Eli had been a teenaged boy during World War II and wound up in several different concentration camps. When it came time to declare a trade or become worked to death or disposed of, Eli claimed that he could cut hair. Luckily for Eli, he really could. It was just one of those things like drumming, you either got the hands for it or you don’t. It was just a damn lucky thing for Eli that he could cut hair. His job was to cut the hair of all the German soldiers and officers that were in charge of the concentration camp. For a few moments a day, these monsters would talk to Eli as if really he were human. They’d talk about their wives and kids and how they thought the war was going. Many of the soldiers would tell Eli that they really had nothing against Jews. As clichéd as it still sounds, many were just following orders. They all told the war tribunals this too.
Eli cut thousands of heads that eventually were killed and turned to ashes. The will to survive was strong in Eli. At the age of twenty, Eli had nothing left for him in Europe as his whole family was killed by Germans in camps. Eli moved to the United States. He did a plethora of things to earn money and saved his money until he could afford to buy an apartment building in the city of Chicago. Before long, Eli bought many properties and managed them himself. As time went on, Eli had set up a medium sized property management company and a side business of owning coin operated laundry machines. Eli was swimming in money. By the time he was fifty, Eli could have retired but he didn’t. Instead he oversaw the business he had created. His sons grew up and went to work for him and took over the day to day operations of Eli’s property management company.
At the age of eighty eight, Eli had to take a slew of medicines just to keep him going day to day. Eli had to have angioplasty and angiograms and open heart surgeries. Eli had mild strokes, heart failure and so on. Luckily for Eli, he had the means to pay for the best doctors money could buy. Eli’s money helped talented young doctors prolong the inevitable. Eli suspected that his last holiday season was coming with his family and so he left his Miami Beach condominium to spend the “Christmas” and New Year time with his two sons in Chicago. Now both sons grew up good Jewish boys who went on to marry two gentile women and adopted their ways which included Christmas. All of Eli’s grandchildren celebrated Christmas and none were going to have a bar-mitzvah. Eli thought that was sad. Nobody ever wanted to hear the stories from the days of the concentration camps and how he was nearly killed many times. The kids all wanted gifts or money and wanted to be left alone. His daughters-in-law treated him like an old child and it all really made Eli very sick to his stomach. Eli felt that his last chance to be with the only family he had left had arrived in December 2009. As irritating as they were, they were the only family he had.
Eli still had his office inside the office building that he created way back in 1958. On the wall were pictures of him in good looking suits with dark hair, standing next to new Cadillacs and Lincolns. There were family pictures with his two sons and his young wife and even one of Eli shaking hands with the first Mayor Daley of Chicago. Eli sat at his desk that had not really been used in ten years and really appreciated the feel of the comfortable leather chair. He could hear his eldest son yelling at people on the intercom and yelling at janitors on the phone.
“You tell those goddamn deadbeats that I will have their fucking asses out on the goddamn sidewalk if I don’t have every cent owed on that apartment by January 1st. They can go to Mc Donald’s and get a goddamn job so that they can pay me my rent. Merry fucking Christmas… You tell them that…” Said Norman, Eli’s eldest son.
Norman was about forty years of age with three children. He owned a home in the suburbs with all new appliances, three cars, condos in Miami and Los Angeles, a boat and all the aggravation that goes with running rental buildings.
“Nester! This is the last fucking time I tell you to clean the lobbies. I give you and your family a free apartment. You don’t pay fucking rent and you run around doing painting all over town instead of maintaining my building the way it should be. Your number one responsibility is to me. You keep my building clean and tidy. If I come again and there are eighteen fucking Spanish names written with magic fucking marker on my mailboxes, you can find another job and place to live. You got a beautiful label maker which I bought and I expect you to use it. No dust, no ad papers on the floor, no chirping smoke alarms in the hallways and no bullshit calls from people who want to see vacant units who claim you never call them back. If I have someone call you and I will, you better take the fucking call… Are we clear on all this shit?”
Eli shook his head and closed his eyes as he listened. Eli never operated by yelling or threats. Eli understood what it was like to be dehumanized and never wanted to do that to anyone. He always felt there were other ways.
A young black woman made an appointment on Christmas Eve night to talk to Norman about the rent that she owed on her apartment. Norman was already frazzled but allowed the woman to come into his office and pitch a solution to her rent delinquency. Her six year old daughter sat next to her with braids in her hair with little white beads at the tips. She wore a Sponge Bob sweater and sat in the chair next to her mother with her arms folded. Bringing Trina with to beg Norman not to throw her out, was to play on his human side. It didn’t matter though because Norman was desensitized to poor people’s excuses for not being able to pay rent. They were all drug addicts, whores, and people without direction who were dumb and lazy and that was just the black ones. The Hispanics, Indians, poor eastern European immigrants and so on were almost equally as worthless in Norman’s opinion.
“Go ahead, I’m listening to you. What do you want to tell me that you haven’t already told the court?”
“I’m trying really hard to find a new job. I worked at the Subway by the train in Rogers Park and the people who own it, let me go an gave my job to one of they relatives who going to college here from India. I had always pay mah rent on time. I keep all mah things clean and I ain’t never been late befoh. I ain’t nevah complained about my leaking faucets and old appliances with broken knobs and freezer that don’t really freeze. I’m aksing you to please gimme time. Imma git a job soon an I’m willing to pay extra each month til I git caught up,” said Carina.
Carina was young and voluptuous as is the case with many young black women with young children in tow. Rather than taking drugs and sleeping around, Carina had been working at a Subway sandwich shop, taking one class at a time at a local junior college and taking care of her daughter that she had as a teenager. Carina moved from a dangerous neighborhood on Chicago’s west side to live and work among white people. Trina went to a good grade school in a good neighborhood and everything had been fine until Carina lost her job. It was a pervasive problem and she was not the only one under eviction. Others understood the system and worked the system over. They would destroy the apartments and refuse to pay rent for months almost years until the courts forced them out and then they would start over again with a new apartment and new company that may not screen their applicants well. Carina was not in that camp. She was a victim of the times. Carina was one of millions who were living check to check and the last check stopped coming.
“I’ve heard a million stories like yours. Here’s my bottom line; I have to pay a mortgage each month on that building. I pay for the water and the heat. I pay for the janitor and the insurance and if I don’t get rent, I have to pay out of my own pocket. If I have to do this everywhere at every building, how am I going to live? I should just do charity work for all those who can’t or won’t pay? I can’t do that. I have a family and bills to pay and this is how it all works. The court gave you until January 3rd. Pound the pavement to find a job. If you can come up with some money, I’ll work with you otherwise you’ll need to make some other arrangements… I’m sorry, that’s it.”
Carina left stoic, holding the hand of her young daughter who wanted to see Charlie Brown’s Christmas, ice skate downtown and look at the lights and displays at the stores that her mother could not shop at. Trina didn’t understand that she was about to be put out of her apartment with her mother and that there would be not one present or a tree for her. Instead they would have to find boxes and pack up what they needed and prepare to go to a shelter. Little children never understand things like that.
“Momma we gotta git home an git ready foh Santa Claus. He coming tonight aftah we go to sleep,” said Trina, while being almost dragged out of the office by the hand by Carina.
“I already done told you they ain’t no Santa Claus and nobody coming to our place. Hush up and lits go,” said Carina.
Eli rather than lecture his son about his tactics, went to his son’s doorway and told him he might or might not see him later at his house for dinner and presents. Norman was taken back.
“Pop… Jill and the kids are expecting you. You have to come,” said Norman.
“I have to do something tonight… We’ll see how it all plays out,” said Eli.
Eli had his driver take him around to stores at the shopping malls packed with last minute shoppers. It was angry chaos in the parking lots. Impatient shoppers ripping around the parking lot hunting for a vacant space for their cars, rushing around while talking on cell phones, clogging up the lines in front of registers. It was magnificent if you like humans milling about like ants on an ant farm. Eli joined in on the fast paced mess until he bought all he needed.
It was about eight in the evening when a knock came to the door of Carina’s apartment. Carina was in the shower and Trina knew better than to answer the door but she suspected it was Santa Claus and she was right. Trina ran up and hugged the large white man in a red suit that carried a bag full of things. Santa’s helper, a chauffeur in a black suit, set up a small fir tree and strung lights around as Trina giggled and opened several presents of clothes and dolls and chocolates. Carina came out of the bathroom with a towel around her head and one around her mid section. She stood in disbelief as her daughter sat on the floor next to a lit tree that had not existed just fifteen minutes earlier, opening presents and telling Santa just how good she had been that year.
“Tommy… He a little punk and all but I didn’t hit him even though he pulled on ma braids. I said I was gonna sock him in his jaw but I didn’t do it cause I wanted you to know that I been good all year… Foh the most part. I do all my homework and I help my mom clean up the apartment and I don’t cuss none and I go to church with momma. She said you wasn’t coming and you wasn’t real but I knew you would come… I just knew it. Thank you for all the gifts, Santa. You the best…”
And with that Trina hugged Santa as hard as she had ever hugged anyone before. Santa stood and handed Carina a money order to cover the back rent and much more. Santa also handed Carina a business card that had a number to contact someone for a job in the office of the coin operated laundry company still owned by Eli. Carina began to cry. Santa hugged her, patted her on the head and left with his chauffeur. Santa would probably not be showing up again in person but both Carina and Trina believed in the miracle that is Christmas. It really can be a magical time.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
The Weight of Paradise
George sat in his apartment at the Paradise Inn with a view of the automotive repair shop that was across the alley from his room at Paradise. George’s room consisted of a desk with a television, a bed and a Gideon’s Bible on the night stand. The room came furnished and cost George $400.00 per month. If George were to go outside and stand in the drive way across from the Veteran’s hospital, he could see stars and planets at night or large letters like a heavenly beacon. The sign with fifteen foot letters reads; Miller Park. It was subliminal, George wanted and needed a beer and one beer would lead to another beer and so on.
“Organic solution guaranteed to help you lose weight. You don’t need drugs. With our books, you can learn how to control diabetes, erectile dysfunction. The FDA doesn’t want you to have this book, the drug companies don’t want you to hear the secret that lies within the pages of this treasure. Natural remedies for asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, stop smoking. This is the new updated version you must have. You can lose a pound a day with hundreds of thousands of people each twenty four hour period… Have your credit card ready. Operators are standing by…”
George took a large swig of his beer that had a woman in a dress holding a beer on the beer bottle itself. It’s the Highlife (registered trademark).
“For $19.95 follow these three techniques. Motivated for success to make hundreds of thousands per week. You cannot fail… Here’s how it works…”
George was born in 1947 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He grew up and served in Vietnam. While there as an eighteen year old boy, he became addicted to pills and alcohol. While in Vietnam, George was exposed to a chemical that changed his life forever.
Agent Orange was given its name from the color of the 55 US gallons (210 L) orange-striped barrels it was shipped in. It is a roughly 1:1 mixture of two phenoxyl herbicides in iso-octyl ester form, 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5 trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T).
2,4-D
2,4,5-T
Internal memos from the companies that manufactured it reveal that at the time Agent Orange was sold to the U.S. government for use in Vietnam it was known that it contained a dioxin, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), a by-product of the manufacture 2,4,5-T. The National Toxicology Program has classified TCDD to be a human carcinogen, frequently associated with soft-tissue sarcoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). In a study by the Institute of Medicine, a link has been found between dioxin exposure and diabetes
Three studies have suggested an increase in the risk of acute myelogenous leukemia in the children of Vietnam veterans, which might be associated with exposure to Agent Orange. A variety of other conditions have been suggested to be linked to exposure, but studies have failed to confirm a link with these diseases. Just 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of TCDD was released in the Seveso disaster causing widespread effects on people and livestock.
George changed the channel while lying in bed. He twisted another cap to the top of a fresh new bottle of beer while holding a cigarette between his index and middle finger on his right hand.
“You are gaining weight due to stress. Your adrenal glands are causing you to gain weight even though you are doing all the right things. Our plan treats the cause and not the symptoms. Your job, the economy is making you fat. This is an all natural product that will help you lose weight through revitalization of your adrenal glands. Stress attacks your adrenal glands causing weight gain. Call now for your free sample.”
On any given day, a million thoughts run through George’s head while drinking beer and taking antidepressants. The idea of visiting Thailand, Arizona, North Carolina, taking martial arts, learning to use the computer, the chemicals in beef and milk and then the afterlife.
Another cigarette, another beer, urinate, rinse repeat …
“The tribulation, seven years in length divided up in two parts is due to the fact that there are two empires and one is swallowed up during the seven year period. There are ten nations that will exist with this empire. To form this new empire, you must unite regions by culture and religion. The EU has put nations together. The United States, Canada, Mexico and South America will be joining together as a global economic unit. The question remains; who are the ten kings of bible prophesy? King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of an image that had two feet with ten toes… Are you following this? Two empires made up of ten nations at the time when the messiah comes back. Daniel chapter seven or Revelations chapter 13, you see the horns on the beast, there are always ten in number. There are ten Germanic tribes that overthrew the Roman Empire. Jesus was supposed to return at this time but Jesus did not return. I believe there is a possibility he is on his way now though. In 1954, the Plan of Rome that was devised by the Biderberg Group of Rome divided the world into ten global regions.
1. America, Canada, Mexico
2. South America
3. Australia and New Zealand
4. Western Europe
5. Eastern Europe
6. Japan
7. South Asia
8. Central Asia
9. North Africa and the Middle East
10. The remainder of Africa
The ten kings are the heads of these ten regions. Whether you like it or not, a new world order is coming…
It was all getting to heavy for George. The weight of gravity was getting to be too much for George.
The mass of an object is a fundamental property of the object; a numerical measure of its inertia; a fundamental measure of the amount of matter in the object. Definitions of mass often seem circular because it is such a fundamental quantity that it is hard to define in terms of something else. All mechanical quantities can be defined in terms of mass, length, and time. The usual symbol for mass is m and its SI unit is the kilogram. While the mass is normally considered to be an unchanging property of an object, at speeds approaching the speed of light one must consider the increase in the relativistic mass.
The weight of an object is the force of gravity on the object and may be defined as the mass times the acceleration of gravity, w = mg. Since the weight is a force, its SI unit is the Newton. Density is mass/volume.
George watched a nature show where the world spun like a big blue marble. It was hard for him to believe he lived on such a place that really is very insignificant in the larger scheme of things. A planet in a solar system and a solar system in a galaxy and a galaxy in a universe. George could go at any moment and the only one who would know is the woman who would have to clean his room.
The last bit of information scared the hell out of George before he closed his eyes and floated down stream to a happier place on earth; his own mind during sleep. In his sleep he felt himself flying out of control. Is it any wonder?
By the way, if Earth spun about 800 times faster, it would hurl us off the surface and into space.
“Organic solution guaranteed to help you lose weight. You don’t need drugs. With our books, you can learn how to control diabetes, erectile dysfunction. The FDA doesn’t want you to have this book, the drug companies don’t want you to hear the secret that lies within the pages of this treasure. Natural remedies for asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, stop smoking. This is the new updated version you must have. You can lose a pound a day with hundreds of thousands of people each twenty four hour period… Have your credit card ready. Operators are standing by…”
George took a large swig of his beer that had a woman in a dress holding a beer on the beer bottle itself. It’s the Highlife (registered trademark).
“For $19.95 follow these three techniques. Motivated for success to make hundreds of thousands per week. You cannot fail… Here’s how it works…”
George was born in 1947 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He grew up and served in Vietnam. While there as an eighteen year old boy, he became addicted to pills and alcohol. While in Vietnam, George was exposed to a chemical that changed his life forever.
Agent Orange was given its name from the color of the 55 US gallons (210 L) orange-striped barrels it was shipped in. It is a roughly 1:1 mixture of two phenoxyl herbicides in iso-octyl ester form, 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5 trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T).
2,4-D
2,4,5-T
Internal memos from the companies that manufactured it reveal that at the time Agent Orange was sold to the U.S. government for use in Vietnam it was known that it contained a dioxin, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), a by-product of the manufacture 2,4,5-T. The National Toxicology Program has classified TCDD to be a human carcinogen, frequently associated with soft-tissue sarcoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). In a study by the Institute of Medicine, a link has been found between dioxin exposure and diabetes
Three studies have suggested an increase in the risk of acute myelogenous leukemia in the children of Vietnam veterans, which might be associated with exposure to Agent Orange. A variety of other conditions have been suggested to be linked to exposure, but studies have failed to confirm a link with these diseases. Just 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of TCDD was released in the Seveso disaster causing widespread effects on people and livestock.
George changed the channel while lying in bed. He twisted another cap to the top of a fresh new bottle of beer while holding a cigarette between his index and middle finger on his right hand.
“You are gaining weight due to stress. Your adrenal glands are causing you to gain weight even though you are doing all the right things. Our plan treats the cause and not the symptoms. Your job, the economy is making you fat. This is an all natural product that will help you lose weight through revitalization of your adrenal glands. Stress attacks your adrenal glands causing weight gain. Call now for your free sample.”
On any given day, a million thoughts run through George’s head while drinking beer and taking antidepressants. The idea of visiting Thailand, Arizona, North Carolina, taking martial arts, learning to use the computer, the chemicals in beef and milk and then the afterlife.
Another cigarette, another beer, urinate, rinse repeat …
“The tribulation, seven years in length divided up in two parts is due to the fact that there are two empires and one is swallowed up during the seven year period. There are ten nations that will exist with this empire. To form this new empire, you must unite regions by culture and religion. The EU has put nations together. The United States, Canada, Mexico and South America will be joining together as a global economic unit. The question remains; who are the ten kings of bible prophesy? King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of an image that had two feet with ten toes… Are you following this? Two empires made up of ten nations at the time when the messiah comes back. Daniel chapter seven or Revelations chapter 13, you see the horns on the beast, there are always ten in number. There are ten Germanic tribes that overthrew the Roman Empire. Jesus was supposed to return at this time but Jesus did not return. I believe there is a possibility he is on his way now though. In 1954, the Plan of Rome that was devised by the Biderberg Group of Rome divided the world into ten global regions.
1. America, Canada, Mexico
2. South America
3. Australia and New Zealand
4. Western Europe
5. Eastern Europe
6. Japan
7. South Asia
8. Central Asia
9. North Africa and the Middle East
10. The remainder of Africa
The ten kings are the heads of these ten regions. Whether you like it or not, a new world order is coming…
It was all getting to heavy for George. The weight of gravity was getting to be too much for George.
