aliens or could have made love to the only living dinosaur and I would never be able to recall. I like to think I was busy getting Salma Hayek pregnant but whatever. Kelli and Joe grab me and guide me to her truck where I am then ceremoniously tossed into the back cab. We pull away and start heading back home. Not far from the club Kelli and Joe are passing the Sherlock back and forth when I interject that I too would like to partake. I took one hit. It’s always just that one hit, you know? It could be the first one or the thirteenth one but it’s always ONE hit that puts you over the edge. Unfortunately for Kelli, the only thing going over the edge was all the alcohol I had just drank. And much like my high school experience, I didn’t stick my neck out when I finally puked. I got myself all over my button up shirt. Why can’t I ever remember that? Somehow over the blaring music, Kelli hears my lurching. By this time I am slumped over in the back seat, pipe resting on my chest. She pulls over on a rather busy freeway to the shoulder and stops the truck. Her and Joe jump out and open the door to the back cab. She yells at me to get out of the tuck and I ignore her. She then yanks me out. My poor attempt at standing up was rapidly compromised by the natural force of gravity. I hit the ground like a bunker buster, bringing the pipe along with me. Kelli manages to remove my dress shirt. Motorists honk their horns as they pass the spectacle on the side of the road. She wipes off the excess vomit from the back of her truck with my shirt. Kelli and Joe then double me over the guardrail so I can continue puking.
During the entire episode, I had only one moment of clarity. One moment that came back to me while Kelli was narrating. It was looking over the guardrail and looking at the drop. I was hanging there and all I could hear was Joe repeating over and over “BE PROFESSIONAL MAN!!! BE PROFESSIONAL!!!” I didn’t know what the fuck that meant. Kelli relayed to me that soon after he yelled that to me, Joe took off on foot down the side of the freeway. Another motorist pulled over to help Kelli get me in the truck. Joe came back before Kelli left. What was his explanation for leaving? He was afraid of going back to jail. That the cops would eventually see the greatest sideshow on earth and decide we could all use some time in the drunk tank. Except Joe was a recently released felon. So, that kind of explains that.
Getting back to the apartment complex, we had to park kind of far from the actual apartment. What would take a normal human being about 2 minutes to complete, it took us approximately half an hour to get me from truck to bed. I insisted on walking myself. It’s unfortunate that due to the increased spinning of the earth that I could not balance myself. So we did the next best thing: I walked/goose-stepped my way towards the general direction of the apartment with Joe holding onto my belt from the back of my pants, keeping me on course. It wasn’t pretty and Joe joked about walking his new Mexican dog (editors note: I am not Mexican). We enter the apartment. I am thrown in the spare bedroom and fall into the deepest of slumbers.
It was just then that I walked with Kelli to her truck to inspect the damage. It was like arriving at a cold crime scene. My shirt was in the bed of her truck; the back seats still needed cleaning. Kelli folded her arms and again repeated, “You owe me, BIG TIME”. Indeed, I did.
There was no real damage done that night. No one was hurt. No one went to jail. No lives were lost. Aside from some puke and shenanigans, it was a good night. It was, however, the first time since high school were I thought, “You know, this drinking thing might not be for me”. It’s a terrible thing to be a sloppy drunk. It’s even worse when you burden other people into taking care of your sloppy ass because you’re too far gone and leaving you alone just might lead to grave consequences.
I remember years and years ago sitting in a car with my cousin Bolo in the drivers seat, my friend Steven in the passenger seat, my friend Miguel sitting to my left in the back. We had just left a graduation party. Steven was ripped and so was Miguel but their respective demeanors were polar opposites. Steven was sloppy, hanging onto people and in general being an annoying prick. Miguel was faded too but he was sitting with a small group of girls, talking only when he had to and restraining every drunk mans urge to talk about tits. He kept his cool. He never let on to just how faded he really was. He was just there to have a good time and not get in anyone’s way.
