Wild Ones

“         Ch’yea mon, ain’t no DUI laws on the island.” Is a phrase that resonates through my brain like a chamber orchestra in a cathedral. I can still see the Scooter Rental Clerk’s face in my head as he told me this fun fact about Bahamian legislature with a big smile. He was young, maybe 19 and obviously blazed on what might have been a better choice for that morning than the gin and tonic I was practically sweating out of my pores from the night before. Freeport, Bahamas was the first stop on the Carnival Cruise my longtime childhood friend and I decided to take for a summer vacation. I had no idea that the next few hours would be some of the strangest I have ever experienced.

The day started off great, as so many do before disaster rears its ugly head like a desert python. Greg and I rented scooters because we figured it would be a fun way to see the first island we would visit in the five day cruise. No lines for tour buses, no taxis taking us to gift shops covered with plastic flamingos and t-shirts made in china. No tourist bars filled with more douchebags than a Planned Parenthood stock room. We wanted real. We wanted one hundred percent, unadulterated, real-life, Bahamas. How dangerous could a scooter be? I kept thinking to myself. I had ridden a motorcycle before and this was much more simple. After-all the scooters were for tourists like us. I was sure there had been a million dumbass Americans just like us who had climbed their fat asses onto the back of those godforsaken machines and made it back to port 100% unscathed before the boat left.

“You realize that the whole place could be like Rucker Park? It could literally be one giant ghetto with a beach and a gift shop.” Greg laughed at the idea of us rolling through a tough neighborhood on brightly colored motorscooters, sporting flip flops and sunscreen. Not to mention Greg is a seven foot tall red headed giant. “I don’t care.” I replied, feeling like a strong mix of Hunter S. Thompson and Steve Zissou. “If that is what the Bahamas is, then I want to drink 40s and smoke blunts outside a local gas station. I want to learn how the locals live.”

So off we went on our 180cc motor scooters smelling strongly of various liquors from the lobby bar on the ship and into the sun of a warm Bahamian day. The island’s architecture had a ranging combination between run down shops and buildings that looked like they were built in the late 70s, with of course the occasional rusted-out factory/plant. 

 In true form, Greg rode 15 under the speed limit in the fast lane while we both sloppily adjusted to the new “drive on the left side of the road” rule that the scooter rental guy also mentioned enthusiastically as we sped into the distance. Every few minutes I would have to turn around and scream “Keep up with traffic!” or “Be careful”! to Greg, as angry Bahamians sped past us in their dust covered Hondas, honking their horns in frustration.

 The majority of people we saw were black and as we got further off the beaten trail, we got increasingly more and more odd looks from the people we passed. One white boy and one giant white boy on two small neon scooters, putting slowly through East-end Freeport was something that these people obviously hadn’t seen every day. I felt a ting of adventure in my heart, something I hadn’t experienced since 2010 when I visited China. The feeling was ecstasy, no pun intended to the Cruise Ship’s name that had brought us there. I live for feelings like that.

Suddenly, feeling sober enough to drink again, I decided we should pull over to a local grocery shop where we could sample some of the local Red Stripe 40 oz. bottles of beer and a 2 liter of water to wash away last night’s hangover. As we walked into the grocery store, near the sliding door stood one of the biggest security bouncers (or loss prevention clerks as white America might call it) I have ever seen. He looked like I would imagine one would look if Rick Ross and Ronnie Coleman missed the Morning After pill together and birthed a future felon. Needless to say we acquired the beer and left immediately.

We continued to ride down the street until finally I slowed down on my scooter so Greg could catch up. Greg made the scooter look like a Fischer Price Big Wheel, though he looked like he was having fun. “Let’s race!” I screamed to him and pulled back the throttle on my scooter. He pulled back on his and we were off. In just a few seconds I already had a serious lead on him, and just as I tilted back a victory swig of the Red Stripe, I saw the speed bumps. Now I find that god sends more irony my way than just about anyone I know, but I wasn’t about to let the speed bumps get the best of my reckless behavior.  I leaned my weight some and shot over the speed bump quickly and continued along the road. Just as I realized I should have yelled a warning to Greg about the speed bumps it was too late. Like a scene in some strange French New Wave film, life seemed to Jump Cut to Greg laying on the ground in the middle of the road while curious Bahamians gathered around to see if he was dead. I didn’t see the spill, but I saw the aftermath from a distance. My heart began to beat faster and faster as I turned the scooter around and zoomed back.