The mass of an object is a fundamental property of the object; a numerical measure of its inertia; a fundamental measure of the amount of matter in the object. Definitions of mass often seem circular because it is such a fundamental quantity that it is hard to define in terms of something else. All mechanical quantities can be defined in terms of mass, length, and time. The usual symbol for mass is m and its SI unit is the kilogram. While the mass is normally considered to be an unchanging property of an object, at speeds approaching the speed of light one must consider the increase in the relativistic mass.
The weight of an object is the force of gravity on the object and may be defined as the mass times the acceleration of gravity, w = mg. Since the weight is a force, its SI unit is the Newton. Density is mass/volume.
George watched a nature show where the world spun like a big blue marble. It was hard for him to believe he lived on such a place that really is very insignificant in the larger scheme of things. A planet in a solar system and a solar system in a galaxy and a galaxy in a universe. George could go at any moment and the only one who would know is the woman who would have to clean his room.
The last bit of information scared the hell out of George before he closed his eyes and floated down stream to a happier place on earth; his own mind during sleep. In his sleep he felt himself flying out of control. Is it any wonder?
By the way, if Earth spun about 800 times faster, it would hurl us off the surface and into space.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Dr. Meckler Mr. Pride
Now Felix Pride found the love of his life at the tender age of twenty. Felix married Rebecca and they lived in a big house with no children and everything was great, on paper, as the saying goes.
Rebecca had grown up in Evanston, Illinois and attended Northwestern University. She had attended Roycemore High School, a private high school in Evanston one block away from Northwestern University. It was at a college party that she met Felix.
Felix had attended Evanston High School and was floating around Evanston with no job or plans for college when he met Rebecca at a Halloween party. Rebecca was dressed as a seductive Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Felix wore an old time ice hockey mask, removed his shirt and oiled his chest. Felix didn’t care much for work but he was diligent about staying in shape and so he had a nice physique. Rebecca noticed this. As time went on, Felix and Rebecca fell head over heels and knew at a young age, that they had found their life partners, their soul mates, the other half of the puzzle piece that could only fit with the other and so on. Dashed hopes and expectations soon followed. Within ten years, Rebecca was unhappy with her husband’s ability to run around doing nothing. Felix was given a job by Rebecca’s father. Rebecca’s father owned a lot of property and so he made Felix a manager of his properties. Felix’s job was to go around to his father-in-law’s property and make sure that everything was as it should be. At best, Felix did a half assed job. Felix visited buildings sparingly and spent most of his time at the gym or at a bar. Felix had managed to coast his whole life and the only thing he had to do was put up with his wife’s displeasure and mental illness.
Rebecca had shown signs of some sort of disorder when younger but most people close to her particularly in her family attributed it to quirkiness. As the years went on, the mania became more pronounced. It was manic without depression and polar without the bi. Rebecca would exercise several times a day and in between exercising and ripping around Evanston in her SUV, she would play the piano, paint, cook and write poetry all day and almost all night.
Felix would come in three sheets to the wind as they say and Rebecca might be playing the piano, singing, painting or reading her poetry.
It is within my soul, my heart, my breath
With every moment, nearing death
What is purpose? What is meaning
Like falling sand, time is fleeting
I lay in bed my heart beating… faster, faster
When will it stop?
“What do you think, Felix? I wrote it today while I was painting the beach picture we took in Portugal last summer. It’s going to take me a while but I’m getting there. You see… There are the boats and the houses on the cliffs over the water… I loved Portugal. I spent the whole day listening to Astrid Gilberto and painting. I’ve now decided that I am going to learn Portuguese and one day we can move to Portugal on the beach… Baby, have you been drinking again? I thought you said you would stop! I thought you fucking said you were quitting! What the fuck is your word worth if you can never keep it!”
And with that, dishes went flying and a vase broke. Felix stood still in the foyer, never moving. Rebecca cried uncontrollably for a minute until Felix consoled her. They then made love on the cold tile floor next to the front door. Rebecca mounted Felix as the cold slate tiles cooled Felix’s ass. Rebecca rode Felix at a feverish pace for a good five minutes, kissed him on the mouth as her mascara dripped and dried on her cheeks. She smiled and held Felix’s face in her hands.
“Guess what?” Asked Rebecca.
“I don’t think I can…” Answered Felix.
“I made some really good cookies…” Said Rebecca, as she sprung up and ran to the kitchen.
The mania was getting to Felix. Felix had just been at a wine bar in Evanston and met the most beautiful woman he had ever met. Katrina was twenty four, black and from the city of Detroit. Felix had never wanted to ever go to Detroit before but now it had become a shining beacon on the hill. It was Shangri-la and nirvana and Brigadoon and so on.
A man had been renting an apartment from Felix who had been divorced and happened to be a doctor of podiatry. Nobody knew where Dr. Meckler had disappeared to. All Felix knew was that the apartment had been abandoned with everything in it. Rather than throwing anything away, Felix had one of his janitors store all of Dr. Meckler’s belongings in a storage locker. Felix eventually went through all Dr. Meckler’s papers and found that he had a strong resemblance to Dr. Meckler. Felix grabbed the birth certificate and passport belonging to Dr. Meckler and began to toy around with the idea of telling young women at bars that he was a doctor. It was with Katrina that he finally assumed another identity. Katrina being a younger woman, who had graduated with a degree in elementary education, was teaching in an inner city Detroit school. She had come to Evanston for a cousin’s wedding and was going back to Detroit. It wasn’t long after that that Felix bought an apartment building in inner city Detroit and had told his father-in-law that there was a whole revitalization of land near downtown Detroit and that they should get in on the ground level. Nobody questioned it. It became necessary to visit Detroit often and before long, Felix was flying in from Chicago almost four times a week, often staying a day or two.
What Katrina knew was that Felix was Dr. Hans Meckler and that he was single and was thinking of moving to Michigan or Detroit more precisely and wanted to serve the inner city. Katrina loved the idea. Felix read up on podiatry and opened an office on Livernois in Detroit. It wasn’t long before Felix had patients. Felix did common sense things for small problems. In grown toe nails, warts, infections and fallen arches. It was all bogus witch doctory that mixed acting with a bit of chiropractor tactics. It was all going smooth. Katrina believed that Felix was Dr. Meckler and that he had to take care of his property in Chicago but worked in Detroit and so if Dr. Meckler was gone for a few days, it was no big deal. Rebecca and her father, was impressed that Felix was taking initiative to do something bold and innovative like invest in property in Detroit where there were sniffs of urban renewal. Rebecca’s father became wealthy by buying up cheap land and selling it once an area came around. He would buy it when boarded up and sell around the time Starbucks and Blockbuster moved in to the neighborhood.
As time went on, Katrina fell madly in love with Dr. Meckler and convinced him to marry her. They had a boy and a girl that had a nice caramel hue to their skin. They were obviously of African descent but had that hint of Caucasian in them too much like in the days of slavery. Dr. Meckler moved the family to a nice looking townhouse near Wayne State University, just down the street from the Fox Theater on Woodward. Everything was going great for both Felix and Dr. Meckler until federal agents showed up at his clinic in Detroit one weekday afternoon.
“So you’re Dr. Hans Meckler? You reside on Woodward in Detroit, you’re married to a Katrina Meckler and have two children ages four and two, correct?”
“That is correct… What is this about?”
The real Dr. Meckler was suspected of murdering a woman in the Chicago area and took off to Canada and assumed a new identity. The federal agents began to look for and follow Felix thinking that he was Dr. Meckler. They were more stunned to find that one man had two separate lives going in two separate cities with two separate women. Felix explained why he did what he did. The agents were intrigued but ultimately had to arrest Felix for false identification and bigamy. You might expect to hear that from this point on that Felix’s life went to the shitter. From his jail cell, Felix dictated his story to his cell mate in a federal prison in South Dakota. Upon his release, Felix had hoards of publishers and agents looking to sign him to a book deal. Felix settled on one finally and his non-fiction book went to number one. Felix wound up on talk shows and made a pile on his book. The title of his book? Dr. Meckler Mr. Pride.
Rebecca had grown up in Evanston, Illinois and attended Northwestern University. She had attended Roycemore High School, a private high school in Evanston one block away from Northwestern University. It was at a college party that she met Felix.
Felix had attended Evanston High School and was floating around Evanston with no job or plans for college when he met Rebecca at a Halloween party. Rebecca was dressed as a seductive Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Felix wore an old time ice hockey mask, removed his shirt and oiled his chest. Felix didn’t care much for work but he was diligent about staying in shape and so he had a nice physique. Rebecca noticed this. As time went on, Felix and Rebecca fell head over heels and knew at a young age, that they had found their life partners, their soul mates, the other half of the puzzle piece that could only fit with the other and so on. Dashed hopes and expectations soon followed. Within ten years, Rebecca was unhappy with her husband’s ability to run around doing nothing. Felix was given a job by Rebecca’s father. Rebecca’s father owned a lot of property and so he made Felix a manager of his properties. Felix’s job was to go around to his father-in-law’s property and make sure that everything was as it should be. At best, Felix did a half assed job. Felix visited buildings sparingly and spent most of his time at the gym or at a bar. Felix had managed to coast his whole life and the only thing he had to do was put up with his wife’s displeasure and mental illness.
Rebecca had shown signs of some sort of disorder when younger but most people close to her particularly in her family attributed it to quirkiness. As the years went on, the mania became more pronounced. It was manic without depression and polar without the bi. Rebecca would exercise several times a day and in between exercising and ripping around Evanston in her SUV, she would play the piano, paint, cook and write poetry all day and almost all night.
Felix would come in three sheets to the wind as they say and Rebecca might be playing the piano, singing, painting or reading her poetry.
It is within my soul, my heart, my breath
With every moment, nearing death
What is purpose? What is meaning
Like falling sand, time is fleeting
I lay in bed my heart beating… faster, faster
When will it stop?
“What do you think, Felix? I wrote it today while I was painting the beach picture we took in Portugal last summer. It’s going to take me a while but I’m getting there. You see… There are the boats and the houses on the cliffs over the water… I loved Portugal. I spent the whole day listening to Astrid Gilberto and painting. I’ve now decided that I am going to learn Portuguese and one day we can move to Portugal on the beach… Baby, have you been drinking again? I thought you said you would stop! I thought you fucking said you were quitting! What the fuck is your word worth if you can never keep it!”
And with that, dishes went flying and a vase broke. Felix stood still in the foyer, never moving. Rebecca cried uncontrollably for a minute until Felix consoled her. They then made love on the cold tile floor next to the front door. Rebecca mounted Felix as the cold slate tiles cooled Felix’s ass. Rebecca rode Felix at a feverish pace for a good five minutes, kissed him on the mouth as her mascara dripped and dried on her cheeks. She smiled and held Felix’s face in her hands.
“Guess what?” Asked Rebecca.
“I don’t think I can…” Answered Felix.
“I made some really good cookies…” Said Rebecca, as she sprung up and ran to the kitchen.
The mania was getting to Felix. Felix had just been at a wine bar in Evanston and met the most beautiful woman he had ever met. Katrina was twenty four, black and from the city of Detroit. Felix had never wanted to ever go to Detroit before but now it had become a shining beacon on the hill. It was Shangri-la and nirvana and Brigadoon and so on.
A man had been renting an apartment from Felix who had been divorced and happened to be a doctor of podiatry. Nobody knew where Dr. Meckler had disappeared to. All Felix knew was that the apartment had been abandoned with everything in it. Rather than throwing anything away, Felix had one of his janitors store all of Dr. Meckler’s belongings in a storage locker. Felix eventually went through all Dr. Meckler’s papers and found that he had a strong resemblance to Dr. Meckler. Felix grabbed the birth certificate and passport belonging to Dr. Meckler and began to toy around with the idea of telling young women at bars that he was a doctor. It was with Katrina that he finally assumed another identity. Katrina being a younger woman, who had graduated with a degree in elementary education, was teaching in an inner city Detroit school. She had come to Evanston for a cousin’s wedding and was going back to Detroit. It wasn’t long after that that Felix bought an apartment building in inner city Detroit and had told his father-in-law that there was a whole revitalization of land near downtown Detroit and that they should get in on the ground level. Nobody questioned it. It became necessary to visit Detroit often and before long, Felix was flying in from Chicago almost four times a week, often staying a day or two.
What Katrina knew was that Felix was Dr. Hans Meckler and that he was single and was thinking of moving to Michigan or Detroit more precisely and wanted to serve the inner city. Katrina loved the idea. Felix read up on podiatry and opened an office on Livernois in Detroit. It wasn’t long before Felix had patients. Felix did common sense things for small problems. In grown toe nails, warts, infections and fallen arches. It was all bogus witch doctory that mixed acting with a bit of chiropractor tactics. It was all going smooth. Katrina believed that Felix was Dr. Meckler and that he had to take care of his property in Chicago but worked in Detroit and so if Dr. Meckler was gone for a few days, it was no big deal. Rebecca and her father, was impressed that Felix was taking initiative to do something bold and innovative like invest in property in Detroit where there were sniffs of urban renewal. Rebecca’s father became wealthy by buying up cheap land and selling it once an area came around. He would buy it when boarded up and sell around the time Starbucks and Blockbuster moved in to the neighborhood.
As time went on, Katrina fell madly in love with Dr. Meckler and convinced him to marry her. They had a boy and a girl that had a nice caramel hue to their skin. They were obviously of African descent but had that hint of Caucasian in them too much like in the days of slavery. Dr. Meckler moved the family to a nice looking townhouse near Wayne State University, just down the street from the Fox Theater on Woodward. Everything was going great for both Felix and Dr. Meckler until federal agents showed up at his clinic in Detroit one weekday afternoon.
“So you’re Dr. Hans Meckler? You reside on Woodward in Detroit, you’re married to a Katrina Meckler and have two children ages four and two, correct?”
“That is correct… What is this about?”
The real Dr. Meckler was suspected of murdering a woman in the Chicago area and took off to Canada and assumed a new identity. The federal agents began to look for and follow Felix thinking that he was Dr. Meckler. They were more stunned to find that one man had two separate lives going in two separate cities with two separate women. Felix explained why he did what he did. The agents were intrigued but ultimately had to arrest Felix for false identification and bigamy. You might expect to hear that from this point on that Felix’s life went to the shitter. From his jail cell, Felix dictated his story to his cell mate in a federal prison in South Dakota. Upon his release, Felix had hoards of publishers and agents looking to sign him to a book deal. Felix settled on one finally and his non-fiction book went to number one. Felix wound up on talk shows and made a pile on his book. The title of his book? Dr. Meckler Mr. Pride.
Il Fait Chaud
Il Fait Chaud
I don’t remember it ever being this hot in Canada. I’ve had to adjust again to this
archaic standard of measurements. Feet, yards, miles and Fahrenheit. I think we stopped
using them up in Canada around 1980. When the British abandoned their own system,
we figured it was time to get sensible too.
It was almost nine in the morning and I spent the night at my girlfriend’s
apartment. She lives in a village called Oak Park, which is directly ten miles west of the
giant buildings that make up the skyline of downtown Chicago.
I stepped outside in a fog. The fog is in my head. I tossed and turned all night. It
was way too hot and too humid to get comfortable enough to sleep. I tried freezing my
sheets and taking a cold shower, but that only helped for a little while. If I slept, it was
fleeting and felt as though I never descended to that deep level where you dream about
sitting on a teeter totter across from Abraham Lincoln. I kept looking at the digital clock
and listened to the ceiling fan make a clicking sound at one second intervals. My
girlfriend slept like an angel in my Québec t shirt with the phrase underneath that reads,
“Je me souviens”, which is I remember my French heritage. She is African-American or
black and I am a blend of French and Irish. I have difficulty sleeping in extreme heat
even if I’m naked and she has no problem sleeping in a t shirt.
The roof of the eighty year old apartment building, is flat and is covered with
black tar and tiny rocks. When the temperature exceeds ninety degrees Fahrenheit, the
roof heats up like a hot plate and makes life on the third floor inhumane. My girlfriend
doesn’t believe in air conditioning. She thinks it ruins the vintage feeling of the
apartment. She tells me constantly that there was no air conditioning in apartments or
homes in the pre-Depression era. I have asked a few people old enough to remember that
era and they told me on extremely hot nights, they would go to Lake Michigan and camp
out near the water. With crime being what it is today, such a thing would not be safe. I
told my girlfriend this and she just shrugged her shoulders. She smiled at me, well rested
and a bit frisky and I told her that I would not be spending the night again until the
weather gets better unless she gets air conditioning. We separated this morning a little
cold towards one another on the hottest day of the summer.
America, just celebrated it’s independence from Great Britain last week and since
then the weather has been beastly. The air conditioning stopped working in my minivan
and so even though I showered less than an hour ago, I already have that not so fresh
feeling.
I checked my voice mail and had three messages before nine in the morning. My
job is to face people who are angry and disgruntled. I work for a developer who buys up
old apartment buildings and converts them into condominiums. My job is to answer
complaints of new owners who have discovered shoddy work.
Call number one. First message was from an irate homosexual named David who
left me a message at 6:15 this morning. If I had not turned off my phone, he would have
been the first voice I heard this morning.
David was able to marry his partner in Boston a few years back and refers to his
partner as his husband. David is a stay at home wife.
“Listen, Luc! I need you to come by this morning and look at the damage to my
walls! I have mold growing in my closet and I am highly allergic to dust and mold. I
have been suffering all night. If this is not taken care of today, I will be spending the
night in a hotel of my choice and I will send you the bill via certified mail. My husband,
who has to work early, was up with me half the night due to my asthma … My walls are
alive with living spores. If I do not hear from you today, I will be going to the village.”
Message two from a trust fund child who has never worked a day in her life and
calls me on a weekly basis to complain about everything. Today it was about noise.
“Luc? This is Mrs. Watkins… Look! Something has got to be done about that
woman upstairs and her two goddamn racing dogs. She owns two greyhounds which she
bought from a society that attempts to save former race dogs. Well I have news for you;
they’re still racing. They chase each other around all night and she is a night nurse and
has no idea what is happening. I have asked her to buy oriental rugs and she just tells me
that she prefers the look of hardwood floors. I’m at my wits end. I’m not getting sleep.
I cannot concentrate during the day and I’ve had problems with migraines and ulcers. I
need to know how you will resolve this.”
Message three. Somebody removed someone’s lock and then took out all of their
belongings from a storage locker in the basement. The man who called happened to be an
attorney.