As we all sat in the car, Steven would stick his head out of the window every couple of minutes to puke his heart out. He was sloppy, talking about his ex girlfriend and how much he loved her and why didn’t she love him. He cried and cried and indirectly begged for some validation. Miguel tapped Bolo on the shoulder to unlock his door. “Why?” Bolo asked. “I gotta puke too man. I’ll be good right after man.” Bolo unlocked his door and Miguel leaned out to do his deed and he wretched almost as violently as Steven. When he finished, he wiped his mouth with some napkins he had brought in his pocket and then threw them out. He sat back up and he was completely back to normal. It was as though he sobered up. The reality of it was he was still drunk. He just didn’t make a big deal out of it. He took care of himself and even cleaned up after himself. He didn’t become an emotional blubbering mess of a man. He was just drunk and enjoying himself. He never lost his cool and when he felt something amiss, he politely asked to be helped out.
Miguel was being professional.
After that night with Kelli and Joe, I remembered Miguel. I decided that if I was going to drink, at the very least I needed to act more like Miguel and less like Steven. I needed to be professional. The reality of it is when you are dealing with alcohol; “being professional” is difficult to strive for if you don’t know your limits. Being professional ultimately means knowing your limits and sticking to them when it comes to alcohol. It’s not like I never had a sloppy ass drunk night ever again. It’s just that when I do feel myself going that way, I repeat the mantra in my mind over and over again “Be professional, be professional, be professional”.
And as for owing Kelli “BIG TIME”? Well I paid her back. The following weekend it as my turn to take care of her. We went out knowing that I would stay sober for the night while Kelli got as drunk as she wanted to. When it was all said and done, she must have had 7 double shots of Goldshlagger. As I drove her truck down the I-10 freeway, Kelli signaled to me that she had to puke. I put the blinker on and started towards the shoulder of the freeway. She waved me off, telling me to keep driving. Maybe she wasn’t going to puke after all. Instead, she lowered her window all the way, grabbed her hair into a pony tail and stuck her head out of the window while she lurched all over the side of the truck at 70mph. As she hung her head out the window, another truck pulled up along side her and the driver lowered his window. He flashed me the horned hand and let out a “WOOOOOOOOO!!!” so loud I could hear it over the whipping wind. I flashed him one back and he drove off. Kelli wiped her mouth with some napkins she kept in the glove compartment. She looked at me, dreary eyed but relieved. She smiled and then she gave me the thumbs up. She was such a professional.
Come to think of it, that might be the story of how I fell in love with her. Maybe…
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That title was a poor attempt at humor about my recent excursion into web developing derring do’s. AND YOU STILL LAUGHED AT IT! That’s just down right fucking silly. Stop it. JUST KIDDING YOUR LAUGH MAKES ME WIGGLE MY TOES!!!
Uhm…Ahem…yeah….
I haven’t typed shit in over a month. That’s due in part to the anomaly of having plenty to write about, starting a blog and having your mind go out for a space walk without a jetpack. Does that even make sense? I don’t know but I do know it’s the truth! After an awesome summer spent tubing, drinking, boating, drinking, floating, drinking, grilling, drinking, laughing, drinking, well…you get the idea…my favorite time of year is beginning and new opportunities have come along with it. I’m at a new job that I really enjoy. Getting back into the whole Web Design/Developing world I tried to leave behind a few years ago. I’m actually coming up with a theme for this blog right here. I’m hoping to have it up by next week. But if I don’t, let’s pretend I never said that, ok? ::Fist Bump:: Good talk.
I’ve started freelancing as well. It’s been a great experience. I really feel like I’m gaining some confidence with my work and delving into territory that could potentially give me a boost in the future. And the future is awesome because I have a Flux Capacitor, so I would know. Don’t believe that bullshit about it being so bright that you’re gonna need shades. Someone actually finds the dimming switch on the sun so the future is actually quite pleasant. The pressure of deadlines can be overwhelming at times but I find myself most creative when under the gun. A little Jesus Juice doesn’t hinder the process either. Sometimes my Goblet of Rock runneth over.
