When the weather is this beautiful, even the rats and roaches dare to venture out.
A Spring afternoon and I find myself at the grocery store buying some lunch. I'm standing in line reading a gossip mag as my basket rests on the floor at my feet. I'm behind a tired looking Mexican woman with two screaming kids. I'm tuning them out though, rocking the ipod with some “Buena Vista Social Club.” In my basket I have a banana, an apple, some sliced turkey, a couple of rolls, and a 40 ounce Miller High Life... we used to call these over-sized bottles “cauguama's.” I'm not really reading the magazine, I keep thinking about that day in 2003 when my cousin and I drove around all day looking for opium.
“ Why do you want opium so bad?”
“ Why not Cabron?”
“ But why opium? Why don't we pick up some blow and a couple of beers? Opium?! It's not like we we live in the fuckin' orient.”
“ Orient... What's that? What are you talking about?”
“ Fuck it, nothing.”
We drove around all day. My cousin had me on the horn calling everyone I know and making them, in turn, call everyone they know. For some strange reason, tracking down some opium that day in 2003 was like finding the lost Ark of the Covenant. We finally decided to bag it and instead wound up scoring some snow and then getting tossed out of the strip club, battered and bloody, because I decided to light up one of the bouncers
As I'm walking out of the store I'm shaking my head and silently chuckling to myself when a bum approaches me. I can't stop staring at the billions of tiny beads of sweat, like a micro-universe, on his forehead and all over his greasy neck.
“ Excuse me sir, do you have any spare change?”
I peer at him from underneath my over-sized Willy Wonka shades. I always get so fucking annoyed when the homeless pester me for money.
“ Maybe. What do you plan on buying?”
He opens his mouth, ready to give me his usual rehearsed, bullshit story. I interrupt him mid-sentence.
“ Be real with me. If you plan on buying some booze, or dope, or whatever just tell me. Don't lie to me or I'm not giving you shit. However if you tell me the truth, if you're real with me, I'll give you five bucks.” I set down my bags and pop the white buds out of my ears.
Next to us some seagulls squawk, fighting over a bag of discarded French fries.
“ Well...” He speaks very slowly now, carefully choosing his words. “ I need bus fare. My mother lives across town and I promised her I'd come and see her.”
I lower my shades and study his features, gazing at him through squinted eyes like a poker master who carefully reads his opponent. I'm not convinced. I bend over and pick up my bags. “ Nope, wrong answer bucko. You're lying to me.”
As I begin to walk away he holds out his hands and quickly closes the distance between us. He starts stuttering, stumbling over his words now. “ Hey, wait, wait, wait. Where are you going man? I told you the truth, I swear to God! I – I r-r-really need to see my mom, I do need bus fair. I need some help h-here man. I... “
“ All right shut the fuck up!" Pause. " I'm giving you one more chance. You can't con a con you ever hear that saying? So this time, you tell me the truth if you want to make an easy five bucks. Oh, and maybe you should put that shirt back on, your track marks are showing.”
He looks down at his arms then quickly shoves them into his pockets, the insides of his forearms are pressed tightly against his sides. His face turns beet red. He doesn't answer.
I turn away. “ Good luck.”
“ All right! O.K, O.K ... I-I needed to buy some smack. You happy now? I need to buy some more junk... a-and fast.”
I smile... a victorious, contemptible smile. I whip my wallet out of my back pocket and tear out a five dollar bill. I reach out my hand, the fiver folded in half sticking out from between my index and bird finger. He quickly snatches it out of my hand like Oliver Twist grabbing a roll from the workhouse headmaster.
“ Thanks man! Seriously, I really appreciate this. God bless!”
His gaze drifts to a bald, fat man climbing out of an SUV so I peel out a ten dollar bill and lazily wave it around in a circle in front of his face to hold his attention. His mouth slackens and plops open with a wet smack. His eyes widen, pupils dilating like dissipating blood in a syringe needle. He doesn't say anything at all. He just dumbly stares at me in disbelief and I coolly stare back. Our eyes carry on an unspoken conversation.
We're really starting to communicate now.
The sun beats down on both of us as the salty breeze lazily blows asphodel blossoms about creating a swirling snowstorm. We face each other in silence like two gunfighters settling a score on an abandoned, dusty street. Beads of sweat begin to creep onto my own brow now like a crackling blanket of army ants slowly invading a sleeping newborns' crib.
The shrill scream of a dying spider then a thump, followed immediately by the slow shuffling of a million spiny legs covered in tight wire-hair approaching Bethlehem - to be reborn again and again. My head's pounding. I can hear the distant drums luring out the beast who lurks in the jungle just beyond the reassuring torchlight... a sequential, slow coaxing.
“ He dead you know. Oh yes, oh yes, yes, yes...” The old Indian turns and repeatedly mutters through rotten teeth as he hides behind a swirling smoke curtain. Mexican desert wigwam peyote nightmare, the old man's head is spinning really really fast now and all around me stuffed dogs nip at my tattered clothes. Tired, so tired. “ Ha! That bastard thought he knew... that son of a bitch thought he had it figgered out. That God-damned maggot... Maggot!”
Somewhere in a quiet operating room a reticulated, squirming mass is held aloft like a human sacrifice as a c-sectioned mother wails to heaven in desperate horror...
The day started out so nice. Today was one of those days when the weather was so beautiful, the weather was so friendly, so accomodating, even the rats and roaches dared to venture out.
Junkie and I, we face each other and my jaw clenches and unclenches matching the beat of the drums. I stutter, now in marionette trance-mode:
“ I - I'll give you this ten and possibly more later if... and only if... you find me a bag as well.”
5 comments:
you tear me into your voice every time i read anything written by you. what do you want? what do you want, seriously? do you want to be the pied piper of Hamelin? do you fish with your net of intriguing words and images and thrilling slowmotionemotions and make dinner with whatever you find in your net?
ah.
you caught me, again.
and i can't use my teeth against this net, it is just too hyptnotizing. it is the whole terrible beauty of human becoming in it and it s like staring at a terribly beautiful sunset from the top of a hill, a whole valley below your feet and at the horizon, around the sun set, there are dark threatening clouds gathering. sometimes, we should run from the truth...maybe.
hopefully the shit was as good as this was a read...
i loved that you went for distance here. It's like giving birth, but you wouldn't know anything about that.
i didn't expect the connection at the end...but mirrors usually do keep us honestn to our innevitable weakness and imperfections.
Bravo, Hermes. This piece by far the best mind fuck I've had in a while. I watched this scene you painted happening in my mind and studied it like a sixteen year old adolescent boy studies the first porno he sneeks a peak at afer his parents go to bed.
The greatest thing? I knew the only reason you didn't just walk away from the junked out hobo was because you wanted your own piece of the pie.
It was such a nice day, too.
Awesome post!
Fuck me! I don't really visit many blogs anymore - I'm cutting the shit as much as I can.
This place is nowhere near a shit-cutting cull for the simple reason that you are the best writer I read on the web.
I'm serious - you won't find me saying the word 'best' any other place like this.
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