“This message is for Luc! I have called twice now and the next correspondence
will be through the courts. My belongings are scattered all over the laundry room floor…
Okay… This has to be resolved one way or another… Okay. You were supposed
to mark all the storage lockers and it was not done… Okay. Our board specifically asked
to have laminated placards, 3X3 in size, stating clearly who’s locker is who’s… I need a
call from you today… Okay. I would really appreciate it.”
Um… Okay.
My first stop was at a Jiffy Lube. I stopped there for an air conditioning recharge
and they told me that my system won’t hold the Freon. The smallish blue collared man
with really yellowish teeth and a tattoo on his neck of a spider, seemed almost pleased to
announce this. He looked like a transplant from the deep south and had a twang to his
voice that one finds as soon as you reach Chicago’s southern suburbs.
“My best advice to you is to sell this thing… Better yet, hang on to it. It’s a
collector’s item. They stopped making Plymouth a few years ago. You can fix this up
and sell it in like twenty years,” said the man with a foolish grin as he picked at his
yellow teeth with a toothpick. His hands were very dirty too. I was thinking that a good
strep infection would take the smile off his face.
Now on top of the problem of my vehicle’s incapability to keep Freon, I got into
an accident a year ago and my fan got crunched. On hot days in heavy traffic, I would
have to run the heater on high to relieve some of the heat from the engine. Picture the
nearly hundred degree temperature Fahrenheit and then a heater blowing full blast while
the traffic is dead stopped. I was praying that this would not happen but low and behold
there was a ten foot patch of street being repaired on Harlem Avenue. The cars queued
up for over a mile. When I got up to the spot where they were working on the street,
there was a black man with a shovel while three fat white men stood around watching. I
wanted to scream at them. I was sweating profusely now. The back of my shirt was
soaked and I had wet rings under the arms and a line running down the middle of my
shirt. I was already crabby and it was 9:30 AM.
I stopped at the hardware store and listened to a cashier talk on her phone for
nearly five minutes. She had huge thighs and was wearing polyester pants with an elastic
waist band. I could not imagine being so fat that conventional pants with zippers and
buttons, would not fit. She had a face that was so bloated that her eyes disappeared when
she smiled. She pulled back her hair like a Sumo wrestler and had mutton chops. She
had a pretty strong moustache going on too. I must note that her nails looked flawless
though. She hung up the phone and looked at me as if I had been eavesdropping.
“Is there something you need, sir?”
“Yeah, I could really use some air-conditioning. Do you have any window units
left?”
She laughed and slapped her enormous thigh that looked like two of mine put
together. Her eyes disappeared and the skin under her chin shook like Jell-O. I have to
point out that Americans are the most obese people in the world. We have Tim Horton
donut shops on every corner and yet the people in Canada are not so grotesque. I wanted
to snap at her for being so insensitive and rude. Instead I just looked at her blankly.
“You people never do the smart thing and buy something like this in the winter…
You’ll probably need a shovel during a snowstorm… I think we got a few left but the
BTUs are low. You’re gonna have to sleep right on top of it to stay cool…” she said as
she giggled.
By 10:00 AM, I had to deal with two really ignorant human beings that find
humor in discomfort. I could only hope one day to be nearby in a lawn chair with a six
pack when misfortune hits them. It would bring me great pleasure. It is but a fantasy.
I got to the first building where the homosexual called. He was waiting at the
door with his hands on his hips. His hair was bleached white until it was blue and was
spiked every which way as if squirrels had wrestled upon his head. He had really hip
horned rim glasses that one could tell were just glass, no prescription. He had a smart
assed comment too.
“Were you running in your work clothes? Your all sweated up. Do you want
water or a towel or something?”
“Um… I’ll be okay. Can I see the damage?”
There was a tiny bubble on the ceiling that had a tiny blotch of spores. This spot
was the size of those fifty cent coins with John F. Kennedy’s face on it or a two dollar
double loony coin in Canada. This is what was causing this person to have asthmatic
conditions? There are people living in shacks in seventy percent of the world with no
heat, air-conditioning or in door plumbing and this guy is crying about a spot on the
ceiling. I called the janitor and had him clean the spot with bleach and then called a
heating and air conditioning guy to look at the unit on the roof. The man insisted I take a
bottle water with me and so I did.
Without boring you with the details of problem solving little insignificant things
that mean nothing in the larger scheme of things. I went back to my girlfriend’s
apartment to put in the unit. I carried it up three flights of stairs. I continued to perspire.
I fought with the old window that had probably been painted a hundred times in the past
eighty plus years. I had to hit it with a hammer to get it to open with the humidity .
I placed the unit in the window and held it with my right hand and pulled on the window
which was stuck in the open position, with the other hand. The hammer was on the bed
and I could not reach it and hold the unit in place. I needed another two inches to reach
it.
I kicked the bed until it fell to the floor. As I was stretching to reach it, the air
conditioner started to slip away and fell three floors to the cement path below and broke
in numerous pieces. I didn’t know if I should cry or punch a hole in the wall. I almost
began to cry in frustration. I just lost $200.00. I got downstairs and the janitor was
stupidly looking up at the sky as if a bird possibly shit it out. I walked by as if I didn’t
know what happened. I really wanted to just stop everything I was doing and just go to
the beach.
I got to the car and realized that I had locked my keys in the apartment. I was
really ready to punch the window of my car but instead I asked the janitor to let me into
the apartment. He gave me a bit of a hard time.
“Are you on the lease?”
“No, it’s my girlfriend’s place but I stay with her half the week… You’ve never
seen me before?”
“Oh yeah… Oh yeah… That one girl… On the third floor, right?”
“Right, right. The tall girl of African descent.”
“Right, right.”
Oak Park is overly politically correct. It has the highest percentage of
homosexuals per capita in the country and I think for that reason, everyone is very careful
to not say anything to offend or discriminate. Between two white dudes, saying that
someone is black should not be too difficult. At any rate, I got my keys. The janitor
stood in the doorway and shook his head up and down while making a frown with his
mouth and squinting his eyes. The apartment was spotless.
“Very clean! That’s a nice surprise.”
“They don’t live in trees anymore… They’re much cleaner than they used to be
when they were barefoot in the bush or picking cotton.”
“Oh no! I didn’t mean to insinuate nothing… I’m really sorry sir.”
I felt bad then. This guy was going to spend the rest of his day worrying about
whether or not I would call his boss to report race discrimination. I couldn’t let him think
that was going to happen. He was nice enough to let me in.
“Don’t sweat it, I’m just having a tough day. I just dropped that A/C unit laying
in the courtyard… I have no air-conditioning in my car and I didn’t sleep last night.”
“I have some at one of the other buildings that someone left. I’ll give them to
you… No problem, sir.”
I always feel sort of sad for old men who call me sir. I’m under forty and he’s
over fifty. He should call me kid or son or dude but not sir.
My brother remained in Canada. He lives outside of Toronto and runs the
Zamboni at a rink. He plays hockey six days a week and sits up in the bar above the ice
rink and watches other hockey games. He has a really pretty wife that was his high
school sweetheart. They have a little boy and my brother is so happy. He told me that he
secretly wants his son to play for the Habs ( Montreal ) instead of the Maple Leafs. That
had more to do with the fact that we loved our grandfather. My mother’s parents
lived in Quebec and spoke only French to us. We spent nearly every summer with them
up in a small town called Chicoutimi which is about two hundred miles north and east of
Quebec City. Nobody up there speaks English. My mother got a job after college with
Air Canada since she was bilingual. She met my father in Toronto where she was
working at the time and the rest is history. In any case, I bring up my brother because he
is happy and not hurried. He never went to college and never wanted to. He coaches ice
hockey, plays it and works at the rink. His whole life is hockey and he loves it. His wife
loves it. They live very simple. If my brother were here he would commandeer the car
and drive straight to Lake Michigan. My grandfather, who was exactly like my brother,
would have done the same thing. He loved to fish. He fished everyday after retiring.
Grandpere would wake in the morning and give my grandmere a kiss and say, “Il fait
beau…” and she would say in her grouchy way, “Non. Il fait chaud…” My grandfather
always said it was beautiful and my grandmother would declare that it was too hot. I
found myself mumbling a few times to myself the same words that my grandmother used.
“Il fait chaud.”
I ran around the rest of the day like any other worker ant does. I did my part for
society and worked hard to keep the wheels of the giant machine moving. I dealt with
hornets, squirrels and rodents inside of units. I dealt with mold and dog shit. I mediated
between a woman with two racing dogs and a woman who hates animals. I watched
plumbers unclog drains, toilets and sewers. I went up on hot roofs to find the source of
leaks. Nothing unusual and the same sort of complaints will come tomorrow. The
difference is that on no sleep, it is difficult to face the world. I don’t know what would
be worse, to not sleep or to not eat. I know now know vividly what no sleep is like with a
good dose of frustration.
I finished my day at a condominium board meeting where people without much to
do, agonized over the cost of cleaning the carpeting in foyer versus new carpet. I needed
clothes pins on my eyelids to make it through the hour meeting with people who
averaged eighty years of age. I felt like getting up and saying something very frank.
“Listen! You are very old and have very little time left on this earth. Worrying
about replacing carpeting versus washing it, should be a minimal thing in your lives. Go
to the zoo. Go to a museum. Go see a play. Look for people you used to know sixty
years ago and stimulate your memories with things you haven’t thought about in ages.
Enjoy each day as if it were your last because one day really soon, you will be gone…
But the carpet will remain.”
I didn’t say that. Instead I looked at an old woman who instructed me to get three
estimates for new carpet and three for carpet cleaning and they would discuss and choose
the best course of action. I thought about all the things going on in my life and hoped to
heck that mundane things like carpeting, would never stir passion within me. With global
warming, wars, nuclear proliferation and starvation in the world, how could we be
worrying about carpeting, air conditioning, mold spores, dog shit and storage lockers?
When you don’t have to worry about survival, you can turn your attention to many things
that mean very little.
I was too tired to go to my apartment across town. I was going to take a cold
shower and go to sleep before my body heated up. I walked in to my girlfriend’s place
and there was a window air-conditioning unit in the living room and another in the
bedroom. It was in the sixties in the apartment with very low humidity. The janitor found
two units and installed them for me, free of charge and without killing them in the
courtyard below. It was the nicest thing to have happened to me all day. I owed the guy
a huge thank you and a gift card to Starbucks or a local restaurant.
I went to bed that night and my girlfriend put on flannel pants and socks to go
with my Quebec shirt. She pulled the comforter up to her chin around her head and
poked her nose out. I laid there in my hybrid underwear that is neither a boxer nor a
brief. It is neither 100% cotton nor 100% spandex. I laid there smiling ready to sleep
like I had not slept in a long time because I had not. I was almost excited. My girlfriend
whispered to me.
“It’s cold…”
I whispered back in French.
“Non. Il fait beau…”
I don’t remember it ever being this hot in Canada. I’ve had to adjust again to this
archaic standard of measurements. Feet, yards, miles and Fahrenheit. I think we stopped
using them up in Canada around 1980. When the British abandoned their own system,
we figured it was time to get sensible too.
It was almost nine in the morning and I spent the night at my girlfriend’s
apartment. She lives in a village called Oak Park, which is directly ten miles west of the
giant buildings that make up the skyline of downtown Chicago.
I stepped outside in a fog. The fog is in my head. I tossed and turned all night. It
was way too hot and too humid to get comfortable enough to sleep. I tried freezing my
sheets and taking a cold shower, but that only helped for a little while. If I slept, it was
fleeting and felt as though I never descended to that deep level where you dream about
sitting on a teeter totter across from Abraham Lincoln. I kept looking at the digital clock
and listened to the ceiling fan make a clicking sound at one second intervals. My
girlfriend slept like an angel in my Québec t shirt with the phrase underneath that reads,
“Je me souviens”, which is I remember my French heritage. She is African-American or
black and I am a blend of French and Irish. I have difficulty sleeping in extreme heat
even if I’m naked and she has no problem sleeping in a t shirt.
The roof of the eighty year old apartment building, is flat and is covered with
black tar and tiny rocks. When the temperature exceeds ninety degrees Fahrenheit, the
roof heats up like a hot plate and makes life on the third floor inhumane. My girlfriend
doesn’t believe in air conditioning. She thinks it ruins the vintage feeling of the
apartment. She tells me constantly that there was no air conditioning in apartments or
homes in the pre-Depression era. I have asked a few people old enough to remember that
era and they told me on extremely hot nights, they would go to Lake Michigan and camp
out near the water. With crime being what it is today, such a thing would not be safe. I
told my girlfriend this and she just shrugged her shoulders. She smiled at me, well rested
and a bit frisky and I told her that I would not be spending the night again until the
weather gets better unless she gets air conditioning. We separated this morning a little
cold towards one another on the hottest day of the summer.
America, just celebrated it’s independence from Great Britain last week and since
then the weather has been beastly. The air conditioning stopped working in my minivan
and so even though I showered less than an hour ago, I already have that not so fresh
feeling.
I checked my voice mail and had three messages before nine in the morning. My
job is to face people who are angry and disgruntled. I work for a developer who buys up
old apartment buildings and converts them into condominiums. My job is to answer
complaints of new owners who have discovered shoddy work.
Call number one. First message was from an irate homosexual named David who
left me a message at 6:15 this morning. If I had not turned off my phone, he would have
been the first voice I heard this morning.
David was able to marry his partner in Boston a few years back and refers to his
partner as his husband. David is a stay at home wife.
“Listen, Luc! I need you to come by this morning and look at the damage to my
walls! I have mold growing in my closet and I am highly allergic to dust and mold. I
have been suffering all night. If this is not taken care of today, I will be spending the
night in a hotel of my choice and I will send you the bill via certified mail. My husband,
who has to work early, was up with me half the night due to my asthma … My walls are
alive with living spores. If I do not hear from you today, I will be going to the village.”
Message two from a trust fund child who has never worked a day in her life and
calls me on a weekly basis to complain about everything. Today it was about noise.
“Luc? This is Mrs. Watkins… Look! Something has got to be done about that
woman upstairs and her two goddamn racing dogs. She owns two greyhounds which she
bought from a society that attempts to save former race dogs. Well I have news for you;
they’re still racing. They chase each other around all night and she is a night nurse and
has no idea what is happening. I have asked her to buy oriental rugs and she just tells me
that she prefers the look of hardwood floors. I’m at my wits end. I’m not getting sleep.
I cannot concentrate during the day and I’ve had problems with migraines and ulcers. I
need to know how you will resolve this.”
Message three. Somebody removed someone’s lock and then took out all of their
belongings from a storage locker in the basement. The man who called happened to be an
attorney.
“This message is for Luc! I have called twice now and the next correspondence
will be through the courts. My belongings are scattered all over the laundry room floor…
Okay… This has to be resolved one way or another… Okay. You were supposed
to mark all the storage lockers and it was not done… Okay. Our board specifically asked
to have laminated placards, 3X3 in size, stating clearly who’s locker is who’s… I need a
call from you today… Okay. I would really appreciate it.”
Um… Okay.
My first stop was at a Jiffy Lube. I stopped there for an air conditioning recharge
and they told me that my system won’t hold the Freon. The smallish blue collared man
with really yellowish teeth and a tattoo on his neck of a spider, seemed almost pleased to
announce this. He looked like a transplant from the deep south and had a twang to his
voice that one finds as soon as you reach Chicago’s southern suburbs.
“My best advice to you is to sell this thing… Better yet, hang on to it. It’s a
collector’s item. They stopped making Plymouth a few years ago. You can fix this up
and sell it in like twenty years,” said the man with a foolish grin as he picked at his
yellow teeth with a toothpick. His hands were very dirty too. I was thinking that a good
strep infection would take the smile off his face.
Now on top of the problem of my vehicle’s incapability to keep Freon, I got into
an accident a year ago and my fan got crunched. On hot days in heavy traffic, I would
have to run the heater on high to relieve some of the heat from the engine. Picture the
nearly hundred degree temperature Fahrenheit and then a heater blowing full blast while
the traffic is dead stopped. I was praying that this would not happen but low and behold
there was a ten foot patch of street being repaired on Harlem Avenue. The cars queued
up for over a mile. When I got up to the spot where they were working on the street,
there was a black man with a shovel while three fat white men stood around watching. I
wanted to scream at them. I was sweating profusely now. The back of my shirt was
soaked and I had wet rings under the arms and a line running down the middle of my
shirt. I was already crabby and it was 9:30 AM.
I stopped at the hardware store and listened to a cashier talk on her phone for
nearly five minutes. She had huge thighs and was wearing polyester pants with an elastic
waist band. I could not imagine being so fat that conventional pants with zippers and
buttons, would not fit. She had a face that was so bloated that her eyes disappeared when
she smiled. She pulled back her hair like a Sumo wrestler and had mutton chops. She
had a pretty strong moustache going on too. I must note that her nails looked flawless
though. She hung up the phone and looked at me as if I had been eavesdropping.
“Is there something you need, sir?”
“Yeah, I could really use some air-conditioning. Do you have any window units
left?”
She laughed and slapped her enormous thigh that looked like two of mine put
together. Her eyes disappeared and the skin under her chin shook like Jell-O. I have to
point out that Americans are the most obese people in the world. We have Tim Horton
donut shops on every corner and yet the people in Canada are not so grotesque. I wanted
to snap at her for being so insensitive and rude. Instead I just looked at her blankly.
“You people never do the smart thing and buy something like this in the winter…
You’ll probably need a shovel during a snowstorm… I think we got a few left but the
BTUs are low. You’re gonna have to sleep right on top of it to stay cool…” she said as
she giggled.
By 10:00 AM, I had to deal with two really ignorant human beings that find
humor in discomfort. I could only hope one day to be nearby in a lawn chair with a six
pack when misfortune hits them. It would bring me great pleasure. It is but a fantasy.
I got to the first building where the homosexual called. He was waiting at the
door with his hands on his hips. His hair was bleached white until it was blue and was
spiked every which way as if squirrels had wrestled upon his head. He had really hip
horned rim glasses that one could tell were just glass, no prescription. He had a smart
assed comment too.
“Were you running in your work clothes? Your all sweated up. Do you want
water or a towel or something?”
“Um… I’ll be okay. Can I see the damage?”
There was a tiny bubble on the ceiling that had a tiny blotch of spores. This spot
was the size of those fifty cent coins with John F. Kennedy’s face on it or a two dollar
double loony coin in Canada. This is what was causing this person to have asthmatic
conditions? There are people living in shacks in seventy percent of the world with no
heat, air-conditioning or in door plumbing and this guy is crying about a spot on the
ceiling. I called the janitor and had him clean the spot with bleach and then called a
heating and air conditioning guy to look at the unit on the roof. The man insisted I take a
bottle water with me and so I did.