And wouldn’t you know it, after getting some affairs in order and finally settling into my new schedule, my mind came back from that space walk. It saw some CRAZY SHIT! If it had a blog, it would tell you all about it. But it doesn’t, so there; I win, you lose! AGAIN! When are you ever going to learn? This is getting too easy.
Look kid, I’m glad we could have this little chit chat. Your moms been thinking that maybe you need therapy but I keep telling her that I can talk some sense into you. And if not, I can beat that shit into your brain, no problemo! So, how we gonna do this then? The easy way? OR THE UNPOSSIBLE WAY? Yes, unpossible is a word. Look it up. Just not on Google. If it asks you “Did you mean Impossible?“, you tell Google to shut its stupid mouth. God that guy thinks he knows everything. If everything I’ve said has fallen on deaf ears, then just remember this; never trust a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her chest, never play poker with a man who’s got a famous city for a first name, and never ever under any circumstance whatsoever, never squeeze the Charmin.
Good talk. I’ll be back later this week with an update.
The Foodie Blues (Part I of III)
When I finally left my parents home, it was with a limited skill set. The few things I could do that would benefit me in my journey to self-sufficiency were a hodge-podge of ridiculous talents. I could play guitar, which was awesome. I could breathe on my own. There’s that. I could iron my clothes. (At this point, I want to send a shout out to my friend Sammy, who schooled me in the ways of the “Pimp Crease”. I will never forget that.) I could moon walk, pop lock, play Xbox and PS2 while designing a website. And that was about it. It’s not like my mom and dad didn’t try to hammer some actual skills into my mind. We’ll just chalk that up that deficiency to low memory retention with a brain at maximum memory capacity coupled with the side affects of street pharmaceuticals. It was a miracle I even spoke English instead of a cacophony of beeps and whistles.
So I left and went to live with Kelli, my awesome girlfriend. Back at home, mom always made breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was divine. I love my mothers cooking. And those times when she couldn’t make a meal because of work, well I’d just mosey my ass on down to the local bastion of late night eating; Jack in the Box. But now I wasn’t home. So with my naivety born anew, I just figured Kelli would handle that. I knew she could cook. Before we became a couple, her and I, along with our friend Kristen would meet up every Monday night at Kelli’s apartment for our weekly intake of Jack Bauer’s slap happy self on “24”. I think it was after a few bottles of wine (I know, wine and torture go together well) that someone came up with the bright idea of each of us making a meal for our group and that we would rotate those responsibilities each Monday. Kelli made a badass chicken and stuffing casserole with mushroom soup. I can’t remember what Kristen made but I do remember it being delicious. And then it was my week. I totally forgot to mention to them: I can’t cook. The best I could do was maybe making everyone some scrambled eggs and throwing some bread in a toaster. Or heat up leftovers.
I looked at some of my mom’s cookbooks. SHIT! All the stuff I thought about making looked overly complicated. I couldn’t even boil fucking water and these cookbook assholes wanted me to “reduce chicken stock by half” in a “saucepan”. And what the fuck was up with all this goddamn math? I hate…no, LOATHE fractions. I would rather be tasked with drowning bags of kittens for the mob than do math. What the hell is “medium-high” heat? THERE IS NO SETTING ON MY STOVE FOR THAT! “Bring to a boil then simmer”. HOW MOTHERFUCKER? HOW DO I DO THAT?!?! No one told me to buy “stock” in chicken or beef but these recipes kept calling for it. Though there were simple things that perhaps in retrospect I could have pulled off, I couldn’t just show up with fucking macaroni and cheese. “Hmmm David, this macaroni and cheese is sooo good! I can still taste the cardboard box it came in! And thanks for not melting all the cheese. I LOVE CLUMPS!” I had to come correct.