 I pulled up to a circle of gawking people and watched as my friend opened his eyes, looked around and suddenly stood up. I had a sigh of relief until I saw the blood pouring from his leg and pieces of his skin tissue covering the scooter where the kick stand had cut a four inch long gash in his calf. Mouths open, the whole circle gawked at the amount of blood we were witnessing spill onto the road. I yanked my t-shirt off quickly and tightly tied it around the open wound. Greg sounded delirious and just about ready to pass out as he reassured the group of strangers that he was going to be alright. “I’m alright, yall….” his voice would trail off. I never know what to say when I’m comforting someone, even when my ex-girlfriends would get upset about something all I had was “It will be ok”. So naturally I wasn’t sure how to handle this with Greg. “You’ve got this. This shit is nothing.” I reassured Greg as I poured water over his head like a trainer at a heavy weight boxing match. I yelled “call the hospital!” At the gawking crowd, they complied. The ambulance finally came after 30 minutes. It sauntered – no, it mamboed slowly down the street at the same breath-taking pace of an 85 year old geriatric woman. Again god gave me a wink and a laugh as the hospital was only a few blocks away from the accident.

I spent the next five hours watching Greg get stitched up, X-rayed, poked at and prodded on while I wore nothing but a blue swim suit, sandals, sunscreen and my wallet. I was the only white person, completely shirtless, amongst stab victims, tons of pregnant mothers, screaming children and a guy who had lost a fight with a fork lift. I’ve never been stared at so much in my life. The entire time I would go into the operating room and tell the doctor “we really have to catch this ship” or “We need to go soon”. The only thing worse than being stuck in a hospital is being stuck there in a foreign country while a boat sails away with all of your luggage. Finally the doctor said we were free to go.

We promised the taxi a big tip as he sped towards the cruise ship, weaving dangerously through rush hour traffic. We were thirty minutes late to when we were due back on the boat, but in that moment I was more concerned with crashing into a brick wall. I gritted my teeth at one point when the taxi sped off road and zoomed past a tour bus. They were just about to close the door to the ship when we pulled up to the dock like the Crazy Taxi video game and ran (Greg hopped) back onto the boat and into safety.

As the elevator softly rumbled up toward our room Greg and I paused and looked at each other.

                “That was awesome.” I said to Greg. It was the only way for me to describe that day.

                “Yeah it was.” Is all he said back. Then there was silence all except for the sound of the elevator.

SCHOOL

ohhhhhh yeahhhhhhh

                Its strange looking back and thinking about how I used to be when I was young. I am so different now, so many events in my life have shaped the person that I’ve become.

The first day of my freshman year of high school was one of the most frightening days of my life. It reigns as number three on a list that includes defending myself with a shotgun and my ex- girlfriend telling me she might be pregnant. I was 14 years old and up until I turned 18 I had always been a late bloomer. I didn’t develop like the other kids in public school did. I went to a middle-school with about 15 kids total in the sixth through eighth grades. The reason was because I have a severe learning disability. I’m retarded when it comes to mathematics. Even today when I go out to restaurants I have to count out the waitress’s tip on my fingers like a child, and if I get frustrated I just leave her a $10 bill and call it a day. Fortunately I was gifted when it came to writing, music, art and just about anything else associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. I spent a lot of my time making paper mache sculptures of birds I liked or reading about the various civil war battles. I didn’t have any friends, I still played with action figures and I listened to a CD of Kiss’s Destroyer that I checked out from the library every week so I could blare the songs religiously into my head via my Walkman. That’s right, my Walkman. I didn’t know how to talk to people, I didn’t know that it wasn’t cool to be excited about the assigned books in your English class and I honestly had no clue that other children were going to be cruel to me because of it.  On top of all this I was about a hundred pounds overweight, wore thick glasses, played the tuba and was terrified of going places without adult supervision.