Without boring you with the details of problem solving little insignificant things
that mean nothing in the larger scheme of things. I went back to my girlfriend’s
apartment to put in the unit. I carried it up three flights of stairs. I continued to perspire.
I fought with the old window that had probably been painted a hundred times in the past
eighty plus years. I had to hit it with a hammer to get it to open with the humidity .
I placed the unit in the window and held it with my right hand and pulled on the window
which was stuck in the open position, with the other hand. The hammer was on the bed
and I could not reach it and hold the unit in place. I needed another two inches to reach
it.
I kicked the bed until it fell to the floor. As I was stretching to reach it, the air
conditioner started to slip away and fell three floors to the cement path below and broke
in numerous pieces. I didn’t know if I should cry or punch a hole in the wall. I almost
began to cry in frustration. I just lost $200.00. I got downstairs and the janitor was
stupidly looking up at the sky as if a bird possibly shit it out. I walked by as if I didn’t
know what happened. I really wanted to just stop everything I was doing and just go to
the beach.
I got to the car and realized that I had locked my keys in the apartment. I was
really ready to punch the window of my car but instead I asked the janitor to let me into
the apartment. He gave me a bit of a hard time.
“Are you on the lease?”
“No, it’s my girlfriend’s place but I stay with her half the week… You’ve never
seen me before?”
“Oh yeah… Oh yeah… That one girl… On the third floor, right?”
“Right, right. The tall girl of African descent.”
“Right, right.”
Oak Park is overly politically correct. It has the highest percentage of
homosexuals per capita in the country and I think for that reason, everyone is very careful
to not say anything to offend or discriminate. Between two white dudes, saying that
someone is black should not be too difficult. At any rate, I got my keys. The janitor
stood in the doorway and shook his head up and down while making a frown with his
mouth and squinting his eyes. The apartment was spotless.
“Very clean! That’s a nice surprise.”
“They don’t live in trees anymore… They’re much cleaner than they used to be
when they were barefoot in the bush or picking cotton.”
“Oh no! I didn’t mean to insinuate nothing… I’m really sorry sir.”
I felt bad then. This guy was going to spend the rest of his day worrying about
whether or not I would call his boss to report race discrimination. I couldn’t let him think
that was going to happen. He was nice enough to let me in.
“Don’t sweat it, I’m just having a tough day. I just dropped that A/C unit laying
in the courtyard… I have no air-conditioning in my car and I didn’t sleep last night.”
“I have some at one of the other buildings that someone left. I’ll give them to
you… No problem, sir.”
I always feel sort of sad for old men who call me sir. I’m under forty and he’s
over fifty. He should call me kid or son or dude but not sir.
My brother remained in Canada. He lives outside of Toronto and runs the
Zamboni at a rink. He plays hockey six days a week and sits up in the bar above the ice
rink and watches other hockey games. He has a really pretty wife that was his high
school sweetheart. They have a little boy and my brother is so happy. He told me that he
secretly wants his son to play for the Habs ( Montreal ) instead of the Maple Leafs. That
had more to do with the fact that we loved our grandfather. My mother’s parents
lived in Quebec and spoke only French to us. We spent nearly every summer with them
up in a small town called Chicoutimi which is about two hundred miles north and east of
Quebec City. Nobody up there speaks English. My mother got a job after college with
Air Canada since she was bilingual. She met my father in Toronto where she was
working at the time and the rest is history. In any case, I bring up my brother because he
is happy and not hurried. He never went to college and never wanted to. He coaches ice
hockey, plays it and works at the rink. His whole life is hockey and he loves it. His wife
loves it. They live very simple. If my brother were here he would commandeer the car
and drive straight to Lake Michigan. My grandfather, who was exactly like my brother,
would have done the same thing. He loved to fish. He fished everyday after retiring.
Grandpere would wake in the morning and give my grandmere a kiss and say, “Il fait
beau…” and she would say in her grouchy way, “Non. Il fait chaud…” My grandfather
always said it was beautiful and my grandmother would declare that it was too hot. I
found myself mumbling a few times to myself the same words that my grandmother used.
“Il fait chaud.”
I ran around the rest of the day like any other worker ant does. I did my part for
society and worked hard to keep the wheels of the giant machine moving. I dealt with
hornets, squirrels and rodents inside of units. I dealt with mold and dog shit. I mediated
between a woman with two racing dogs and a woman who hates animals. I watched
plumbers unclog drains, toilets and sewers. I went up on hot roofs to find the source of
leaks. Nothing unusual and the same sort of complaints will come tomorrow. The
difference is that on no sleep, it is difficult to face the world. I don’t know what would
be worse, to not sleep or to not eat. I know now know vividly what no sleep is like with a
good dose of frustration.
I finished my day at a condominium board meeting where people without much to
do, agonized over the cost of cleaning the carpeting in foyer versus new carpet. I needed
clothes pins on my eyelids to make it through the hour meeting with people who
averaged eighty years of age. I felt like getting up and saying something very frank.
“Listen! You are very old and have very little time left on this earth. Worrying
about replacing carpeting versus washing it, should be a minimal thing in your lives. Go
to the zoo. Go to a museum. Go see a play. Look for people you used to know sixty
years ago and stimulate your memories with things you haven’t thought about in ages.
Enjoy each day as if it were your last because one day really soon, you will be gone…
But the carpet will remain.”
I didn’t say that. Instead I looked at an old woman who instructed me to get three
estimates for new carpet and three for carpet cleaning and they would discuss and choose
the best course of action. I thought about all the things going on in my life and hoped to
heck that mundane things like carpeting, would never stir passion within me. With global
warming, wars, nuclear proliferation and starvation in the world, how could we be
worrying about carpeting, air conditioning, mold spores, dog shit and storage lockers?
When you don’t have to worry about survival, you can turn your attention to many things
that mean very little.
I was too tired to go to my apartment across town. I was going to take a cold
shower and go to sleep before my body heated up. I walked in to my girlfriend’s place
and there was a window air-conditioning unit in the living room and another in the
bedroom. It was in the sixties in the apartment with very low humidity. The janitor found
two units and installed them for me, free of charge and without killing them in the
courtyard below. It was the nicest thing to have happened to me all day. I owed the guy
a huge thank you and a gift card to Starbucks or a local restaurant.
I went to bed that night and my girlfriend put on flannel pants and socks to go
with my Quebec shirt. She pulled the comforter up to her chin around her head and
poked her nose out. I laid there in my hybrid underwear that is neither a boxer nor a
brief. It is neither 100% cotton nor 100% spandex. I laid there smiling ready to sleep
like I had not slept in a long time because I had not. I was almost excited. My girlfriend
whispered to me.
“It’s cold…”
I whispered back in French.
“Non. Il fait beau…”
Monday, December 7, 2009
Like Bill and Tiger
Monique de la Croix came from Haiti in 1986 with her son Elmer in tow. They braved the seas between Haiti and Florida and played a bizarre game on the shores of Miami where by if a refugee could touch dry land, they could stay. The coast guard would try to force the people from Haiti back to their make shift boats or put them on coast guard ships before they could touch dry land. Monique, with her son Elmer strapped to her back, ran as hard and as fast as she could through the crashing waves and fell face first onto dry land as she laughed and cried. It had been days since she ate or drank water and she had nothing but the clothes she was wearing and her two year old son with her.
Catholic charities placed Monique in Montreal since she spoke French and Creole exclusively. It was in Montreal that Monique met and married a white man who adopted Elmer and taught him to play the game of ice hockey.
Elmer grew to be a hair over six feet in height and a little over two hundred pounds. Elmer was lean, fast and quite capable as an ice hockey player. He went early in the NHL draft and wound up playing for Nashville. Nashville signed Elmer to a multiyear contract whereby he made millions at the age of 21. By age twenty two, Elmer had married Canadian figure skating Olympian Jeanette Devereux and lived comfortably in Nashville, Miami and Montreal. Everything was going great for Elmer until one crazy night.
Jeanette had been taking anti-depression drugs for a while and fluctuated between being unable to get out of bed and not being able to sleep for days. On manic days, Jeanette might stay out drinking all night with friends, have breakfast and come home to break things in the house and cry. One day Jeanette would send text messages that she wanted to die, other days she wanted Elmer to die quickly followed up with messages of I love you, when will you be home?
Being a black man in a white dominated sport and a superstar at that was a love hate sort of thing for the fans of Nashville. The good ole boys liked the speed and physical nature of the sport of ice hockey but had a difficult time at first with having their big star a black man with a strong French accent. They did like the finesse of Elmer and his willingness to fight when necessary.
After one particular home game around Thanksgiving in the states, Elmer had gone out with a few players to a steak house to eat. It was there that Elmer met Christy, a devil with face of an angel and a body of a goddess. Now Elmer had practiced really good self restraint throughout the duration of his marriage and opportunity for infidelity knocked almost nightly for Elmer. One particular Wednesday evening, Elmer became weak and succumbed to primal urges that could not easily be quelled. Often in these situations, the sports figure goes one way and the female goes the other and nothing is spoken of again until maybe the next time in town. Christy had fallen deeply and madly in love.
Christy grew up in rural Tennessee and left home at fourteen to find a job in Memphis. Christy lied about her age and was able to land a job as a waitress at a steak house in Memphis. At sixteen, Christy lived like a woman several years older than her and nobody knew or questioned the fact that Christy had not reached adulthood. Christy was built like a woman from head to toe. Christy had a certain Marilyn Monroe quality about her that irresistible to men. Christy had a thing for men who could speak French. Elmer was talking to Jeanette on the phone in French when Christy walked by.
« Jeanette! Ecoutez bien! Ce n’est pas possible maintenant. J’ai deux matches ce semaine. Nous jouons en Montreal en Janvier. J’ai trois jours apres Noel. Venez... Venez.. Tu est ma femme... Je t’aime, Jeanette... D’accord... Je vais telephoner demain apres le match... A bien tot. »
Christy stood and listened as Elmer spoke to his wife. After ending his call, Christy realized who Elmer was. Elmer’s value went up about 1000%.
“Bon jour miss-you… You’re that French hockey player that everyone is all crazy for right now, aren’t you?”
“Yes thaat ees me, madam… And who are you, if hi might axe?” Asked Elmer.
Christy finished work and the other players that Elmer was dining with, went home for the night. Elmer took Christy to a Jazz club where they had a few drinks and spoke to one another. Elmer learned that Christy was poor and her father died when she was eight and that her step father was a dirty pig who tried to sleep with her several times. Christy learned that Elmer was born in Haiti and had been a refugee and that he grew up in Canada, learned to play hockey well and became quite wealthy. Christ thought about how her whole life could easily change if she could just find a way to have Elmer fall head over heels for her. It wasn’t hard at all. Every time Elmer came back to town, he would pick up Christy and they would have wild passionate sex all night. Elmer liked her ivory colored skin and nearly platinum hair. He liked her extremely fit, young body and Christy was intrigued by being with a black man. Back in nowhere Tennessee, people all had strong negative opinions about black people that went back hundreds of years. Elmer was without much body fat and full of muscles. He had an interesting accent and smelled of cologne. His things were all neat and he drove a really nice car.
The Disneyland relationship between Elmer and Christy went on for quite some time and they were both content with the relationship. Christy kept the relationship quiet except for sharing with her own sister via the internet all that was transpiring between her and Elmer. Clara had no ill will towards her sister and trusted that her secret would remain such and it would have had she not forgotten to log off of the computer before leaving home one day. The girl’s mother read every sordid detail and got to thinking that she would contact Elmer about the affair. Every attempt at coming in contact with Elmer failed. Beulah, the mother of Christy and Clara, contacted a tabloid with the story with the promise of money. For a little more than $5,000.00, Beulah brought Elmer’s world crashing down.
NHL SUPERSTAR, DE LA CROIX HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH UNDERAGED GIRL IN MEMPHIS.
It was like spilling blood into the ocean around sharks. It was a feeding frenzy for the press. Before and after games, in front of Elmer’s home, at restaurants and at stores, there was always a camera man or more to snap photos and ask all sorts of questions. After weeks of hounding, Elmer decided to hold a press conference. All eyes and ears were on Elmer. It was carried live on ESPN and CBC English and French. Here is how it went;
“Okay… I’m ready for the cirque d’Amerique. I have a statement for all of you today” Declared Elmer, while leaning the palms of his hands on a podium in front of hundreds of cameras and microphones.
“Thees may or may not come as a surprise to all of you but I am going to let you know a leetle beet aboat me… I haav trouble being on time and keeping appointments. I lose things easily and forget things even more. I don’t like to clean my ouse and I don’t like to cook. Sometimes I forget to flush after going to the bathroom and I rarely wash my hands… I am a husband, father and a son and nobody could dispute that I haav not been first rate on all of those hats that I wear aside from a hockey helmet. I fell in love weeth a young lady whom I waas not aware of er age. I waas lead to believe that she waas twenty one years of age. I professed my love for thees person but haav been faced with the reality thaat I ham already married. My marriage ees not whaat eet should be and I ham not happy een my marriage for reasons thaat are nobody’s business. You ave been giving a relentless account of all the tings thaat could be dug up on me. You ave all you need to know. Now you should know thaat I ham not a monster or a bad man. I ham not sorry for whaat I ave done and it ees no reflection on my job anymore than whaat any of you do in your private lives. I can tell you een case eet comes up that I ham not a pedophile, a homosexual, one who wears female undergarments or one who sticks tings in his own asshole or the asshole of others. I ave never add a ménage a trois or any other sort of deviant sexual behavior. I would be interested to know among all of you what eet ees that you do when you are not working. I would like to write about eet and take pictures of you while you go home, go to work, go to eat. I would like to pose asinine questions while you are holding your child’s hand. I would like to make stupid jokes on late night television and discuss it with Larry King what eet ees thaat you all do… You can make the argument thaat I ham rich and famous… I say to all of you, so fucking what. Anyone who ees without sin cast the first stone… Anyone without blood on ees ands, raise your and for us all to see. Presidents, preachers and sports figures are all under the microscope een thees country. You ave whaat you’ve all been looking for… Now let me say thees clearly once and for all… Go fuck yourselves to the best of your ability and leave me the fuck alone. There ees no story ear that you aven’t already erred before… Merci beaucoups… Au revoir…”
Elmer was given a few days off by the team and Elmer took them. Elmer went to an undisclosed location in Maui for a few days. While there Elmer decided to play Golf to get his mind off of circus that constantly followed him. It was on the eighth hole that Elmer received a phone call. This is what the famous man said to Elmer;
“Hey man… That was beautiful what you did at the press conference. I would have never thought of doing such a thing. You’ve blazed a trail for the rest of us. Next time I’m anywhere near you, we need to meet… Sure, sure… My wife has a pretty important cabinet job right now, but I’ll tell you what… One of these days our paths will cross and we got to set down and talk… You’re my type of man… I’ll let you go now but I just wanted to thank you more than anything. You’re my hero… God bless.”
Catholic charities placed Monique in Montreal since she spoke French and Creole exclusively. It was in Montreal that Monique met and married a white man who adopted Elmer and taught him to play the game of ice hockey.
Elmer grew to be a hair over six feet in height and a little over two hundred pounds. Elmer was lean, fast and quite capable as an ice hockey player. He went early in the NHL draft and wound up playing for Nashville. Nashville signed Elmer to a multiyear contract whereby he made millions at the age of 21. By age twenty two, Elmer had married Canadian figure skating Olympian Jeanette Devereux and lived comfortably in Nashville, Miami and Montreal. Everything was going great for Elmer until one crazy night.
Jeanette had been taking anti-depression drugs for a while and fluctuated between being unable to get out of bed and not being able to sleep for days. On manic days, Jeanette might stay out drinking all night with friends, have breakfast and come home to break things in the house and cry. One day Jeanette would send text messages that she wanted to die, other days she wanted Elmer to die quickly followed up with messages of I love you, when will you be home?
Being a black man in a white dominated sport and a superstar at that was a love hate sort of thing for the fans of Nashville. The good ole boys liked the speed and physical nature of the sport of ice hockey but had a difficult time at first with having their big star a black man with a strong French accent. They did like the finesse of Elmer and his willingness to fight when necessary.
After one particular home game around Thanksgiving in the states, Elmer had gone out with a few players to a steak house to eat. It was there that Elmer met Christy, a devil with face of an angel and a body of a goddess. Now Elmer had practiced really good self restraint throughout the duration of his marriage and opportunity for infidelity knocked almost nightly for Elmer. One particular Wednesday evening, Elmer became weak and succumbed to primal urges that could not easily be quelled. Often in these situations, the sports figure goes one way and the female goes the other and nothing is spoken of again until maybe the next time in town. Christy had fallen deeply and madly in love.
Christy grew up in rural Tennessee and left home at fourteen to find a job in Memphis. Christy lied about her age and was able to land a job as a waitress at a steak house in Memphis. At sixteen, Christy lived like a woman several years older than her and nobody knew or questioned the fact that Christy had not reached adulthood. Christy was built like a woman from head to toe. Christy had a certain Marilyn Monroe quality about her that irresistible to men. Christy had a thing for men who could speak French. Elmer was talking to Jeanette on the phone in French when Christy walked by.
« Jeanette! Ecoutez bien! Ce n’est pas possible maintenant. J’ai deux matches ce semaine. Nous jouons en Montreal en Janvier. J’ai trois jours apres Noel. Venez... Venez.. Tu est ma femme... Je t’aime, Jeanette... D’accord... Je vais telephoner demain apres le match... A bien tot. »
Christy stood and listened as Elmer spoke to his wife. After ending his call, Christy realized who Elmer was. Elmer’s value went up about 1000%.
“Bon jour miss-you… You’re that French hockey player that everyone is all crazy for right now, aren’t you?”
“Yes thaat ees me, madam… And who are you, if hi might axe?” Asked Elmer.
Christy finished work and the other players that Elmer was dining with, went home for the night. Elmer took Christy to a Jazz club where they had a few drinks and spoke to one another. Elmer learned that Christy was poor and her father died when she was eight and that her step father was a dirty pig who tried to sleep with her several times. Christy learned that Elmer was born in Haiti and had been a refugee and that he grew up in Canada, learned to play hockey well and became quite wealthy. Christ thought about how her whole life could easily change if she could just find a way to have Elmer fall head over heels for her. It wasn’t hard at all. Every time Elmer came back to town, he would pick up Christy and they would have wild passionate sex all night. Elmer liked her ivory colored skin and nearly platinum hair. He liked her extremely fit, young body and Christy was intrigued by being with a black man. Back in nowhere Tennessee, people all had strong negative opinions about black people that went back hundreds of years. Elmer was without much body fat and full of muscles. He had an interesting accent and smelled of cologne. His things were all neat and he drove a really nice car.