So I went and bought dinner from Las Rosas Mexican restaurant. Cooking: 1, David: 0
I didn’t think much of it after that. 2 weeks later, that season of “24” ended and I missed having another coronary by the grace of Fox’s TV schedule. But judgment day was drawing nigh. I should have heard the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse trotting down my driveway. I still remember that day. Blissfully sitting on the couch flipping through the channels with a nice beer buzz tingling my face. “THAT’S IT!” was all I heard before she threw her hands up in exasperation. See, little did I know but the truth was not so much that Kelli got tired of cooking as much as she got tired of ME not cooking. “You’re going to learn how to cook! I can’t drive an hour and a half in traffic with assholes, come home at almost 7pm and STILL have to make dinner for both of us!” So I said “Well who’s going to show me how to cook, GENIUS?” (Actually, I didn’t call her genius. I like not having a knife in my crotch.) There was no real answer other than to call her so she could tell me how to cook something. I might as well have been doing surgery via telegraph.
If there were one word I could use to sum up how well that idea worked, it would be “Fuckshit”. It was the only word I uttered during what I deemed my sensationally bad “trial and error cooking hour”. I think the first night I tried to cook, I was tasked with cooking chicken in a pan and macaroni and cheese (yes the poetic coincidence of it made me chuckle.) So I turned the stove on, put the skillet on the burner and without waiting any time at all, I threw the chicken in the pan. Did I mention I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer that morning? I forgot to mention that to Kelli. I waited a few minutes. Nothing. Not even a sizzle. So I turned up the heat. BOO-YAH, a few seconds later I was cooking (ZING!) As time elapsed, I grew more and more worried as to how long I should cook each side for. I flipped the chicken. And then growing more worried, I flipped again. A half hour later that chicken had flipped more than Mary Lou Retton. And it was STILL frozen. The outside was looking badass. Just like they did in the cookbooks. But with each turn and drop, the pan resonated with a single sound: Clunk. I might as well have been cooking rocks. And being that I am a scientist (i.e. not a scientist) concerned with matters on a galactic scale, it never really occurred to me that the outside of the chicken would cook faster than the inside of the chicken. So I never really turned the heat back down. “Fuckshit”. At least it looked well made. I read the directions on the box of macaroni. “Bring to boil then simmer”. Jesus. So I turned the stove up to 11, threw in 4 coffee cups of water (oh man that shit still makes me laugh) and then set sail for the seven seas of cheese. Eventually the water boiled. I clicked my heels. All was right with the world. I opened the top of the box and without looking, poured its contents into the pot. When the pouch containing cheese fell into the pot, it created a tsunami of hot water too grand for it to contain. So it splashed on my arms and chest. And that’s kind of the story of how I punched my first hole in the wall of our apartment.
“Fuckshit”.
I did my best to recover. I boiled the macaroni for 10 minutes like the box commanded me to do. I must have glanced over the part that talks about stirring occasionally. When it came time to drain, almost half of the macaroni was stuck to the bottom of the pot. I scrapped the bottom of the pot like a pothead scraping the last remnants of resin in his pipe’s bowl (and if that sentence doesn’t win some type of award, I’ll be sad). “Fuckshit”. I cut open the pouch of cheese and stirred as fast as I could. After I was done, I had what on the surface appeared to be an awesome dinner. The chicken looked great and the macaroni looked like, well, macaroni. When Kelli came home, she looked impressed. She gave me a hug and a kiss. I had been a good boy. “It looks great”, she said. She let out a sigh of relief. What followed, however, was anything but relief. I don’t possess the skills to adequately describe the look on Kelli’s face when she attempted to dig her fork and knife into the chicken, only to be abated by its still semi frozen state. She cycled through her emotions quickly and looking at her face was like watching the seasons change in fast forward. Snow, rain, thunderclouds, hail, wind and oppressive heat: I was watching the forecast on her face: 50% chance of forgiveness, 50% chance of PAIN. I made a mental note of where her knife was currently positioned.