                

               The biggest hell of freshman year was gym class. It was a class involving sports. I’ve always been terrible at pretty much everything sports related and most people could tell that immediately having took one glance at me. I was and still am the kind of guy who drops a lightly tossed pass right in front of his feet and gets murdered by an incoming linebacker. Naturally I spent my entire freshman year without any close friends. Alienation was an understatement, I wasn’t an alien, I was an extra-dimensional creature. The other children gawked at me like I had descended from a spacecraft in a Paul Stanley tee shirt and jean shorts and now desired nothing more than to learn the ways of human beings. During gym most of the other boys talked about pussy and football, two things that I had no interest in and couldn’t begin to understand. The other kids could tell I wasn’t part of the group, they would make fun of my clothes or spray axe body spray into my eyes. Maybe to an average freshman this wouldn’t have been a big deal but to a guy who had skipped the social development stages his peers had been through it was incredibly tough. I spent a lot of my time crying after school and lying to my mother about how I had a great day full of smiles and rainbows.

 I still cry, very rarely, but I still do. Anyone who is too cool to feel emotion can meet me in the parking lot of your local Wal-Mart, I’ll be happy to beat you until you feel something. At this point as a reader you might feel a little bad about the experiences your young narrator has been through. Personally I don’t regret a thing, so save your hugs and sympathy. People are violent animals when it comes down to the dirt of it. I don’t care how many degrees you hold, how many dinner parties you throw, or how many times a day you pray to your god. If you believe humanity has evolved past violence then you are a fool.

The positive note about gym was that every day the coach would take pity on me and let me sit with him in his office and eat half of my lunch. I loved lunch. Everyday my dad would pack me treats in a big purple plastic lunchbox with stickers covering the sides. Sometimes he would make me a sandwich or pack fried chicken from the previous night’s dinner. Every day he would make it a surprise and I would sit in the small office with the old coach and eat. It was the first time I had begun to really appreciate my father for the kind and generous person he is and although I could have really used to lose some weight, a Kit-Kat bar in my lunch was the most fun I had in an otherwise terrible day.

               

             I spent the entire year playing half of a basketball game and eating half of my lunch. Once class was over I would change back into my school clothes, everyone would make fun of me for being fat or wearing Looney Tunes underwear and I would go about the rest of my day. This was a lot on me, especially at a time when I was going through puberty. What could be worse to a young boy than having hormone induced mood swings on top of the stress of the other kids poking fun? I felt trapped and between the constant humiliations of having my pants pulled around my ankles or being sucker punched in the middle of class I thought that high school was probably the worst idea mankind had ever thought up.

              

            Though like everything in life the year passed before I knew it. It was the last few weeks of school before summer break. Standardized testing was going on which meant that students spent most of the day in one class, unfortunately for me that class was gym. It was an entire week of the longest chain of pranks I had ever endured. Every day of that week I walked into the gym in the morning, changed into my gym clothes and listened to my KISS CD until one of the other boys would harrass me for a few hours, then I woud eat my lunch and listen to the entire album again until a different boy would pick up where the other left off.