The Disneyland relationship between Elmer and Christy went on for quite some time and they were both content with the relationship. Christy kept the relationship quiet except for sharing with her own sister via the internet all that was transpiring between her and Elmer. Clara had no ill will towards her sister and trusted that her secret would remain such and it would have had she not forgotten to log off of the computer before leaving home one day. The girl’s mother read every sordid detail and got to thinking that she would contact Elmer about the affair. Every attempt at coming in contact with Elmer failed. Beulah, the mother of Christy and Clara, contacted a tabloid with the story with the promise of money. For a little more than $5,000.00, Beulah brought Elmer’s world crashing down.
NHL SUPERSTAR, DE LA CROIX HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH UNDERAGED GIRL IN MEMPHIS.
It was like spilling blood into the ocean around sharks. It was a feeding frenzy for the press. Before and after games, in front of Elmer’s home, at restaurants and at stores, there was always a camera man or more to snap photos and ask all sorts of questions. After weeks of hounding, Elmer decided to hold a press conference. All eyes and ears were on Elmer. It was carried live on ESPN and CBC English and French. Here is how it went;
“Okay… I’m ready for the cirque d’Amerique. I have a statement for all of you today” Declared Elmer, while leaning the palms of his hands on a podium in front of hundreds of cameras and microphones.
“Thees may or may not come as a surprise to all of you but I am going to let you know a leetle beet aboat me… I haav trouble being on time and keeping appointments. I lose things easily and forget things even more. I don’t like to clean my ouse and I don’t like to cook. Sometimes I forget to flush after going to the bathroom and I rarely wash my hands… I am a husband, father and a son and nobody could dispute that I haav not been first rate on all of those hats that I wear aside from a hockey helmet. I fell in love weeth a young lady whom I waas not aware of er age. I waas lead to believe that she waas twenty one years of age. I professed my love for thees person but haav been faced with the reality thaat I ham already married. My marriage ees not whaat eet should be and I ham not happy een my marriage for reasons thaat are nobody’s business. You ave been giving a relentless account of all the tings thaat could be dug up on me. You ave all you need to know. Now you should know thaat I ham not a monster or a bad man. I ham not sorry for whaat I ave done and it ees no reflection on my job anymore than whaat any of you do in your private lives. I can tell you een case eet comes up that I ham not a pedophile, a homosexual, one who wears female undergarments or one who sticks tings in his own asshole or the asshole of others. I ave never add a ménage a trois or any other sort of deviant sexual behavior. I would be interested to know among all of you what eet ees that you do when you are not working. I would like to write about eet and take pictures of you while you go home, go to work, go to eat. I would like to pose asinine questions while you are holding your child’s hand. I would like to make stupid jokes on late night television and discuss it with Larry King what eet ees thaat you all do… You can make the argument thaat I ham rich and famous… I say to all of you, so fucking what. Anyone who ees without sin cast the first stone… Anyone without blood on ees ands, raise your and for us all to see. Presidents, preachers and sports figures are all under the microscope een thees country. You ave whaat you’ve all been looking for… Now let me say thees clearly once and for all… Go fuck yourselves to the best of your ability and leave me the fuck alone. There ees no story ear that you aven’t already erred before… Merci beaucoups… Au revoir…”
Elmer was given a few days off by the team and Elmer took them. Elmer went to an undisclosed location in Maui for a few days. While there Elmer decided to play Golf to get his mind off of circus that constantly followed him. It was on the eighth hole that Elmer received a phone call. This is what the famous man said to Elmer;
“Hey man… That was beautiful what you did at the press conference. I would have never thought of doing such a thing. You’ve blazed a trail for the rest of us. Next time I’m anywhere near you, we need to meet… Sure, sure… My wife has a pretty important cabinet job right now, but I’ll tell you what… One of these days our paths will cross and we got to set down and talk… You’re my type of man… I’ll let you go now but I just wanted to thank you more than anything. You’re my hero… God bless.”
Friday, December 4, 2009
South of the Border
South of the Border
I don’t want you to think I’m boy crazy because I’m not at all. I have played ice
hockey practically my whole life and now I’m on the cusp of seventeen. Every year in
Toronto they hold the prospects tournament for girls and boys that are scouted to
participate in scrimmage games for the benefit of being signed to division one schools. I
haven’t decided if I will sign with Cornell or Wisconsin. I totally ruled out Minnesota-
Duluth and North Dakota. I just know I’m going to wind up with some backwards
Evangelical Christian chick, strumming a guitar, trying to get me to come with her to
some youth festival where some dude who looks like David Koresh, gets you to join the
church as if he were selling time shares in Cancun.
I don’t want you to think I’m a total lush too because I’m not at all. I was upstairs
in the restaurant at the Beatrice Ice Rink next to York University. A bunch of the boys
just got finished and I was eating nachos with a girl named Judy from Kingston, Ontario
and Vishna from Barrie, Ontario. Vishna is Indian but was born in Nigeria. She lived in
London for a year and then her father found a job in Canada. She is a really pretty Indian
girl and the first one I ever met that did not smell of Curry when she sweats. In fact I
asked her flat out.
“So do you like Curry?”
“Um… Do you carry a shaleighly and look for your Lucky Charms?”
“Don’t get pissy… It’s a reasonable question, eh?”
“I also don’t have a dot on my forehead, work at Tim Horton’s or drive a fucking
cab.”
“Damn… What a temper! Do you have a one hump or two hump camel?”
Vishna looked at me as angry as could be. I busted out laughing and she laughed
too. This happened last year and we have kept in touch through email ever since. Barrie,
was the province champions last year and we played them in the quarter finals. Vishna is
really fast.
Judy is tall and has straight blond hair and is really pretty. She plays the tuba and
is the total honour student. She is really quiet but a great hockey player. I come from
Windsor which is just over the bridge from Detroit. The people there love the Red Wings
instead of the Maple Leafs. I followed the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey
League. I think watching them and my brother was what got me into the sport.
So I was eating nachos with Vishna and Judy when these absolutely gorgeous
guys from Buffalo, New York came up to our table. Scott, who has blond hair and
dimples when he smiles, sat down and dipped his middle finger in the cheese and put it
into his mouth slowly.
“I just love cheese on the nacho…”
Vishna let into him right away.
“That was really gay…”
To say gay to a male hockey player under the age of eighteen is really an attack on
the essence of his maleness. It prevented him and the other two guys with him from
acting stupid. They suddenly became really cool.
“So like… What schools have talked to you?” Asked a boy named Bill with a
buzz cut and faint freckles.
Bill got signed to Guelph. Scott was going to Lake Forest College in Illinois to
play division three hockey. Colin had not been signed yet but was hoping to go to
Brantford in the Ontario Hockey League. For American guys, they weren’t so bad. They
thought they were all so funny saying “eh” after everything.
Vishna really had a thing for Scott. They talked to each other all throughout the
next day and went down to the Hall of Fame in downtown Toronto on the off day. Scott
invited all of us to a party in Buffalo.
I really don’t care much for the states. It’s dirty, crowded and really have an over
abundance of obese people. Vishna was crazy to go. Judy and I really didn’t want to
cross the border to go to a house party but we did. We got into Vishna’s father’s car and
drove over the border. The American border guard was a nice old man. He never asked
to see our passports. We found the house in a clean suburb. It was actually really low
keyed. There was only like twenty people there and it was nice. A good looking guy
with brown curly hair, came up to talk to me. His pants were sagging and he wore his
Yankees hat cocked to the right. He had all the hand gestures of a rapper including
fondling his penis with his right hand while gesturing with his left hand. Our
conversation was a trip. He kept trying to look down my cleavage when it was my turn to
speak. I don’t think he heard me much.
“Yeah so I play hockey…”
“Cool, cool… You all still wear them skirts and run around with candy canes?”
“Um… That’s field hockey. I play on the ice.”
“Oh hell naw! Girls playing like dudes? Shit… You all be giggling and
squealing and shit?”
That ended that conversation. I wished him well in his endeavours to become a
producer. Other than piss, shit and babies, I don’t know what he could produce.
Anyway, I also talked with a bunch of guys who also played hockey and a couple
of their girlfriends. I had a couple of Coronas and a shot of some licorice tasting stuff
that like burned me on the inside. I think Vishna was in one of the bedrooms with Scott.
I personally think it’s sort of gross since they just met but whatever. Judy and I didn’t ask
any questions and she didn’t tell. We could tell though that she was in a stupid way right
now. Her mind was locked and fixated on the blond kid with the dimples. He was totally
in love with his Indian version of Barbie. They kissed for like five minutes while we
waited in the car. We got to the border and the Canadian border official, who was a short
French guy asked us questions in French purposely.
“Citoyen?”
Vishna must have been riding high from finding love. She decided to give a smart
assed answer to entertain us. The short French guy was not amused.
“No, no it’s a Saturn…”
Of course we laughed. Short men always think women are making fun of them.
He stepped out of his little booth and ordered us to pull around to an area where they dig
through your trunk. Vishna tried to reason with him.
“I was only joking… Citoyen sounds like a car model.”
“Drinking and driving, eh?”
“Oh my god! We’re hockey players! We’re in the prospects tourney in York.”
“Okay. Well it’s one in the morning. I’m sure you’re not playing hockey now,
eh?”
Vishna backed the car up as if she going to go into the stall where they strip
search your car. Instead she wheeled around and raced back over the bridge, dodging cars
coming towards us. She broke the wooden gate at the toll booth on the American side
and raced down side streets in downtown Buffalo. She called Scott on her cell phone. I
resorted to rhetorical questions.
“Are you fucking crazy?! They’re going to put us in prison! Do you wanna be in
an American prison? No school in North America will take us now… Oh my god,
Vishna!”
“You don’t understand! My father will send me to live with family in India if he
finds out that I went over to America. I promised him I would be good and just stay in
the room.”
I had a horrible feeling that my scholarship chances would be gone as well as my
opportunity to try out for Team Canada. We drove aimlessly down streets as Vishna tried
to find her way back to Scott’s house. Judy sat with her arms folded and showed no
emotion. I felt like smacking her face.
“Judy! What the hell?” I said to her.
“What? What did I do?” She asked, quite angered now.
“How can you just sit there and not say a fucking word?” I asked.
“Because I am fucking numb right now. We’re like fugitives.” Said Judy.
Vishna was crying and swearing because Scott wasn’t picking up his phone. We
eventually pulled up and Vishna went back into the house to find them. Vishna left the
car running. There was a Dave Mathews song playing. It reminded me of my last
boyfriend. He had tickets to see Dave Mathews. I couldn’t go with my boyfriend and so he went with a bunch of friends. Kelly from my team last year got drunk and blew him at
the concert. I found out from friends of my boyfriend what had happened. At the next
practice, I took a shit and piss in her hockey bag while practice was going on. I left the
ice and dropped a tremendous shit in her bag. I eat a lot of vegetables and so the fiber
really helped produce the effect I was looking for. She made me feel like shit by blowing
my boyfriend and I made a really large smelly turd for her to deal with. Of course we fist
fought and I beat her ass. It’s not Dave Mathews fault, he had no way of knowing. I
think he’s a good guy.
Somehow Vishna got Scott to drive us over the border in his father’s minivan.
When we got to the border, the same little French guy stopped him. Our hearts were
jumping out of our chests. He gave Scott a hard time.
“Why are you going to Canada at three in the morning?”
“Um well, I’m in this prospects tournament and I live in Buffalo and so I’m just
going back to the rink… To the hotel by the rink.”
Boys are so inarticulate. He was a mumbling mess of lies and the little
Frenchman knew it.
“Which hotel?”
“It’s right by the rink by the university.”
Oh my god! What a blond disaster he had become. Our future in college sports
rested in the hands of an imbecile.
“Um my dad is sleeping in the hotel and I had to go home because I left my skates
there and had to borrow a pair earlier and I like fell asleep watching Buffalo play
Vancouver… It was an awesome game. But anyway, I had three games today and I was fatigued.”
A bit better but still not off the hook yet.
“What do you have in the back of the van?”
“Just my equipment… Do you wanna see it?”
I almost screamed. How could he invite the border guard to check his car?
“The last thing I want to see or smell is your equipment right now… You’re free
to go.”
We were free to get back into our country. We did not get caught. I wanted to
stop and kiss the ground right there at Niagara but the sentiment quickly passed. It was
four before we got back to our room and the alarm clock went off at seven. It felt like I
had just closed my eyes. I played like shit and so did Judy and Vishna. We took a nap
between games and were fine.
Vishna was able to talk Scott into putting New York plates on her Ontario
licensed car. Vishna got her car back into Canada. Scott had to lie again. He said he had
purchased a used car. There were a lot of cars that day and so he got away with it.
Vishna sent his plates UPS and everything turned out mostly okay.
Vishna was eating dinner when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police came to her
door in Barrie. They questioned her about speeding away from the border. She
vehemently denied being near Niagara much less the states. They questioned her over
and over until she broke down and told them the truth. Turns out that the detective was a
former junior league player from Barrie and he worked things out for Vishna without her
parents ever finding out. Vishna actually stayed in contact with Scott. She drove twice to
see him in Buffalo since the incident. She even saw the same border guard. The French guy
asked again in French her citizenship. Vishna learned to say Canadian.
I don’t want you to think I’m boy crazy because I’m not at all. I have played ice
hockey practically my whole life and now I’m on the cusp of seventeen. Every year in
Toronto they hold the prospects tournament for girls and boys that are scouted to
participate in scrimmage games for the benefit of being signed to division one schools. I
haven’t decided if I will sign with Cornell or Wisconsin. I totally ruled out Minnesota-
Duluth and North Dakota. I just know I’m going to wind up with some backwards
Evangelical Christian chick, strumming a guitar, trying to get me to come with her to
some youth festival where some dude who looks like David Koresh, gets you to join the
church as if he were selling time shares in Cancun.
I don’t want you to think I’m a total lush too because I’m not at all. I was upstairs
in the restaurant at the Beatrice Ice Rink next to York University. A bunch of the boys
just got finished and I was eating nachos with a girl named Judy from Kingston, Ontario
and Vishna from Barrie, Ontario. Vishna is Indian but was born in Nigeria. She lived in
London for a year and then her father found a job in Canada. She is a really pretty Indian
girl and the first one I ever met that did not smell of Curry when she sweats. In fact I
asked her flat out.
“So do you like Curry?”
“Um… Do you carry a shaleighly and look for your Lucky Charms?”
“Don’t get pissy… It’s a reasonable question, eh?”
“I also don’t have a dot on my forehead, work at Tim Horton’s or drive a fucking
cab.”
“Damn… What a temper! Do you have a one hump or two hump camel?”
Vishna looked at me as angry as could be. I busted out laughing and she laughed
too. This happened last year and we have kept in touch through email ever since. Barrie,
was the province champions last year and we played them in the quarter finals. Vishna is
really fast.
Judy is tall and has straight blond hair and is really pretty. She plays the tuba and
is the total honour student. She is really quiet but a great hockey player. I come from
Windsor which is just over the bridge from Detroit. The people there love the Red Wings
instead of the Maple Leafs. I followed the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey
League. I think watching them and my brother was what got me into the sport.
So I was eating nachos with Vishna and Judy when these absolutely gorgeous
guys from Buffalo, New York came up to our table. Scott, who has blond hair and
dimples when he smiles, sat down and dipped his middle finger in the cheese and put it
into his mouth slowly.
“I just love cheese on the nacho…”
Vishna let into him right away.
“That was really gay…”
To say gay to a male hockey player under the age of eighteen is really an attack on
the essence of his maleness. It prevented him and the other two guys with him from
acting stupid. They suddenly became really cool.
“So like… What schools have talked to you?” Asked a boy named Bill with a
buzz cut and faint freckles.
Bill got signed to Guelph. Scott was going to Lake Forest College in Illinois to
play division three hockey. Colin had not been signed yet but was hoping to go to
Brantford in the Ontario Hockey League. For American guys, they weren’t so bad. They
thought they were all so funny saying “eh” after everything.
Vishna really had a thing for Scott. They talked to each other all throughout the
next day and went down to the Hall of Fame in downtown Toronto on the off day. Scott
invited all of us to a party in Buffalo.
I really don’t care much for the states. It’s dirty, crowded and really have an over
abundance of obese people. Vishna was crazy to go. Judy and I really didn’t want to
cross the border to go to a house party but we did. We got into Vishna’s father’s car and
drove over the border. The American border guard was a nice old man. He never asked
to see our passports. We found the house in a clean suburb. It was actually really low
keyed. There was only like twenty people there and it was nice. A good looking guy
with brown curly hair, came up to talk to me. His pants were sagging and he wore his
Yankees hat cocked to the right. He had all the hand gestures of a rapper including
fondling his penis with his right hand while gesturing with his left hand. Our
conversation was a trip. He kept trying to look down my cleavage when it was my turn to
speak. I don’t think he heard me much.
“Yeah so I play hockey…”
“Cool, cool… You all still wear them skirts and run around with candy canes?”
“Um… That’s field hockey. I play on the ice.”
“Oh hell naw! Girls playing like dudes? Shit… You all be giggling and
squealing and shit?”
That ended that conversation. I wished him well in his endeavours to become a
producer. Other than piss, shit and babies, I don’t know what he could produce.
Anyway, I also talked with a bunch of guys who also played hockey and a couple
of their girlfriends. I had a couple of Coronas and a shot of some licorice tasting stuff
that like burned me on the inside. I think Vishna was in one of the bedrooms with Scott.
I personally think it’s sort of gross since they just met but whatever. Judy and I didn’t ask
any questions and she didn’t tell. We could tell though that she was in a stupid way right
now. Her mind was locked and fixated on the blond kid with the dimples. He was totally
in love with his Indian version of Barbie. They kissed for like five minutes while we
waited in the car. We got to the border and the Canadian border official, who was a short
French guy asked us questions in French purposely.
“Citoyen?”
Vishna must have been riding high from finding love. She decided to give a smart
assed answer to entertain us. The short French guy was not amused.
“No, no it’s a Saturn…”
Of course we laughed. Short men always think women are making fun of them.
He stepped out of his little booth and ordered us to pull around to an area where they dig
through your trunk. Vishna tried to reason with him.
