Heavy Lifting

I’d been reading some of my old, say, 2007 era writings, and it actually occurred to me that the reason why I haven’t been producing those strange disjointed essays about everything from drinking to treason to smashing pumpkins in the street. Actually, this realization, this moment of clarity, came when I was rolling around in a puddle of Heineken in the middle of a suburban road at 4:33 AM (eastern time) bleeding out of multiple ports and yelling that I was the Lono. It was after some horrible and misguided attempt to navigate a poorly known and loosely trucked skateboard down towards the beach to search for narwhales and fight Vikings, or some such thing. Bad craziness.

And it all started with us chugging vodka and playing free pool at some downtown joint with strange girls from New Mexico (or Mexico, not that there’s much of a difference, but god help you if you pick the wrong one). They kicked us out due to excessive noise and gambling. So we came flying out of there and into a drive-thru liquor store at high speed demanding mescaline and as much Chivas as they could spare. The teller was firmly against this. She tapped her watch and said distractedly, “No can do me Amigos”.

I casually rolled down the backseat window and instinctively grabbed her by the wrists.

“Damn your protocol! Can’t you see this is an emergency!”

I then pointed at our driver and shook the limp liquor store teller firmly. Her eyes were darting around the store, looking for an exit from this band of lunatics.

I said: “That woman’s an Aztec Voodoo princess. She’ll curse you for many moons. She needs that Chivas.”

“No!” the Teller gargled, “You’re all depraved. I can’t be cursed. I’m a Protestant!”

I laughed terribly and threw my cigar at her greasy teller window. Anna screamed when it exploded into a circus of burning universes.

“You fool! The Christians eat their young. This is a true Aztec! Give us our booze or the next thing you’ll know you’ll be parading through the streets of Ciudad Obregon as small Mexican children bean you with fish heads.”

I let her go of her wrists and she went whirling back into her market, waving at her hair as if I’d lit it aflame. We all sat quietly in the car.

“Do you think that’ll work?” the Voodoo Princess’s friend asked.

“Of course it will,” I said quietly.

It could. It must. We were on a rage now. Searching for truth, turning over any rocks in our path, we were patriots. And a good three minutes passed with no sign of the teller. I imagined the poor women running out an emergency exit, jogging down US1 screaming wildly about voodoo and drunken lunatics.

But just as we were about to give up, she came babbling back to the window with an arm full of vodka, Chivas and some assorted Heineken. She flung the window open and proceeded to throw the bottles at us.

“Get out of here you fiends!” she yelled, “You’ve taken all that I have and I never want to see that Mexican gypsy again.”

I leaned carefully out of my window again and said: “When the weird gets going, the weird turn pro.”

She heard none of it. The teller slammed the window and turned all of the lights off. I imagine she’s still on the floor of that place, sitting in the dark and clutching a large handgun. She’s probably always there screaming about Mexican gypsies and bad apples.

But so much for that. We proceeded to blast back over the bridge without remorse. Counting stars, collecting there names as witnesses to be used at a later trial date, and yelling at both the saltwater and our fears. We subdued both on that drive home. And then we crashed that little Volvo to a stop in the thick grass of my front lawn. From there: lots of nudity, Indian ceremonies and a mighty drinking of vodka in a luke-warm jacuzzi. Love is battlefield.

And yet, that’s all secondary, what I really remember from that night was rolling around in the street, howling about lost dreams and tides that were too high, bleeding tremendously (mainly out of my wrist and knee) and thinking how common this felt. I used to write about these nighttime extravaganzas with such zeal because they were generally unique. Now it’s just another Tuesday night in Fat City. But maybe what’s more accurate, what really cuts to the bone, is that I used to write about these things mainly when they occurred in a new environment. It’s my reactions to new places (like an over-stimulated science experiment) that seems to cause (at times) readable art. I’ve been burning hard on both ends lo this past year, but I’ve been doing it in stasis.

And that, dear reader, is why I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been enjoying my consistency while plotting for wild and unpredictable inconsistency. And consistency, for all its virtues, is by no means interesting. These scenes, these images of a fast shimmering life have been constant lately. It’s been a wild ride in the City between The Ocean and The River. But what I need, what I want, to create some truly good writing, to establish something, is to take this show on the road.

Here’s the core of the issue. I haven’t been able to understand yet which character I am in Revolutionary Road. Am I Dicaprio’s character, falsely ambitious and deceptively content in my ways, or am I Kate Winslet’s character, falsely content and desperately seeking the dream of explosive alternative reality? A heavy quarter century thought, and one that I will, in the end, have only one way of thinking through.

But enough of that, for now anyway, on this late night with these dead fireflies.

About a week ago we (and when I say we, I mean this various but generally solid core crew of misfits that goes by the name of The Wolfpac, but is known, in some circles, as the Enablers, the Vertigos, the Too Much Fun Club, or, simply, Do Not Admit) were discussing the merits of jumping into a pool. Not just into a pool, but off a roof. And not just off of a roof, but through a screen. And not just off of a roof and through a screen, but a running start off of a roof where we’d then have to clear about seven feet of metal in order to drop kick a re-enforced screen and careen drunkenly eleven more feet into the deep end of a shallow pool.

We were in the ether at this point, but our gracious house host laughed casually along with us. Then he went inside to prepare another round of heavy drinks. When he came back out, arms full of fuel, he found us on the wall leading to his roof in various stages of climbing culture. I was using the air conditioning as a boast to get to his screened in porch. I was going to make that impossible jump. We all were.

And so he came out with saucer eyes, dropped the drinks, and said: “Jesus Christ, you maniacs! I didn’t think you were serious!”

Oh yes, my friend, we are serious. I am the Lono.