The last day of that week is a day I will never forget for as long as I live. I carried my big purple lunchbox into the gym in the morning, walked into the cold concrete locker room and placed it into my locker. I can still smell the stench of the boy’s locker room. It is like a gang of sweaty Sumo wrestlers tried to cover up the smell of an elephant turd with the cheapest cologne they could find on sale at the Dollar General. I assumed my spot next to the bleachers until it was time for lunch, but the coach wasn’t in his office that day. I walked around for a few minutes, but couldn’t find him. I walked to my locker, took out my big purple lunchbox and carried it into his office. I opened it up to find some turkey, a banana, a package of raisins and an ice-cream sandwich! Fuck yeah! I love ice cream sandwiches! I immediately went for the ice cream and opened half of it up, it had already began to melt a little but that didn’t ruin anything for me. I was an ice cream eatin’ machine. I was just about to plunge my face into the wrapper when I heard a voice behind me. “What the hell is that?” It was Chuck Brodman. Chuck was a blonde hair, blue eyed, athletic, rich kid. He looked like a perfect Aryan specimen, I’m sure his grandfather pimped slapped Jews during the Holocaust. He was an incredible athlete who would constantly remind the other boys how he had fingered his girlfriend Jessica Nelson in the girl’s locker room. At the time I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what “fingered” meant but it seemed like a big deal. Regardless I was still transfixed on my treat and I didn’t understand right away that he wasn’t actually interested in learning what I had in my hands. “My dad packed me an ice cream sandwich!” I turned around to face Chuck to tell him about my good luck. Upon looking at Chuck’s face I realized two things, one was that he had actually sarcastically asked the question and two was that even if he hadn’t no one was going to be excited about my ice cream except for me.

What happened next would shape my thoughts and actions for the rest of my life. Chuck slowly walked up to me, he towered above my head as he became uncomfortably close. He snatched the ice cream sandwich from my hand, turned around and walked into the boys locker room with it. Although I knew nothing good would come of it, I followed him in hopes that he wouldn’t flush it down a toilet or something. When I entered the boy’s locker room Chuck was standing on a concrete bench next to the lockers, my heart was beating faster than when I was forced to actually exercise. He had crushed my ice cream in his hand in front of the entire 9^th grade gym class, he jumped off of the bench and dropped what was left of it on my tennis shoes. Everyone laughed at me. I couldn’t help myself, I began to cry. I had never cried in front of people before, even when my parents came home and I had been crying I always made myself stop. I felt my chin become weak and my stomach felt light as tears poured down my eyes. I balled like a baby.  “What a faggot.” I’ll never forget the cool tone of his voice, the sound can only be related to how a dentist’s drill feels when it hits a nerve in your tooth. He stomped the ice cream sandwich into my orthopedic sneakers.

I thought about how bad the entire year had been, I thought about how much my dad loved me and how he had woken up early and put extra ice into the lunch box to make sure the ice cream hadn’t melted before lunchtime, I thought about killing myself by jumping off of the gym roof and finally as I clenched my fat little fist I thought about murdering Chuck Brodman. I grabbed his neck with my left hand in some sort of strange death grip, I remember holding so hard that I could almost wrap my fingers entirely around his trachea. I wound back with my right hand and punched him. I had never punched anyone before in my life but I had seen Harrison Ford do it enough times in Indiana Jones to loosely grasp the concept. Luckily for Chuck I had forgotten the move where you rip your opponent’s heart out of his chest and drop it into a pit of lava while Indian men scream praise to their devil-god, because I would have done that shit. I yelled wildly as I held tighter with my left hand, Charles began to turn red. I punched him again and again till his body collapsed. His skull hit the floor so hard the echo of bone against concrete bounced off of the metal lockers and through the tile shower room. I got on top of him and punched him again. It was the first time I had ever lost control of myself. The floor of the boy’s locker room was covered in blood. The other boys had at first chanted “fight, fight, fight” in classic high school form but the sight of the beating I had just inflicted on Chuck had been so shocking that they eventually stood in silence at the raw display of animal aggression they had just witnessed. I went to my locker, took my change of clothes and ran to the library. My head was pounding and I was covered in blood. I changed clothes in the library bathroom and placed my gym clothes in my backpack.

I don’t know why I chose to go to the library. Maybe because I just wanted somewhere really quiet to process what had just occurred. I walked up to the first shelf of books I saw, picked a large photography book about elephants off of the shelf, opened it to a close up of a baby elephant, laid my face flat on it and cried. I cried because I was afraid of what would happen to me, I cried because I had never seen so much blood, I cried because my hand was big and swollen but mostly I cried because I felt bad about hurting Chuck Brodman. I sat there crying into the book until the coach, the principle, the vice principle and a police officer came to bring me to the office.