“I was only joking… Citoyen sounds like a car model.”
“Drinking and driving, eh?”
“Oh my god! We’re hockey players! We’re in the prospects tourney in York.”
“Okay. Well it’s one in the morning. I’m sure you’re not playing hockey now,
eh?”
Vishna backed the car up as if she going to go into the stall where they strip
search your car. Instead she wheeled around and raced back over the bridge, dodging cars
coming towards us. She broke the wooden gate at the toll booth on the American side
and raced down side streets in downtown Buffalo. She called Scott on her cell phone. I
resorted to rhetorical questions.
“Are you fucking crazy?! They’re going to put us in prison! Do you wanna be in
an American prison? No school in North America will take us now… Oh my god,
Vishna!”
“You don’t understand! My father will send me to live with family in India if he
finds out that I went over to America. I promised him I would be good and just stay in
the room.”
I had a horrible feeling that my scholarship chances would be gone as well as my
opportunity to try out for Team Canada. We drove aimlessly down streets as Vishna tried
to find her way back to Scott’s house. Judy sat with her arms folded and showed no
emotion. I felt like smacking her face.
“Judy! What the hell?” I said to her.
“What? What did I do?” She asked, quite angered now.
“How can you just sit there and not say a fucking word?” I asked.
“Because I am fucking numb right now. We’re like fugitives.” Said Judy.
Vishna was crying and swearing because Scott wasn’t picking up his phone. We
eventually pulled up and Vishna went back into the house to find them. Vishna left the
car running. There was a Dave Mathews song playing. It reminded me of my last
boyfriend. He had tickets to see Dave Mathews. I couldn’t go with my boyfriend and so he went with a bunch of friends. Kelly from my team last year got drunk and blew him at
the concert. I found out from friends of my boyfriend what had happened. At the next
practice, I took a shit and piss in her hockey bag while practice was going on. I left the
ice and dropped a tremendous shit in her bag. I eat a lot of vegetables and so the fiber
really helped produce the effect I was looking for. She made me feel like shit by blowing
my boyfriend and I made a really large smelly turd for her to deal with. Of course we fist
fought and I beat her ass. It’s not Dave Mathews fault, he had no way of knowing. I
think he’s a good guy.
Somehow Vishna got Scott to drive us over the border in his father’s minivan.
When we got to the border, the same little French guy stopped him. Our hearts were
jumping out of our chests. He gave Scott a hard time.
“Why are you going to Canada at three in the morning?”
“Um well, I’m in this prospects tournament and I live in Buffalo and so I’m just
going back to the rink… To the hotel by the rink.”
Boys are so inarticulate. He was a mumbling mess of lies and the little
Frenchman knew it.
“Which hotel?”
“It’s right by the rink by the university.”
Oh my god! What a blond disaster he had become. Our future in college sports
rested in the hands of an imbecile.
“Um my dad is sleeping in the hotel and I had to go home because I left my skates
there and had to borrow a pair earlier and I like fell asleep watching Buffalo play
Vancouver… It was an awesome game. But anyway, I had three games today and I was fatigued.”
A bit better but still not off the hook yet.
“What do you have in the back of the van?”
“Just my equipment… Do you wanna see it?”
I almost screamed. How could he invite the border guard to check his car?
“The last thing I want to see or smell is your equipment right now… You’re free
to go.”
We were free to get back into our country. We did not get caught. I wanted to
stop and kiss the ground right there at Niagara but the sentiment quickly passed. It was
four before we got back to our room and the alarm clock went off at seven. It felt like I
had just closed my eyes. I played like shit and so did Judy and Vishna. We took a nap
between games and were fine.
Vishna was able to talk Scott into putting New York plates on her Ontario
licensed car. Vishna got her car back into Canada. Scott had to lie again. He said he had
purchased a used car. There were a lot of cars that day and so he got away with it.
Vishna sent his plates UPS and everything turned out mostly okay.
Vishna was eating dinner when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police came to her
door in Barrie. They questioned her about speeding away from the border. She
vehemently denied being near Niagara much less the states. They questioned her over
and over until she broke down and told them the truth. Turns out that the detective was a
former junior league player from Barrie and he worked things out for Vishna without her
parents ever finding out. Vishna actually stayed in contact with Scott. She drove twice to
see him in Buffalo since the incident. She even saw the same border guard. The French guy
asked again in French her citizenship. Vishna learned to say Canadian.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Revolutionary Surf Company
Revolutionary Surf Company
Clyde lived in one bedroom apartment in Van Nuys, California. Van Nuys, is the
name of a city within the county of Los Angeles. It is part of the San Fernando Valley,
which is a half hour north by automobile from the City of Los Angeles.
In 1976, while the nation was celebrating it’s two hundred year independence
from Great Britain, Clyde was let go from the only job he ever had. It was during high
school that Clyde quit the school football team and took up surfing full time. It was a cult
like thing that happened among the small clique of his friends who would rise before the
sun and head to Malibu to surf for several hours before school. Clyde was given a job at
the Chevron on Van Nuys Boulevard, pumping gas. For a young guy who wanted to just
surf and pick up girls now and then, it was a great job.
Clyde eventually found a young woman who was into the surf culture as much as
he was. She was beautiful with straight blond hair and the body of a goddess. Clyde too
was attractive and had a thin frame with platinum blonde hair and a year round bronze
glow to his skin due to the sun. Mary and Clyde, married at the age to nineteen and had
two children. Mary surfed less and less and studied more. She enrolled at California
State University at Northridge or CSUN as it was known by the natives and became a
school teacher. Mary excelled in school and graduated with high marks. She taught
elementary school and went back to get her masters degree so that she could become a
school principle. By the time she and Clyde were thirty, she was a principle at a school in
North Hollywood called Saticoy School. Clyde still had a job pumping gasoline at the
Chevron. Clyde learned a lot about cars by working at the gas station but not enough to
secure a job as a mechanic and so like street car operators and ice men, Clyde lost his job
to the automation or the self service stations. People got used to pumping their gas. It became cheaper with the energy crisis, to have people pump their own. They drove little
Hondas and Datsuns instead of big Lincolns and Cadillacs. With no high school diploma,
the only job Clyde could find was a near by hot dog chain called Der Weinerschnitzel,
which was German for, the hot dog. Clyde had to wear a red shirt with the stores logo
and name on it and a white chef’s hat. He saw a lot of people who he went to high school
with and they too had families. The difference was that all of them had high school
diplomas and college educations and good jobs. Some were bankers, or loan officers or
worked for Hughes Aircraft in the aerospace industry. Clyde was serving fast food and
was nearly thirty years of age. Clyde’s wife Mary became very disappointed in her
husband’s desire to aspire to be something in life besides a surfer and a short order cook
and so she took up with another man suddenly. He never heard from her or his two small
children ever again.
Clyde moved out of the three bedroom home they rented in Sherman Oaks and
moved to the one bedroom apartment in Van Nuys. The building was sort of what the
people in the east referred to as a two flat. That meant that there were only two
apartments in the building. Clyde lived above the owners on the second floor. On the
first floor lived a Cuban family that had immigrated slightly after the time that Fidel
Castro, came to power. The father was a heavy smoker and died a few years back and the
wife immediately found another man and had him moved in before her husband’s body
became cold. The man she took up with was your conventional white man, probably
third or fourth generation Irish. This man had been having an extramarital tryst with the
Cuban woman prior to her husband’s expiration.
Now this Cuban couple had a beautiful daughter by the name of Bonita and Bonita or Bonnie as everyone called her, was seventeen years old. She was born in Cuba
but moved from there when she was four years old. Her family took refuge in the
Mexican embassy and were given asylum in the United States. All of Bonnie’s other
relatives still live in Cuba. Bonnie had straight dark hair and was very Spanish looking.
That is to say that she looked unlike the Aztec looking Mexicans who were a large part of
the population in the San Fernando Valley. Most people only knew of Ricky Ricardo as
the only Cuban inhabitant of the United States. Bonnie had full lips that made her appear
as if she were always pouting and had slightly slanted eyes, making people wonder if
possibly she might have some Japanese or Filipino in her. Bonnie was not a small girl.
Bonnie was curvy and voluptuous. She looked much older than her seventeen years of
age. Bonnie was very smitten with Clyde who lived above.
Now Bonnie’s mother was too consumed with trying to please the new man in her
life to pay much attention to her daughter who was nearly a woman. Bonnie was in her
last year at Grant High School and would probably take some typing courses at nearby
Valley College and try to get a job as a secretary.
Bonnie had a lot of boyfriends and admirers who had the hard look of desire on
their faces when they looked at Bonnie. She looked the part of a sex kitten as they called
them back in the days of burlesque. Bonnie couldn’t help how she looked. Like Marilyn
Monroe, she just naturally oozed sex appeal. The fact that Clyde was indifferent with her,
was perplexing. Bonnie knew that Clyde was thirteen years older than her and had been
married. She also knew that he lived a simple life and loved rising early to surf. One day
Bonnie approached Clyde.
“I would like to go with you one morning and watch you surf…”
“Um… Okay.”
So one week day morning at a few minutes before five, Clyde drove his 1964
Chevrolet Impala station wagon down the Ventura Freeway to the Topanga Pass towards
Malibu. The back seat was removed to make space for surf boards and the front seat was
a bench seat with the springs sticking up. In fact, Bonnie was shifting her weight quite a
bit to keep the spring from digging into her ass.
Bonnie sat on the cold sand, covered with a blanket and watched Clyde and a few
other young surfers, ride the waves as the sun began to light the early morning sky.
Within time, Bonnie accompanied Clyde nearly everyday and then she began to spend
nights and before long, she was practically living with Clyde.
One day Clyde and Bonnie were at a mini market picking up a few small items so
that they wouldn’t have to queue up in the local chain grocery store. The clerk behind the
counter was reading the racing form, looking for good bets for the races later in the day at
Santa Anita Race Track. Bonnie grabbed some milk and some toilet paper and a bomb
pop while Clyde looked through the latest issue of Surfer Magazine.
“I know that dude! Totally bogus. That dude was a total hodad, poser.
Unbelievable… Now he has his own boards.”
Of course Bonnie wasn’t listening. She was waiting patiently for the clerk to peel
his eyes from the race form to ringer her up. The clerk gave her the total and then Bonnie
had to ask for a bag.
“Honey, come carry this stuff…”
As Clyde walked up to the counter, two young Mexican men walked in. They
both had nylons pulled over their faces. They wore baggy pants with shiny shoes and tank top t shirts under flannel shirts. One stood at the door and kept watch while the
other walked up with a cannon of a gun.
“Keep yer hands were I can see dem, bato. Don’t try no shit an you live to see
another day, essay… Pinchay cavrone… Dis eess all you got een dah register? I’m
gonna have to take some tequila too… Lay down, bitch and quit looking at me.”
He used duct tape to tape their hands behind their backs. The clerk with the
racing form, still had his cigar in his mouth while he laid face down behind the register.
A few minutes later, a customer removed the duct tape from their wrists. Bonnie asked
the clerk if he was going to call the police. The clerk sort of shrugged and went back to
his form.
Bonnie thought about the whole incident. It was the first and only time she had
ever been in the middle of a robbery. She couldn’t believe how easy it looked and how
matter of fact the clerk was about losing so much money. Bonnie thought about the
prospect of living from hand to mouth with the surfer who was totally satisfied to just
work at a fast food restaurant for the rest of his life. One morning on the way back from
surfing, Bonnie told Clyde of their plans. Bonnie, who was then a full eighteen years old
and done with high school, was used to being the one with vision in their relationship and
so Bonnie discussed her plans with Clyde.
“Listen baby, you have vacation time you never take and I think we should go on a
little trip.”
“That sounds bitchin. Where you wanna go, like Mexico?”
“No baby. You know I’m Cuban, right?”
“Yeah you mentioned that…”
“So Cubans don’t come from Mexico. They come from Cuba. Cuba is an island
like Catalina. It isn’t that much further from Florida than Catalina is from Los Angeles.”
“So we’re going to Cuba?”
“We’re gonna try real hard, mi cielo… First we’re going to see America on our
way to Florida.”
“You can surf in Cuba, right, mi amore?”
“It is surrounded by the ocean, love of my life…”
“Then you know me, babe. I’m like totally down with it… I can bring my board
right?”
“If you really want to, precious, bring your toys with you…”
“Awesome…”
And so they set out on their vacation towards the east on a Monday, after surfing,
before traffic got too bad on Pacific Coast Highway. Clyde drove all the way out to the
dessert with his arm around Bonnie. They sang Beach Boy tunes from the eight track
player he had installed. Clyde also liked Dick Dale, Dwayne Eddy and Jan and Dean but
the Beach Boys were his favorite.
They stopped at a road side diner in the middle of no where in the Mojave
Desert. The waitress was sort of short tempered with them. There were a few other
truckers in the restaurant and the cook. Bonnie had asked her twice to come back because
she needed time.
“Darlin, we got six things on the menu… Watchu think you getting?”
“Okay fine… I’ll just have a cheeseburger with fries and a shake…”
“We got two kinds of shakes, the vanilla kind and the chocolate kind… Which one you want?”
The waitress then rolled her eyes and walked off. They got their food fast as it
was fast food and they ate it relatively fast also. Bonnie had a few fries and some bites of
her hamburger and maybe a few sips at best of the shake. The waitress made a comment
about that.
“Y’all shoulda ordered the kiddy plate if this was all you was gonna eat… Seems
a damn shame with all the starvation in the world.”
Bonnie had enough of the woman’s attitude. She felt that now that she was
legally a woman, people had to start treating her with respect.
“Ma’am, if your so concerned with the food, you’re welcome to do whatever you
want with it. You don’t look like you missed to many meals, to me.”
The waitress scribbled the total and slammed it down on the table. Clyde sensing
tension, went over and paid the bill. He was apologetic which just angered Bonnie
more. Bonnie lectured Clyde as they walked to the car.
“Baby, you got to learn to be my knight in shining armor. You can’t saying sorry
to no fat ass bitch because you thought I was mean. That woman was rude, mi hito.
Don’t do that, okay?”
“Sure babe… You know me.”
They drove across the street to get some gas and check the oil. Ironically enough
it was a Chevron station and they still had a man who pumped the gas, checked the oil
and filled the tires. Bonnie excused herself to go to the bathroom. She walked back
across the street to the back of the restaurant and put on a large black poncho, black
gloves and a Richard Nixon mask. She walked in with a Snoopy pillow case and a gun that she purchased off of some Mexican gangsters in the park near their apartment back in
Van Nuys. Bonnie locked the door and fired the gun at the ceiling once. Plaster fell on
her head.
“Everybody over here in the middle of the floor… You! In the back! Get up
here!”
She duct taped their eyes and hands behind their backs and withdrew a little over
$200.00 from the register. She pulled the shades down and turned off the lights and
exited through the kitchen door and walked over to the car as if nothing had happened.
Clyde saw Bonnie coming from the direction of the restaurant and asked her why she had
gone back over there.
“I got to thinking about it and decided I would make things right, baby. Let’s go
now!”
They drove through the night and stayed in a road side motel run by real
descendants of the people Columbus was supposed to have discovered. They were really
a dark bronze. Clyde had never seen a real native American before. He was in awe. He
asked to take a picture with them. They did for $5.00.
Now Bonnie being quite street smart and a complete thinker, studied out every
place they hit along the way east. She robbed a whole string of places in Texas and even
brought them up into Oklahoma to rob a place right over the border before they headed
back south and stayed way down south in the bayous of Louisiana. It was there that they
met a kindly old Cajun man. Bonnie initially wanted to rob him but couldn’t bring
herself to doing it.
“People calls me ay-tee-yen. It dare French fo Steven. Ma people come down the Mississip Riviere all dah way dare from watchu have there in Canada called New
Brunswick, close dare to Quebec. Some hundred year plus an we don here speak Cajun.
We mix dah French wit dah Anglais an make watchu got dare Creole.”
“Can you say something for us in Cajun?” Asked Bonnie.
“Quand vous restez ici, vous etes chay vous… Dat der mean dat when you stay
right-cheer, you already home.”
That night they ate crawfish in a stew and drank some homemade concoction out
of a mason jar, all compliments of Etienne and his large family. Other Cajuns got
together that night and played Cajun music. Bonnie liked the Cajuns. They were poor
people who loved life. The songs were unlike anything they had ever heard before. They
had violins, an accordian and a man with a wash board strapped to his chest. Most of
there songs were sung in French with a strong twang. Nobody seemed to mind the two
foreigners amongst them. People danced and drank just the same. Clyde and Bonnie
danced and drank until they could barely stand. They retired to their cabin built on stilts
above a swamp. There was no air-conditioning in the room, just a ceiling fan that
squeaked. They fell asleep in a pool of sweat in each other’s arms as the music played on
and the Cajun’s continued to party.
They met some really nice people in the deep south and it became harder and
harder for Bonnie to want to rob good, simple people of their hard earned money. Bonnie
decided that she would have to incorporate Clyde and they would try their hands at a few
banks. With banks being insured and all by the government. The idea of borrowing
money from banks, knowing the government would return the money to the banks, made
Bonnie feel as though it was justifiable.
“Robbing banks! Baby, I would go through a brick wall for you but not banks…
Where’d you get such a crazy thought, my love?”
“You might have wondered how we got all this money, sweetie pie. I borrowed
from a few places along the way. When you gassed up, I was making withdraws. The
way I see it, if we hit two banks, we are set for Cuba.”
It was in a really hick town in Mississippi where the people were quite uninviting.
They all seemed to look at Bonnie and Clyde strangely and without the hospitality that
they had grown accustomed to. One motel denied them a room.
“I am a good Christian woman and I don’t allow no fornicating in my place of
business. If y’all can prove you married, I be more than happy to get you a room for the
night. Y’all come from California? People sure are different there, ain’t they?”
So it was in a small Mississippi town that Bonnie scoped out a small savings and
loan. There was an elderly man in a uniform with a gun that looked like it never left the
holster. There was a bank manager who had large square glasses and a walrus like
moustache and thick side burns. He had a large stomach that drooped over his belt line.
He was a jovial man. The two attendants were younger women in their early twenties.
People filed in an out of the bank, making small talk with the security guard about fishing
and gardening. One woman discussed seeing an unusual breed of woodpecker in her
backyard with the president who is a bird watcher. Bonnie came in with a blond wig and
granny glasses to inquire about opening an account. She let the bank president know that
she was a student at the nearby college. He gave her a few forms and Bonnie was on her
way. Just before closing the following day, Bonnie and Clyde came into the bank. They
both had on dark clothing. Bonnie wore a Richard Nixon mask and Clyde wore a Lyndon B. Johnson mask, both with highly exaggerated noses.