Turned out to be a mix. She gave me the “at least you tried” talk and a stiff punch to the arm. We kind of chuckled about it later when we had to order dinner. Back to my durrrhhhhh state of mind, I figured that would be that last time she would ask me to cook.
Cooking: 2, David: 0.
Just what are the limits to how stupid can one human being be? I’m not one for speculation but I’d like to think I have vigorously tested and over stepped those boundaries with gusto. I’d like to think that because I’m stupid. See? Always testing. My trial by fire was far from over. I can’t recall what I tried to make next. Or even what I had tried to make after that. What continued though was my penchant for doing things the wrong way and Kelli’s patience wearing thin. “This whole situation is a Fuckshit”, I said. “What the hell is a Fuckshit?” she asked. I forgot I was the only one who made up words in this apartment. Jamblowski.
It was a long time. A long time before I got comfortable with measurements, knife skills, sautéing, broiling, boiling, simmering, seasoning, baking and all that good shit. I can’t remember the first meal I made that actually came out the way I had planned but I do remember thinking to myself “This is what Barry White must feel like when he finishes one of those sexy ass songs”. For a moment, I felt like the Barry White of cooking. Women within a 10-foot radius would instantly become pregnant. Vasectomies would be reversed. I’m pretty sure all I got right was chicken.
To be continued…
The Greatest Gig Evar!
June – 1993
I was sitting on my bed trying to remember where I had put my shoes. Everything else was good to go. Walkman? Check. Fresh batteries? Double check. Bootleg copies of AC/DC, Guns and Roses, U2, Black Sabbath and Nirvana? Check. But where the hell where those damn shoes? I momentarily considered going barefoot. After calculating how much running around I would do (i.e. a shitload), I reconsidered and the shoe hunt began anew. It wasn’t until I checked under the living room table, where our new puppies loved to hide things, did I find them. This is what Hermes must have felt like finding his winged sandals. I was finally ready to play the greatest gig ever.
I double timed it to my room to get my gear. I looked at my aluminum bat and tried to supress a smirk. Remembering how I graduated from air guitar to broom sticks to rulers to finally an aluminum bat my father had bought me in hopes of sparking an interest in playing baseball. Sorry dad. Just a few years prior I was sitting in the living room of our New York home, strumming on a guitar my dad had bought but never played. It was never in tune and I didn’t know the first thing about guitar other than I looked sooo fucking cool holding one. I mean really, I was King Shit on Turd Island. I would stand in front of the mirror miming what I felt was a kick ass performance of “La Bamba” and then I’d slow things down for the ladies by playing/miming “Donna”. Even though there were technically no ladies wooing for me, I always felt it would be good practice for when it did happen.
But that guitar never made the trip with me to Guatemala. So I settled for a red and grey aluminum bat as my new stand in. It had been 2 years since I arrived. 2 long, strange, awesome, shitty years. When you go from living in the great metropolis that is New York City to a Central American country at the tail end of a near 30 year long civil war, you’ll find your 11 year old mind totally fucked with. Culture shock doesn’t begin to describe the feeling of being shuttled from one extreme to another. It was a blitzkreig of the unfamiliar. 2 years and I was just getting used to Guatemala and all her quirks. My parents had told me earlier that day we were going back to the United States. Notice how I didn’t say New York? That’s a story for another time…
My father had bought 2 small, small houses in a new subdivision on the side of a mountain. There were no phone lines, no cable, no gas, and barely any electricity and running water. The 2 homes were propped up against one another. My dad knocked a hole in the wall of both of them so we could just walk between houses without having to go outside. I always noticed on the trip home that looking from the backseat, I had a spectacular view. So one day with little effort, I climbed to the roof of our one story home and once again, I could take in the view. Directly to my south, the shanty homes of a nearby town peppered the land. Extending past that you could see Guatemala City, a more modern place than the nearby towns, punctuated with tall buildings and cleaner landscapes. Beyond that laid another mountain range with it’s peaks prodding clouds. To my south east lay Lake Amatitlan. From where I stood, it shimmered a celestial blue. And at it’s base stood a volcanoe. There are no views like this in New York that I had witnessed. It was humbling.