                

           For the next four years of my life I had to see a therapist about my anger management problems. Ironically gym class did end up helping me find the sport I am best at; boxing.

Its Alive

There is a place where the chainlink fence and the overgrown grass sprouts out of the ground as if from the same root, behind foliage sits classic car after classic car like Lucky Strikes packed neatly into a box. 

Someone loved each one of them, now they lay in cemetery.

Each is a different flavor. A green Monte Carlo, a red Mustang, a blue El Camino. A blonde, a brunette, a redhead.

They are all dead beauty queens, laying in their chain-link coffin. Chrome rusts like rotting flesh. mangled frames slowly decompose and crack. Their paint greys like hair, once colorful, vibrant and exploding with life.

I could imagine what it would be like to be behind the wheel of a 70’ Monte Carlo, but this one was long dead. I could imagine what a date with Marilyn Monroe would be like. I could imagine the dinner, the drive-in theater, and even lover’s lane if I played my cards right. But either way, digging up Marilyn Monroe would not mean she would be the same. Dead is dead.

I could never accept death, so I’ll dig up the corpse of Bettie Page and bolt on the legs of Marilyn Monroe. I’ll stitch on Jane Mansfield’s breasts and screw in Rita Hayworth’s shining teeth. I’ll weld on Betty Grable’s glutes and air up Brigitte Bardot’s lips. Then I’ll spray on a brightly colored dress and drop a gorilla’s heart into her chest.

She’s alive.    

How I broke my arm

I’ve only thought I was in love twice before in my life, once head over heals in love with a red headed Heroin addict and once with a black stripper while I was hammered on New Years Eve. Ironically the first love triggered the other, which in turn caused my wrist to shatter into three different pieces.

               

I was in a shitty mood, an especially shitty mood because not only had I just crashed my beloved Cadillac but also I had just been forced to break up with my girlfriend. I had lost the only two things I had ever fell in love with in the same month and it tore my fucking heart to pieces. Some people put all their money into their arms and there is nothing you can do about it, I know that now. It was this type of chauvinist, break-up attitude that drives a man to want to read “The Crucible” and totally understand why they burned girls at the stake. It was the kind of mood that makes a man drink too much and consider buying a muscle car. I’m still looking into a Chevy Nova. Naturally my childhood friend and I decided the only remedy was to go to a strip club in West Palm Beach to reign in the new year. After-all where is there a better place in the entire world for depression, rage and sexual angst to come together with a full liquor bar? “Girls end up taking all of your money anyway, only here they’re not ashamed to admit what they want” my buddies reassured me the entire ride. “Thanks guys”, I guess they didn’t hear the sarcasm. My heart felt like it was sinking into my stomach and being consumed by my acidic innards.

                Packed in the car down to West Palm Beach was one seven foot tall ginger by the name of Greg and three German flight students who I had met at a beer bar the weekend before. They had been amazed at the lack of girls in Vero Beach, Greg and I had planned to quench their thirst with a waterfall. The entire ride down to West Palm our Chrysler 300 rode in the fast lane going ten under the speed limit, I had grown up with Greg’s driving so it was easy for me to ignore the angry horn blasts and flashing lights from the people having to pass us in the right lane. I had to smile. Greg was the kind of guy who could tell you how the earth spun on an axis and how cells multiply, but didn’t know what to say to a pretty girl. I happened to be the opposite and I sported the GPA to prove it . Whenever we talked to girls at bars we ended up convincing them he was a professional athlete. No one argues when you are as big as Greg, either because they actually believe you or are too afraid to question it. This particular night though he was not worried. He had three hundred dollars in one dollar bills, George Washington would do all the talking he needed tonight. As I stared out of the window into the dark fields parallel to I-95 my depression plagued me like locusts. This was our exodus from crappy Vero

Beach, we were pilgrims and our promised land was called “Cheetahs”.