“Can I have your attention… This is a hold up. Everyone on the ground and
don’t make a sound and we’ll have no problems,” said Bonnie, while holding a gun to the
bank president’s head.
Clyde stood by the door and kept look out. The door was locked. Bonnie ordered
Clyde to duct tape the hands of everyone in the bank. Clyde apologized to an older
woman who was crying.
“I’m really sorry ma’am… If I wouldn’t have lost my job at the Chevron and had
to go to work at Der Weinerschnitzel, we probably wouldn’t have had to do this.”
“Baby, please shut the hell up. You don’t need to be talking to nobody. Just do
your job and we’ll be on our way.”
Clyde stuffed more money into bags than the bags could hold. Stacks and stacks
of hundreds, fifties and twenties. Before leaving, Clyde put two hundred dollars in the
purse of the crying old woman and they were gone. When the crossed into Georgia,
Clyde and Bonnie fought over selling the wagon.
“Sweetie, I got news for you; where we are going, you cannot take the wagon with
you.”
“Where the hell are we going?”
“Don’t worry where we’re going. All you need to know is that there is a lot of
surfing. You can spend the rest of your life riding the waves.”
“Okay… Cool. But I wanna keep the wagon. Can‘t we take it on a boat to Cuba, my love?”
“What don’t you understand about not being able to keep it? Look, when we get
where we’re going, I promise you we’ll find something just as old and probably nicer.”
And so they traded the old wagon for a newer model Ford truck so that Clyde
could keep his prized surfboard. They drove through the night and made Key West, late
in the day. Bonnie left Clyde at the hotel and went looking to buy a boat. She found a
large speed boat with two large outboard motors. They large Chrysler engines. The
owner of the boat store gave Bonnie a good deal. Bonnie went back to retrieve Clyde and
by nightfall, they were headed due south. The trip took a little over three hours on a night
with a full moon and a placid ocean. It was close to two in the morning when they
reached shore. Upon docking the boat, they were apprehended by the police. Clyde had
no idea where he was. All he knew was that everyone was speaking Spanish and they had
a rifle against his spine.
A military officer sat with his feet up on his desk, smoking a large Cohiba Cigar.
He wore a round military ball cap in olive green to match his uniform. He began to ask
Bonnie questions in Spanish.
“So what you are saying is that you and your… Husband?”
“Yes my husband.”
“Yes your husband. You and your husband are political fugitives who have been
plotting to overthrow the American government…”
“Yes that is correct, commandant.”
“You mean to tell me that this man here… Your husband… Looking like
someone who has just left the beach, could tell me the difference between, let’s say the
Democratic Party and the Republicans?”
“Most certainly, commandant…”
“Here’s what I am thinking, comrade… I think that maybe you and this man…
Your husband, Yes? Yes… I think it is possible that you were just common criminals in
the United States and rather than face jail time, you thought you might come back to
Cuba…”
Bonnie began to cry and spun a story of great proportions. Even the commandant
was impressed. He did not believe it but he was impressed.
“We left California last week and drove all the way from Florida and risked death
to get here. I don’t remember Cuba but I do remember all the things my parents told me
and realized that my happiness lies here, in the place of my birth. We want to spread the
word to Cubans that America is truly the great evil. We want the people here to know
about the huge disparity in America. The haves have a lot and have nots suffer
immensely. I believe with all my being in what is being done here in Cuba. I would
stand on a mountain to profess this…”
“And your husband. He feels this passion for equality? He could tell me who
Karl Marx was possibly Lenin. He could identify who Fidel was and what he fought for
and what he fought against?”
“Here’s the thing, commandant, my husband is slightly… How do I say this
exactly? He is a bit dense… His heart is in the right place though.”
They separated Bonnie from Clyde. They sent in an English speaking interpreter
to question Clyde. Clyde was in a room without windows. In the room were two chairs
and a desk with a naked bulb suspended from the ceiling. The government official was a
very pretty woman. Uncommonly beautiful. Her name was Miranda and she tried to come off as Clyde’s friend.
“So tell me, what was it you did in the United States?”
“Well you know, I believe in taking it easy, man. Y’know like my thing is to surf.
I surf everyday. Some people pray and go to church and all but I’m sort of one with
nature and god when I’m on my board… It’s hard to explain but like you got the whole
Pacific Ocean and it’s like the biggest thing in the world and we have this gift… No
amount of money is worth the feeling I get from surfing… I worked and all at the
Chevron on Vanowen for a long time and people pump their own gas now and so I took
up with Der Weinerschnitzel last year. I don’t mind it and all. Bonnie thinks I should
look for another job but I’m cool with it. I told her if we have kids and all that maybe I
could find work in like a shoe store or something like that. I just need something where I
can work with my hands…”
“I see… Tell me how you felt about the Vietnam War.”
“It was mostly bogus… I mean who really cares if they wanted to be communist.
Let em be, man… Live and let live is my motto. I did have an uncle who surfed there
during the war. He said it wasn’t too bad…”
“How do you feel about communism?”
“Well like I try not to get too bogged down in the stuff I can’t really change in
life. People are worried about Russians and commies and all. I think if people really
wanna have that sort of thing, we shouldn’t try and kill them over it… Buy the world a
Coke and have a smile…”
“Yes… How do you feel about the redistribution of wealth?”
“Whoa… You’re hitting me with some scientific stuff there… What does that mean?”
“How do you feel about a few people having so much and many having very
little? Do you feel it is right for everyone to have an equal share?”
“I guess that’s cool and all… I guess I would be a little worried if the dentist was
making the same as the dude scooping up elephant shit at the zoo… I mean like if he had
no incentive to do better, y’know what I mean? Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Yes…”
“Are all the babes here as hot as you? I have to tell you that you’re smoking…”
Clyde and Bonnie were separated for a long period of time. Clyde wound up in a
prison filled with people who had difficulty following the strict laws provided. Nobody
around Clyde spoke English and so he kept to himself. Bonnie was kept with dissidents
in a female prison and was questioned daily for hours. News traveled all the way to the
top. The president of the entire country heard about the couple and saw a chance to use it
as a propaganda tool. He ordered both to meet with him in Havana. They ate well and
were offered alcohol. Clyde was even offered a cigar. The president laughed with delight
at the things that Bonnie said to him. They were so vehemently anti-American that it
warmed his heart. Being a man who understands the power of persuasion and possessing
the gift of communication, he was highly impressed by Bonnie and saw a chance to use
them as a tool.
On May 1st there was a large parade and many people came to hear the president
speak. A lot of people had no choice unless the wanted to chance imprisonment. Be that
as it may, the president had an audience. It was during his four hour speech that he
introduced Clyde and Bonnie. They stood beside the president and looked out at the crowd that stretched as far back as the eye could see.
“Comrades… Here before us are two great people who have left their country, the
United States of America, to live among us. They escaped political persecution and
braved the open seas to come here. Many of you hear false stories of people trying to get
to Florida on little rafts. Right here in the flesh are two patriots who have escaped the
grip of tyranny, imperialism and decadence to be part of the revolution… Long live the
Revolution!”
Now the president, being a master at using symbols as tools, used Clyde and
Bonnie to his advantage. It was like driving a thumb tack into the ass of a giant. It would
not kill but it would hurt like hell. So it was that the duo were given a fifteen minute
television program that would air just before the state run evening news. It became an
instant hit with the entire nation. Everyone would tune in to hear the bizarre and horrid
accounts of things that took place in the United States. They had theme music taken from
a movie staring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. It was banjo music that was played
during the chase scenes from the movie, Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie wore a red beret and
scarf with an olive green military shirt and Clyde usually wore an Ocean Pacific t shirt or
his Los Angeles Dodgers t shirt. Bonnie would read from the teleprompter in Spanish.
“Today in the United States, two thousand auto workers were laid off in the state
of Michigan, in the city of Detroit. Many will be forced to look for new jobs which will
require a college education. The paradox is that university education is not guaranteed
by the state. Many will become homeless and live in parks…”
The screen flashed images of homeless men sitting in a park, drinking out of a
bottle on a park bench as well as angry auto workers, burning a car outside an auto plant in Flint, Michigan. There was also the human interest story of a man who worked in a
textile plant who killed his entire family and then himself after his company moved to
Guyana. Gerald Ford was portrayed as a buffoon who stumbled into power on the heals
of the Watergate scandal. They showed Police brutality and urban blight. They showed
pollution in rivers and lakes and even a fire on Lake Erie near the city of Cleveland.
There was also acid rain, Three Mile Island and oil soaked birds from a tanker spill in
Alaska and so forth. People in Cuba began to feel really good about their plight. The
revolution was getting a bit stagnant after twenty years and so this helped. When it was
Clyde’s turn to speak, he gave the surf report for a few minutes each day. He too read
from a teleprompter and the nation fell in love with his poor verbal skills in Spanish.
“Hello comrades, it is I, Clyde with the surf report…”
They would play surf tunes, Wipe Out and Pipeline, while Clyde pointed to
various spots on the map of Cuba.
“Dudes… Get ready for action coming out of Cape Verde. There’s a storm
brewing like a bowl of Ceviche. Look for waves to be break at above six feet off of
Oriente by Tuesday. Due to the full moon, the action should be cool all over the island…
Let’s go over the vocab for this week, get your pens ready… Stoked, the word is stoked.
That means that you feel really good about the prospects of some really radical waves.
The opposite would be bummed. You’d be bumming over not so radical waves. That
brings us to the next word; radical. Not to be confused with some political term of some
dude who is way out there on a limb. Radical means something really cool. Word three;
hodad, the word is hodad. That is a poser, fake and phony. If the dude is faking he is a
true hodad. Next words are gnarly and bitchen. You can use them both interchangeably.
Both are cool words used to describe awesome waves. You could use toasty too. So this
is the sentence for the week in English… Follow the bouncing ball…
Dude, don’t be a poser, hodad sporting the baggies on a bitchen day when the radical
swells are toasty, gnarly. Don‘t be bumming me when I‘m stoked, bro… This has been
Bonnie and Clyde saying so long and long live the revolution.”
The state provided them an apartment in Havana within walking distance to the
television station. Clyde came up with an idea to manufacture surf boards called,
Revolution Surf Company. Each surf board had the heads of Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che
Guevara, Karl Marx and Clyde, set up like Mount Rushmore. Of course the surf boards
were illegal in the United States just as were Cuban cigars, but there were hardcore
surfers that would find them somewhere on the black market and pay through the nose for
them. The Revolution Surf Company was state owned and their profits were substantial.
Aside from the boards, they had t shirts, shorts and towels with the same Rushmore
looking logo. It was a hit on the west coast where Clyde once lived.
People around the world that lived to surf, bought the surf boards made in Cuba. Every
year in May, they had a surf competition that Clyde would judge.
Bonnie and Clyde married in 1978 in a wedding that was publicized nearly as
much as Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s was in England. They went on to have two
boys that both took up surfing. They still reside in the apartment provided for them by
the government and exist on a meager salary. Clyde never cared. It was about the same
as he made at Der Weinerschnitzel and at least now he had health care coverage and was
taken care of by the government like a good big brother. He was given a 1957 Chevrolet
Bel-Air station wagon compliments of the president. To this day, you can find Clyde heading to the beach early in the morning. Occasionally you can find Bonnie on the shore
watching him.
Clyde lived in one bedroom apartment in Van Nuys, California. Van Nuys, is the
name of a city within the county of Los Angeles. It is part of the San Fernando Valley,
which is a half hour north by automobile from the City of Los Angeles.
In 1976, while the nation was celebrating it’s two hundred year independence
from Great Britain, Clyde was let go from the only job he ever had. It was during high
school that Clyde quit the school football team and took up surfing full time. It was a cult
like thing that happened among the small clique of his friends who would rise before the
sun and head to Malibu to surf for several hours before school. Clyde was given a job at
the Chevron on Van Nuys Boulevard, pumping gas. For a young guy who wanted to just
surf and pick up girls now and then, it was a great job.
Clyde eventually found a young woman who was into the surf culture as much as
he was. She was beautiful with straight blond hair and the body of a goddess. Clyde too
was attractive and had a thin frame with platinum blonde hair and a year round bronze
glow to his skin due to the sun. Mary and Clyde, married at the age to nineteen and had
two children. Mary surfed less and less and studied more. She enrolled at California
State University at Northridge or CSUN as it was known by the natives and became a
school teacher. Mary excelled in school and graduated with high marks. She taught
elementary school and went back to get her masters degree so that she could become a
school principle. By the time she and Clyde were thirty, she was a principle at a school in
North Hollywood called Saticoy School. Clyde still had a job pumping gasoline at the
Chevron. Clyde learned a lot about cars by working at the gas station but not enough to
secure a job as a mechanic and so like street car operators and ice men, Clyde lost his job
to the automation or the self service stations. People got used to pumping their gas. It became cheaper with the energy crisis, to have people pump their own. They drove little
Hondas and Datsuns instead of big Lincolns and Cadillacs. With no high school diploma,
the only job Clyde could find was a near by hot dog chain called Der Weinerschnitzel,
which was German for, the hot dog. Clyde had to wear a red shirt with the stores logo
and name on it and a white chef’s hat. He saw a lot of people who he went to high school
with and they too had families. The difference was that all of them had high school
diplomas and college educations and good jobs. Some were bankers, or loan officers or
worked for Hughes Aircraft in the aerospace industry. Clyde was serving fast food and
was nearly thirty years of age. Clyde’s wife Mary became very disappointed in her
husband’s desire to aspire to be something in life besides a surfer and a short order cook
and so she took up with another man suddenly. He never heard from her or his two small
children ever again.
Clyde moved out of the three bedroom home they rented in Sherman Oaks and
moved to the one bedroom apartment in Van Nuys. The building was sort of what the
people in the east referred to as a two flat. That meant that there were only two
apartments in the building. Clyde lived above the owners on the second floor. On the
first floor lived a Cuban family that had immigrated slightly after the time that Fidel
Castro, came to power. The father was a heavy smoker and died a few years back and the
wife immediately found another man and had him moved in before her husband’s body
became cold. The man she took up with was your conventional white man, probably
third or fourth generation Irish. This man had been having an extramarital tryst with the
Cuban woman prior to her husband’s expiration.
Now this Cuban couple had a beautiful daughter by the name of Bonita and Bonita or Bonnie as everyone called her, was seventeen years old. She was born in Cuba
but moved from there when she was four years old. Her family took refuge in the
Mexican embassy and were given asylum in the United States. All of Bonnie’s other
relatives still live in Cuba. Bonnie had straight dark hair and was very Spanish looking.
That is to say that she looked unlike the Aztec looking Mexicans who were a large part of
the population in the San Fernando Valley. Most people only knew of Ricky Ricardo as
the only Cuban inhabitant of the United States. Bonnie had full lips that made her appear
as if she were always pouting and had slightly slanted eyes, making people wonder if
possibly she might have some Japanese or Filipino in her. Bonnie was not a small girl.
Bonnie was curvy and voluptuous. She looked much older than her seventeen years of
age. Bonnie was very smitten with Clyde who lived above.
Now Bonnie’s mother was too consumed with trying to please the new man in her
life to pay much attention to her daughter who was nearly a woman. Bonnie was in her
last year at Grant High School and would probably take some typing courses at nearby
Valley College and try to get a job as a secretary.
Bonnie had a lot of boyfriends and admirers who had the hard look of desire on
their faces when they looked at Bonnie. She looked the part of a sex kitten as they called
them back in the days of burlesque. Bonnie couldn’t help how she looked. Like Marilyn
Monroe, she just naturally oozed sex appeal. The fact that Clyde was indifferent with her,
was perplexing. Bonnie knew that Clyde was thirteen years older than her and had been
married. She also knew that he lived a simple life and loved rising early to surf. One day
Bonnie approached Clyde.
“I would like to go with you one morning and watch you surf…”
“Um… Okay.”
So one week day morning at a few minutes before five, Clyde drove his 1964
Chevrolet Impala station wagon down the Ventura Freeway to the Topanga Pass towards
Malibu. The back seat was removed to make space for surf boards and the front seat was
a bench seat with the springs sticking up. In fact, Bonnie was shifting her weight quite a
bit to keep the spring from digging into her ass.
Bonnie sat on the cold sand, covered with a blanket and watched Clyde and a few
other young surfers, ride the waves as the sun began to light the early morning sky.
Within time, Bonnie accompanied Clyde nearly everyday and then she began to spend
nights and before long, she was practically living with Clyde.
One day Clyde and Bonnie were at a mini market picking up a few small items so
that they wouldn’t have to queue up in the local chain grocery store. The clerk behind the
counter was reading the racing form, looking for good bets for the races later in the day at
Santa Anita Race Track. Bonnie grabbed some milk and some toilet paper and a bomb
pop while Clyde looked through the latest issue of Surfer Magazine.
“I know that dude! Totally bogus. That dude was a total hodad, poser.
Unbelievable… Now he has his own boards.”
Of course Bonnie wasn’t listening. She was waiting patiently for the clerk to peel
his eyes from the race form to ringer her up. The clerk gave her the total and then Bonnie
had to ask for a bag.
“Honey, come carry this stuff…”
As Clyde walked up to the counter, two young Mexican men walked in. They
both had nylons pulled over their faces. They wore baggy pants with shiny shoes and tank top t shirts under flannel shirts. One stood at the door and kept watch while the
other walked up with a cannon of a gun.
“Keep yer hands were I can see dem, bato. Don’t try no shit an you live to see
another day, essay… Pinchay cavrone… Dis eess all you got een dah register? I’m
gonna have to take some tequila too… Lay down, bitch and quit looking at me.”
He used duct tape to tape their hands behind their backs. The clerk with the
racing form, still had his cigar in his mouth while he laid face down behind the register.
A few minutes later, a customer removed the duct tape from their wrists. Bonnie asked
the clerk if he was going to call the police. The clerk sort of shrugged and went back to
his form.
Bonnie thought about the whole incident. It was the first and only time she had
ever been in the middle of a robbery. She couldn’t believe how easy it looked and how
matter of fact the clerk was about losing so much money. Bonnie thought about the
prospect of living from hand to mouth with the surfer who was totally satisfied to just
work at a fast food restaurant for the rest of his life. One morning on the way back from
surfing, Bonnie told Clyde of their plans. Bonnie, who was then a full eighteen years old
and done with high school, was used to being the one with vision in their relationship and
so Bonnie discussed her plans with Clyde.