My roof had now served as my stage. Days on end I would make the climb on top of the roof, bat and walkman in tow. And I would play to the townspeople, to the mounatins, to the lake and to the volcanoe. And you know something? I never got booed. Not once. I laid waste to packages of batteries trying to keep up with the demands for encores and back to back gigs. But this time, it would be even more special. It would be my last gig in Guatemala. And I had planned on a spectacular send off. The night before, I got a bootleg copy of Steve Vai’s “For The Love of God”. That day, I knew exactly where in my setlist I would stick that in. The sun was beginning it’s descent. It was showtime.
I scaled the side of the house, using the outside pila to help me ascend to the roof. Wow, the place was packed. Some of the houses nearby already had their lights on. It was like people in the audience had already started lighting their lighters to wave in the air. “¡¡¡Buenas Noches Quierida Guatemala!!!”. As the crowd roared I hit play on my walkman. I opened with a blaring rendition of “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC. Since I was the only member of my band I also had to double as the vocalist. And Brian Johnson didn’t seem to mind me singing along with him. I mimicked Angus Young’s on stage theatrics, running from one end othe roof to the other, wildly contorting my body while wailing away on the aluminum bat. I opted for an AC/DC collage of songs and did everything from “Dirty Deeds” to “Highway to Hell”. The crowd loved it. By now the sun was gone and all that was left was the light from houses down below and away. They swayed side to side in unison as I, once again, slowed things down for the ladies and played “Sweet Child O’Mine” by Guns and Roses. I don’t know why people think Axl Rose is such an asshole. He let me sing their whole “Appetite for Destruction” album along with him and he didn’t seem to mind. This was turning out to be a really long set. I drank down a glass of water my roadie/mom had brought out to me. When she asked “How long before you come down?”, I responded with “Just a couple more songs mom”. I don’t know if she really ever knew what the fuck I was doing up there but she was probably content that I was near home. I decided to liven things up a bit and played “Eruption” by Eddie Van Halen. Next up was “Iron Man” quickly followed by “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and then “Panama”. I patted my forehead dry and took another drink from my goblet of rock. I was catching my breath, preparing for my grand finale.
When the crowd finally settled down, I played the opening notes to “For The Love of God”. I closed my eyes and arched my back as each note rang out smoothly. I let the wind hit me. It was like I was in a rock video. I mimicked the spastic facial contortions I had seen so many guitar players do in videos. Each note sang outward like a thousand celestial voices. As the song built momentum, I would play to each one of them individually; the town, the mounatins, the volcanoe and the lake. The digits of my left hand moved wildly trying to keep up with the frenzied crescendo of the song. And right at the end, as the last note of the song soars straight into the stratosphere, I fell to my knees and winced as though every ounce of my being was being rocketed towards the unknown. And when the tape player stopped, I opened my eyes and ears. And it was silent. A roaring silence. Not even the crickets chirped. And for all my pretending and preening and posturing, at that moment I realized I was just a boy with a bat and a walkman. And it was the greatest feeling in the world. Hell, I wasn’t even a guitar player. But more than any other time in my life since then, I knew the boy on that roof would never age. I knew this body would grow old and the world around me would change constantly. But that kid, he’s still here. And he can play a wicked aluminum bat.
I climbed down off the roof. There were no calls for encore. Everything I wanted to say, I just had. “Que Dios Les Bendiga!” I said before finally getting on the ground. And the first person I saw when I got down was my mom. And she clapped. It was deafening. I think she knew. I put the bat away, said good night to my parents and sister, grabbed the puppies and headed to my bedroom.
On my 13th birthday, my dad bought me my first actual guitar. And even though there were no roofs left to climb, my life was never the same after that day.
What am I getting myself into?
Jesus, I did it.
I really did it.
I’m starting a blog.