                We arrived in West Palm and decided to visit Clematis Street. I had been there earlier that year with friends chasing them from night club to night club. I hate nightclubs with the same intensity that Hitler hated the Jews, but I digress. We ate at an upscale sushi restaurant that was considered “hip” for serving portions that even anorexic supermodels would have complained about, soon after we crushed some Five Guys burgers and were on our way to Cheetahs.

We arrived to the strip club at about nine o’clock. As I walked up to the door a bouncer frowned down at me, ironically another tall ginger but not as large as Greg. “ID’s”, he demanded as we approached. He looked me in the eyes and barked “take the hat off”. This particular rule pissed me off. A strip club is one of the worst and most desperate places on the planet. It is a place where drugged out single mothers wave their genitalia in the stale air for disgusting pigs like me to throw money at. The last thing a strip club should ever have is a dress code. If I want to wear a Darth Vader costume, I should be able to. If I want to dress up like mickey mouse, the bouncer had better open the door for me and call me “Mr. Mouse”. I was wearing my lucky captain’s hat that night and fuck anyone who said otherwise. This plus my lack of respect for authority caused me to chuckle condescendingly at the bouncer’s not so friendly request. “Come on Andy” Greg pleaded with me, he had been my friend long enough to tell when I was down to start trouble. I sized up the bouncer, he looked like the kind of guy that had just finished shooting uncut HGH into his ass while watching himself flex in the mirror. I wasn’t impressed. I took my hat off and stuffed it into my back pocket. I walked slowly past the bouncer, he looked like he was about to go into a steroid fueled killing spree. Inside the club was like a meat market where all the meat had been left in the sun for a day. Like a candy shop selling candy that had been dropped on a carpet before being sloppily repackaged. The place was covered in mirrors and flashing pink lights. As I walked through the thin layer of smoke in the air, I gazed around at all the broken dreams I saw dancing naked on the poles.

Now I spent two years of my college career partying in Atlanta, Georgia with some of the biggest fuck-off frat boys of all time, I can hold liquor. That night though I had ordered a slew of the cheapest vodka drinks available, Mr. Boston and Red Bull, and they were doing their job well. I had blown about half of my hard earned money on a girl who could shoot a marble across the room like a bullet when I met Simone. Simone was a short half black, half latina girl with big fake boobs and an ass you could bounce a quarter off of. She had hair down to her waist like an amazon princess and dark eyes that reflected the pink neon lights. She was nice, but she was paid to be nice. I knew it and she knew it. She asked me what I was doing in a place like Cheetahs, “a young guy like you should be out actually getting laid”. I laughed and responded “aren’t you supposed to lead on male customers so they think they’re gonna get laid?” Suddenly I realized why I was there. “I’m here to satisfy a primal urge and so are you.” This time she laughed, “and what kind of primal urge am I trying to satisfy?” I took another sip of my drink, it was hard to pretend to be slick when you’re choking down Mr. Boston. I paused for a minute to collect my thoughts, I looked into Simone’s big brown eyes and said “you want money, and I want sex. You’re willing to exploit your body to obtain money and I’m willing to exploit my wallet to obtain sex.” Simone gave me the first real glance she had given me all night, she had let her guard down and I could see it in her face. “I like you” she said, suddenly her guard was back up as she flashed me a fake smile,

“but I’m gonna have to watch out for you.”

The next few hours pass. I drank more cheap vodka drinks. I became numb. Simone had circled the bar twice talking and laughing with other guys but I could tell every once in a while she looked back in my direction. I could feel her eyes beaming down on me like the hot sun. My gaze also occasionally followed her around the bar like a lion spotting a gazelle from a nearby patch of tall grass, I still can’t decide who had played the part of the lion. Finally she sat in my lap while I was in front of a stage with Greg. The Germans were already smashed and resorting to their native tongue. They laughed wildy while the stripper on the stage pulled Greg’s face into her ass with her feet. I had to smile as well. Simone began to speak to me “so what’s your name?” I told her my name. “What about you?” I said gruffly as I felt the vodka now cheerfully helping my stomach acid tear my sunken heart apart.