“Listen baby, you have vacation time you never take and I think we should go on a
little trip.”
“That sounds bitchin. Where you wanna go, like Mexico?”
“No baby. You know I’m Cuban, right?”
“Yeah you mentioned that…”
“So Cubans don’t come from Mexico. They come from Cuba. Cuba is an island
like Catalina. It isn’t that much further from Florida than Catalina is from Los Angeles.”
“So we’re going to Cuba?”
“We’re gonna try real hard, mi cielo… First we’re going to see America on our
way to Florida.”
“You can surf in Cuba, right, mi amore?”
“It is surrounded by the ocean, love of my life…”
“Then you know me, babe. I’m like totally down with it… I can bring my board
right?”
“If you really want to, precious, bring your toys with you…”
“Awesome…”
And so they set out on their vacation towards the east on a Monday, after surfing,
before traffic got too bad on Pacific Coast Highway. Clyde drove all the way out to the
dessert with his arm around Bonnie. They sang Beach Boy tunes from the eight track
player he had installed. Clyde also liked Dick Dale, Dwayne Eddy and Jan and Dean but
the Beach Boys were his favorite.
They stopped at a road side diner in the middle of no where in the Mojave
Desert. The waitress was sort of short tempered with them. There were a few other
truckers in the restaurant and the cook. Bonnie had asked her twice to come back because
she needed time.
“Darlin, we got six things on the menu… Watchu think you getting?”
“Okay fine… I’ll just have a cheeseburger with fries and a shake…”
“We got two kinds of shakes, the vanilla kind and the chocolate kind… Which one you want?”
The waitress then rolled her eyes and walked off. They got their food fast as it
was fast food and they ate it relatively fast also. Bonnie had a few fries and some bites of
her hamburger and maybe a few sips at best of the shake. The waitress made a comment
about that.
“Y’all shoulda ordered the kiddy plate if this was all you was gonna eat… Seems
a damn shame with all the starvation in the world.”
Bonnie had enough of the woman’s attitude. She felt that now that she was
legally a woman, people had to start treating her with respect.
“Ma’am, if your so concerned with the food, you’re welcome to do whatever you
want with it. You don’t look like you missed to many meals, to me.”
The waitress scribbled the total and slammed it down on the table. Clyde sensing
tension, went over and paid the bill. He was apologetic which just angered Bonnie
more. Bonnie lectured Clyde as they walked to the car.
“Baby, you got to learn to be my knight in shining armor. You can’t saying sorry
to no fat ass bitch because you thought I was mean. That woman was rude, mi hito.
Don’t do that, okay?”
“Sure babe… You know me.”
They drove across the street to get some gas and check the oil. Ironically enough
it was a Chevron station and they still had a man who pumped the gas, checked the oil
and filled the tires. Bonnie excused herself to go to the bathroom. She walked back
across the street to the back of the restaurant and put on a large black poncho, black
gloves and a Richard Nixon mask. She walked in with a Snoopy pillow case and a gun that she purchased off of some Mexican gangsters in the park near their apartment back in
Van Nuys. Bonnie locked the door and fired the gun at the ceiling once. Plaster fell on
her head.
“Everybody over here in the middle of the floor… You! In the back! Get up
here!”
She duct taped their eyes and hands behind their backs and withdrew a little over
$200.00 from the register. She pulled the shades down and turned off the lights and
exited through the kitchen door and walked over to the car as if nothing had happened.
Clyde saw Bonnie coming from the direction of the restaurant and asked her why she had
gone back over there.
“I got to thinking about it and decided I would make things right, baby. Let’s go
now!”
They drove through the night and stayed in a road side motel run by real
descendants of the people Columbus was supposed to have discovered. They were really
a dark bronze. Clyde had never seen a real native American before. He was in awe. He
asked to take a picture with them. They did for $5.00.
Now Bonnie being quite street smart and a complete thinker, studied out every
place they hit along the way east. She robbed a whole string of places in Texas and even
brought them up into Oklahoma to rob a place right over the border before they headed
back south and stayed way down south in the bayous of Louisiana. It was there that they
met a kindly old Cajun man. Bonnie initially wanted to rob him but couldn’t bring
herself to doing it.
“People calls me ay-tee-yen. It dare French fo Steven. Ma people come down the Mississip Riviere all dah way dare from watchu have there in Canada called New
Brunswick, close dare to Quebec. Some hundred year plus an we don here speak Cajun.
We mix dah French wit dah Anglais an make watchu got dare Creole.”
“Can you say something for us in Cajun?” Asked Bonnie.
“Quand vous restez ici, vous etes chay vous… Dat der mean dat when you stay
right-cheer, you already home.”
That night they ate crawfish in a stew and drank some homemade concoction out
of a mason jar, all compliments of Etienne and his large family. Other Cajuns got
together that night and played Cajun music. Bonnie liked the Cajuns. They were poor
people who loved life. The songs were unlike anything they had ever heard before. They
had violins, an accordian and a man with a wash board strapped to his chest. Most of
there songs were sung in French with a strong twang. Nobody seemed to mind the two
foreigners amongst them. People danced and drank just the same. Clyde and Bonnie
danced and drank until they could barely stand. They retired to their cabin built on stilts
above a swamp. There was no air-conditioning in the room, just a ceiling fan that
squeaked. They fell asleep in a pool of sweat in each other’s arms as the music played on
and the Cajun’s continued to party.
They met some really nice people in the deep south and it became harder and
harder for Bonnie to want to rob good, simple people of their hard earned money. Bonnie
decided that she would have to incorporate Clyde and they would try their hands at a few
banks. With banks being insured and all by the government. The idea of borrowing
money from banks, knowing the government would return the money to the banks, made
Bonnie feel as though it was justifiable.
“Robbing banks! Baby, I would go through a brick wall for you but not banks…
Where’d you get such a crazy thought, my love?”
“You might have wondered how we got all this money, sweetie pie. I borrowed
from a few places along the way. When you gassed up, I was making withdraws. The
way I see it, if we hit two banks, we are set for Cuba.”
It was in a really hick town in Mississippi where the people were quite uninviting.
They all seemed to look at Bonnie and Clyde strangely and without the hospitality that
they had grown accustomed to. One motel denied them a room.
“I am a good Christian woman and I don’t allow no fornicating in my place of
business. If y’all can prove you married, I be more than happy to get you a room for the
night. Y’all come from California? People sure are different there, ain’t they?”
So it was in a small Mississippi town that Bonnie scoped out a small savings and
loan. There was an elderly man in a uniform with a gun that looked like it never left the
holster. There was a bank manager who had large square glasses and a walrus like
moustache and thick side burns. He had a large stomach that drooped over his belt line.
He was a jovial man. The two attendants were younger women in their early twenties.
People filed in an out of the bank, making small talk with the security guard about fishing
and gardening. One woman discussed seeing an unusual breed of woodpecker in her
backyard with the president who is a bird watcher. Bonnie came in with a blond wig and
granny glasses to inquire about opening an account. She let the bank president know that
she was a student at the nearby college. He gave her a few forms and Bonnie was on her
way. Just before closing the following day, Bonnie and Clyde came into the bank. They
both had on dark clothing. Bonnie wore a Richard Nixon mask and Clyde wore a Lyndon B. Johnson mask, both with highly exaggerated noses.
“Can I have your attention… This is a hold up. Everyone on the ground and
don’t make a sound and we’ll have no problems,” said Bonnie, while holding a gun to the
bank president’s head.
Clyde stood by the door and kept look out. The door was locked. Bonnie ordered
Clyde to duct tape the hands of everyone in the bank. Clyde apologized to an older
woman who was crying.
“I’m really sorry ma’am… If I wouldn’t have lost my job at the Chevron and had
to go to work at Der Weinerschnitzel, we probably wouldn’t have had to do this.”
“Baby, please shut the hell up. You don’t need to be talking to nobody. Just do
your job and we’ll be on our way.”
Clyde stuffed more money into bags than the bags could hold. Stacks and stacks
of hundreds, fifties and twenties. Before leaving, Clyde put two hundred dollars in the
purse of the crying old woman and they were gone. When the crossed into Georgia,
Clyde and Bonnie fought over selling the wagon.
“Sweetie, I got news for you; where we are going, you cannot take the wagon with
you.”
“Where the hell are we going?”
“Don’t worry where we’re going. All you need to know is that there is a lot of
surfing. You can spend the rest of your life riding the waves.”
“Okay… Cool. But I wanna keep the wagon. Can‘t we take it on a boat to Cuba, my love?”
“What don’t you understand about not being able to keep it? Look, when we get
where we’re going, I promise you we’ll find something just as old and probably nicer.”
And so they traded the old wagon for a newer model Ford truck so that Clyde
could keep his prized surfboard. They drove through the night and made Key West, late
in the day. Bonnie left Clyde at the hotel and went looking to buy a boat. She found a
large speed boat with two large outboard motors. They large Chrysler engines. The
owner of the boat store gave Bonnie a good deal. Bonnie went back to retrieve Clyde and
by nightfall, they were headed due south. The trip took a little over three hours on a night
with a full moon and a placid ocean. It was close to two in the morning when they
reached shore. Upon docking the boat, they were apprehended by the police. Clyde had
no idea where he was. All he knew was that everyone was speaking Spanish and they had
a rifle against his spine.
A military officer sat with his feet up on his desk, smoking a large Cohiba Cigar.
He wore a round military ball cap in olive green to match his uniform. He began to ask
Bonnie questions in Spanish.
“So what you are saying is that you and your… Husband?”
“Yes my husband.”
“Yes your husband. You and your husband are political fugitives who have been
plotting to overthrow the American government…”
“Yes that is correct, commandant.”
“You mean to tell me that this man here… Your husband… Looking like
someone who has just left the beach, could tell me the difference between, let’s say the
Democratic Party and the Republicans?”
“Most certainly, commandant…”
“Here’s what I am thinking, comrade… I think that maybe you and this man…
Your husband, Yes? Yes… I think it is possible that you were just common criminals in
the United States and rather than face jail time, you thought you might come back to
Cuba…”
Bonnie began to cry and spun a story of great proportions. Even the commandant
was impressed. He did not believe it but he was impressed.
“We left California last week and drove all the way from Florida and risked death
to get here. I don’t remember Cuba but I do remember all the things my parents told me
and realized that my happiness lies here, in the place of my birth. We want to spread the
word to Cubans that America is truly the great evil. We want the people here to know
about the huge disparity in America. The haves have a lot and have nots suffer
immensely. I believe with all my being in what is being done here in Cuba. I would
stand on a mountain to profess this…”
“And your husband. He feels this passion for equality? He could tell me who
Karl Marx was possibly Lenin. He could identify who Fidel was and what he fought for
and what he fought against?”
“Here’s the thing, commandant, my husband is slightly… How do I say this
exactly? He is a bit dense… His heart is in the right place though.”
They separated Bonnie from Clyde. They sent in an English speaking interpreter
to question Clyde. Clyde was in a room without windows. In the room were two chairs
and a desk with a naked bulb suspended from the ceiling. The government official was a
very pretty woman. Uncommonly beautiful. Her name was Miranda and she tried to come off as Clyde’s friend.
“So tell me, what was it you did in the United States?”
“Well you know, I believe in taking it easy, man. Y’know like my thing is to surf.
I surf everyday. Some people pray and go to church and all but I’m sort of one with
nature and god when I’m on my board… It’s hard to explain but like you got the whole
Pacific Ocean and it’s like the biggest thing in the world and we have this gift… No
amount of money is worth the feeling I get from surfing… I worked and all at the
Chevron on Vanowen for a long time and people pump their own gas now and so I took
up with Der Weinerschnitzel last year. I don’t mind it and all. Bonnie thinks I should
look for another job but I’m cool with it. I told her if we have kids and all that maybe I
could find work in like a shoe store or something like that. I just need something where I
can work with my hands…”
“I see… Tell me how you felt about the Vietnam War.”
“It was mostly bogus… I mean who really cares if they wanted to be communist.
Let em be, man… Live and let live is my motto. I did have an uncle who surfed there
during the war. He said it wasn’t too bad…”
“How do you feel about communism?”
“Well like I try not to get too bogged down in the stuff I can’t really change in
life. People are worried about Russians and commies and all. I think if people really
wanna have that sort of thing, we shouldn’t try and kill them over it… Buy the world a
Coke and have a smile…”
“Yes… How do you feel about the redistribution of wealth?”
“Whoa… You’re hitting me with some scientific stuff there… What does that mean?”
“How do you feel about a few people having so much and many having very
little? Do you feel it is right for everyone to have an equal share?”
“I guess that’s cool and all… I guess I would be a little worried if the dentist was
making the same as the dude scooping up elephant shit at the zoo… I mean like if he had
no incentive to do better, y’know what I mean? Hey, can I ask you something?”
“Yes…”
“Are all the babes here as hot as you? I have to tell you that you’re smoking…”
Clyde and Bonnie were separated for a long period of time. Clyde wound up in a
prison filled with people who had difficulty following the strict laws provided. Nobody
around Clyde spoke English and so he kept to himself. Bonnie was kept with dissidents
in a female prison and was questioned daily for hours. News traveled all the way to the
top. The president of the entire country heard about the couple and saw a chance to use it
as a propaganda tool. He ordered both to meet with him in Havana. They ate well and
were offered alcohol. Clyde was even offered a cigar. The president laughed with delight
at the things that Bonnie said to him. They were so vehemently anti-American that it
warmed his heart. Being a man who understands the power of persuasion and possessing
the gift of communication, he was highly impressed by Bonnie and saw a chance to use
them as a tool.
On May 1st there was a large parade and many people came to hear the president
speak. A lot of people had no choice unless the wanted to chance imprisonment. Be that
as it may, the president had an audience. It was during his four hour speech that he
introduced Clyde and Bonnie. They stood beside the president and looked out at the crowd that stretched as far back as the eye could see.
“Comrades… Here before us are two great people who have left their country, the
United States of America, to live among us. They escaped political persecution and
braved the open seas to come here. Many of you hear false stories of people trying to get
to Florida on little rafts. Right here in the flesh are two patriots who have escaped the
grip of tyranny, imperialism and decadence to be part of the revolution… Long live the
Revolution!”
Now the president, being a master at using symbols as tools, used Clyde and
Bonnie to his advantage. It was like driving a thumb tack into the ass of a giant. It would
not kill but it would hurt like hell. So it was that the duo were given a fifteen minute
television program that would air just before the state run evening news. It became an
instant hit with the entire nation. Everyone would tune in to hear the bizarre and horrid
accounts of things that took place in the United States. They had theme music taken from
a movie staring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. It was banjo music that was played
during the chase scenes from the movie, Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie wore a red beret and
scarf with an olive green military shirt and Clyde usually wore an Ocean Pacific t shirt or
his Los Angeles Dodgers t shirt. Bonnie would read from the teleprompter in Spanish.
“Today in the United States, two thousand auto workers were laid off in the state
of Michigan, in the city of Detroit. Many will be forced to look for new jobs which will
require a college education. The paradox is that university education is not guaranteed
by the state. Many will become homeless and live in parks…”
The screen flashed images of homeless men sitting in a park, drinking out of a
bottle on a park bench as well as angry auto workers, burning a car outside an auto plant in Flint, Michigan. There was also the human interest story of a man who worked in a
textile plant who killed his entire family and then himself after his company moved to
Guyana. Gerald Ford was portrayed as a buffoon who stumbled into power on the heals
of the Watergate scandal. They showed Police brutality and urban blight. They showed
pollution in rivers and lakes and even a fire on Lake Erie near the city of Cleveland.
There was also acid rain, Three Mile Island and oil soaked birds from a tanker spill in
Alaska and so forth. People in Cuba began to feel really good about their plight. The
revolution was getting a bit stagnant after twenty years and so this helped. When it was
Clyde’s turn to speak, he gave the surf report for a few minutes each day. He too read
from a teleprompter and the nation fell in love with his poor verbal skills in Spanish.
“Hello comrades, it is I, Clyde with the surf report…”
They would play surf tunes, Wipe Out and Pipeline, while Clyde pointed to
various spots on the map of Cuba.
“Dudes… Get ready for action coming out of Cape Verde. There’s a storm
brewing like a bowl of Ceviche. Look for waves to be break at above six feet off of
Oriente by Tuesday. Due to the full moon, the action should be cool all over the island…
Let’s go over the vocab for this week, get your pens ready… Stoked, the word is stoked.
That means that you feel really good about the prospects of some really radical waves.
The opposite would be bummed. You’d be bumming over not so radical waves. That
brings us to the next word; radical. Not to be confused with some political term of some
dude who is way out there on a limb. Radical means something really cool. Word three;
hodad, the word is hodad. That is a poser, fake and phony. If the dude is faking he is a
true hodad. Next words are gnarly and bitchen. You can use them both interchangeably.
Both are cool words used to describe awesome waves. You could use toasty too. So this
is the sentence for the week in English… Follow the bouncing ball…
Dude, don’t be a poser, hodad sporting the baggies on a bitchen day when the radical
swells are toasty, gnarly. Don‘t be bumming me when I‘m stoked, bro… This has been
Bonnie and Clyde saying so long and long live the revolution.”
The state provided them an apartment in Havana within walking distance to the
television station. Clyde came up with an idea to manufacture surf boards called,
Revolution Surf Company. Each surf board had the heads of Fidel Castro, Ernesto Che
Guevara, Karl Marx and Clyde, set up like Mount Rushmore. Of course the surf boards
were illegal in the United States just as were Cuban cigars, but there were hardcore
surfers that would find them somewhere on the black market and pay through the nose for
them. The Revolution Surf Company was state owned and their profits were substantial.
Aside from the boards, they had t shirts, shorts and towels with the same Rushmore
looking logo. It was a hit on the west coast where Clyde once lived.
People around the world that lived to surf, bought the surf boards made in Cuba. Every
year in May, they had a surf competition that Clyde would judge.
Bonnie and Clyde married in 1978 in a wedding that was publicized nearly as
much as Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s was in England. They went on to have two
boys that both took up surfing. They still reside in the apartment provided for them by
the government and exist on a meager salary. Clyde never cared. It was about the same
as he made at Der Weinerschnitzel and at least now he had health care coverage and was
taken care of by the government like a good big brother. He was given a 1957 Chevrolet
Bel-Air station wagon compliments of the president. To this day, you can find Clyde heading to the beach early in the morning. Occasionally you can find Bonnie on the shore
watching him.
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