“Its Simone, I told you –“

“Its not Simone.” I smiled as I looked into her eyes. I could tell I was right.

She looks back into my eyes with another genuine expression. We’re the same type of animal, and we could practically smell it on each other.

It was eleven fifty at night, only ten minutes until the new year when Simone offered me a private dance in a room behind the bar. She told me there was something special about me, I reminded her she is paid to say things like that, but who could pass up a private dance? I told her I would meet her in the back room as I stood up to go to the bathroom. As I pissed onto the urinal cake I thought about my mortality, I think about it all the time, it comes with the territory of depression. As I began to leave the bathroom I noticed a small black man standing next to the sink surrounded by cheap bottles of cologne and little packages of mints.

“Where are you from?” I ask him as he squirts soap into my hands. My voice echoes off the tile.

“I’m from Haiti, but I live here now.” He seemed surprised, it was obviously a question he didn’t

get often. He looked like he was in rough shape. As a romantic I place significance on events in my life, and as a cynical bastard I later realize that significance is a farce. “This place sucks.” I said as I reached into my wallet to place a $50 dollar bill into his plastic tip bowl. “Take it easy,” I tell him. I began to walk out of the bathroom I thought to myself that if a god exists it is going to have a hard time trying to decide to put me in heaven or hell.

As I exited the bathroom Simone grabed my arm and lead me into the back room behind the bar. She shoved me hard against an arm chair in a cubicle covered in mirrors. She didn’t give me a chance to tell her I just ran out of money. She stripped naked for me and began to rub her body against mine. “You don’t have to be shy with me,” she whispered in my ear as she took my hands and ran them along her breasts. I looked up at the large “No Touching” sign about the door we walked in through. I was drunk, incredibly depressed and feeling a naked stripper when I heard the countdown to 2013 begin. At that point the large bouncer had walked through the door and witnessed the blatant and rather enthusiastic breaking of the “no touching” rule.

“TEN!” The crowd shouted from the bar.

“What the fuck is this?” The ginger bouncer yelled.

“Fuckkk”, Simone moaned as she jumped off me.

“FOUR!” The crowd continued.

“Are you kidding me bitch?” The bouncer yelled again.

“Uhhhh,” is all I could muster from my drunken stupor.

The bouncer grabbed Simone by the shoulders and threw her into an empty arm chair violently.

                “ONE!” The crowd shouted as I became enraged.

By some strange twist of fate like something straight out of Patrick Swayze’s Road House or literally any terrible Chuck Norris movie ever, we had had words earlier and now we were finishing the encounter with fists. Now I’ve been boxing for the past six years of my life and when the crowd shouted “One”, I heard a bell ring inside my head. I jumped off of the chair like a prize fighter jumping off of a stool, I clench my fists. I could feel the alcohol pulsing through my veins as I made every muscle in my body tight. My hands felt like stones and my heart raced, I was unstoppable. I threw a combo, jab, cross to his nose, and I pivoted my feet to throw a left hook to his ribs. BANG. The giant bouncer fell to his knees. I had never punched anyone so hard in my life, my knuckles were leaking blood. I hurt him and I immediately feel bad about it. Simone looked stunned as people from the bar outside the room screamed and laughed “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” I took my captain’s hat out of my back pocket and threw it on my head like a trophy. It was about time to hit the old dusty trail. Simone laid naked on the arm chair adjacent, mouth open in shock.

                “Hey Simone” I turned around in front of the door to face her. “What’s your real name?” She looked from the giant bouncer back to me, “It’s Tammy.” She suddenly sounds more ghetto, its still sexy. In 2013 my eyes opened and I looked through my glasses and across a darkened sex room at another human being, “Happy new year Tammy.” I ran out into the bar and made my escape, Germans and all.

One week later a doctor squinted at an X-ray rendering of my shattered wrist, and I sure as hell

don’t regret it. 

How I killed my Cadillac

        I told the cop I wasn’t speeding but I sure as hell was. It was hard not to speed when I sat in my Cadillac. I had seen pictures of it for sale on Craigslist five months earlier and just like thefirst time a photohraph of a naked woman flashes on your computer screen, it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen and a symbol of my primal urges. I wanted it. The golden hood ornamentburned into my eyes and the tan leather interior was like lingerie on a playboy bunny. It was atwo door Burgundy with a tan canvas top, a 1988 Deville with a 4.5 liter turbo engine in pristinecondition. Some old lady had bought it in ’88, drove it to church and back for years and dropped dead, now it was mine. I had the interior carpet redone in a burgundy shag complete with crown air freshener and a suicide knob with a picture of half-naked pin up girl printed on the face. I waxed it weekly and changed the speakers back to stock, I even furnished the front fender with a skull and crossed lightning bolt vanity plate. The tires burned every-time I hit the gas, and if you weren’t prepared for the acceleration the force would throw you back into your seat. I was in love with the same libido one has with a girlfriend you don’t date for the conversation and I was having the time of my life.

The night it died, it did so gloriously. I had just finished polishing the hood ornament and the continental kit earlier that day, the chrome was immaculate. It was pouring rain and the reflection from the yellow streetlights flew past on the windshield so quickly it almost seemed like a blur. The hum of the engine had played like a soundtrack to a dismal evening. I had been depressed, sometimes it hits me like a sack of bricks. Driving was soothing to me and there is

 nothing like the hum of a V8 and risking life and limb when you feel you have nothing to lose. Suddenly though like a great orchestra rosining their bows, everything began to synchronize. The stereo flicked to “Walk Don’t Run” by The Ventures. The mix of twangy guitar and rain pounding on the windshield filled my ears like the woodwinds fastening their reeds to their instruments and the trumpets emptying their spit valves. I look left, “look at this ass-clown” I say out loud to the empty car. There sitting in the lane next to me is a v6 Mustang and a guy who wanted to rev his piece of shit engine at me. I throw the shift into neutral and rev mine back, I’d

 burned fools like this on a bicycle before, this asshole was going to be fun.The light flicked to green and I eased on the gas, the traction was trash on the slick highway. Almost immediately I had left “Mustang Sally” in the dust. At the same time the speedometer read 70 and like a glow of divine justice beaming down at me, I saw the red light reflected off of the wet asphalt and into my now widened eyes. The Orchestra began to play. I hit the brakes and the tires began to sing like dying sirens in Homer’s Odyssey. Everything became very slow.

There I was screeching toward impending collision when I realized that my mouth had tightened into a smile. I don’t remember ever feeling so alive. I spun the suicide knob to the

 right to lock the tires, I watched as the miniature pin up girl did nude back-flips around the wheel. This time it was the low brass’s turn to play, as I heard the groan of the axle now taking the full brunt of the friction. I began to laugh. My movements had been seamless, this orchestra could not have had a better maestro. The symphony suddenly came to a crescendo as I skidded closer to the black Honda Pilot carefully stopped at the red light. I hate Hondas. I found myself whooping, since when do I whoop? The crash itself was a climax, like the percussion section had suddenly fired to life as the hood of my beloved Cadillac began to make contact. The Deville was horny for a Honda Pilot and once it had started it wasn’t going to stop. The hood bent, smashing glass, suddenly it was over. Like the first time I had had sex; I felt incredible and it was over entirely too quickly. The car’s engine began to smoke, I decided to light one up as well.

 Excitement arose in my stomach like a child on the night before Christmas. This had been the most fun I had had in years. I climbed out of the driver’s side window like a NASCAR super-star, the entire door frame had been pinned shut. Covered in glass and blood I checked to see

 how the Pilot faired, apparently much better than me.

The police arrived, then the tow truck, and then my parents. It continued to rain. The police asked me basic questions, the tow truck man told me my Cadillac was finished, and my

mother acted towards me like I had just finished raping and murdering a classroom full of underprivileged children. For the next few weeks broken glass covered the side of the road where my Cadillac died like a memorial to my visceral experience or an epitaph made by GMC. I guess fast love dies fast. At least I still have the suicide knob.