Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned

by Kinky Friedman

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "Elephant Dump Number One," he said. "Butyric acid."

  "It certainly smells like an elephant dump," observed Clyde.

  "You have no idea what this stuff will smell like once I spray it on the front wall of Starbucks," said Fox. "People will be avoiding the entire West Village. Intrepid or misguided tourists will be dropping like flies. Flies ought to like it, though."

  "When does this operation get under way?" I inquired.

  "In about five minutes," said Fox.

  "Good," said Clyde. "That's some nasty shit and I'd like to get it out of here."

  "I don't really need any help on Dump Number One," said Fox. "But you two can come along as UN observers if you like."

  "Might get some good material," said Clyde facetiously, looking at me still.

  "Wouldn't miss it for the world," I said.

  By the time we got to Starbucks, it was almost three o'clock in the morning, a good hour if you were spraying butyric acid on the front of a Starbucks. Clyde and I served as lookouts for Fox and the whole operation took slightly less than three minutes. There was, I must report, not much to see. There was, however, a startlingly appalling amount to smell. As we walked away from the scene, the malodorous aroma seemed to almost pursue our rapid footsteps down the street. We could still smell the horrible stench a block away.

  "That ought to give a few soccer moms a second thought about going in for their morning latte," said Fox, with a wickedly happy smile.

  "Jesus," said Clyde. "That'll give the hunchback of Notre Dame a second thought."

  "They'll have to close down tomorrow," I said.

  "You'd be surprised," said Fox. "They're pretty enterprising. Maybe the baristas will give each customer a gas mask so they can avoid going without their indispensable, wonderful, fucking favorite gourmet blend."

  "Do I detect a bit of bitterness in your tone?" asked Clyde sweetly.

  "Not bitterness," said Fox. "Only sadness and rage. There are elements of sadness and rage behind everything that's ever been funny in this world."

  "Then the joke's on all of us," I said.

  "Good. Good," said Fox. "Keep writing."

  I don't know if Starbucks opened or not that morning. I had to hand it to them, however. They took a licking and kept right on ticking. As for us, the three partners in crime, we slept in until well past noon. I lay there on my mattress on the floor watching Clyde sleep like an angel next to me and listening to Fox snoring in his sleeping bag on the other side of her. The devil in his sleeping bag. Sometimes your mind can be so clear when you first wake up that if you just lie there half thinking, half dreaming, you begin to think you're a different person. It's almost like seeing yourself and your life and your friends for the first time. The shenanigans we were foisting on Starbucks, I thought, were juvenile, inane, and futile to the extreme and yet the whole ludicrous campaign seemed to shimmer in my mind with excitement and danger and fun. No one could ever have talked you into something this crazy. You had to want to be a part of it. Ours is not to reason why, I thought. Ours is just to do or die. Was Clyde an angel and Fox a devil, or had they both simply become internalized living parts of myself?

  Why were we doing what we were doing? That was a question the cops would have to ask if they ever caught us. I'm still not sure there was really an answer, but I'll try to give you one. Fox was doing it mostly on principle. Clyde was doing it mostly for fun. And my motives, I'm afraid, were not quite as pure. I was not doing it for the hell of it, a notion that drove practically everything Fox and Clyde ever did in their lives. I was scheming against Starbucks for cynical, vicarious, practical reasons, and almost all of them by this time revolved around what Clyde had once called "that bloody book." She had not been wrong. More blood would soon be poured onto its pages than any of us could have suspected.

  I did not see Elephant Dump Number Two. I stayed home writing that night, but Fox and Clyde told me all about it when they got back just before dawn. It had been, apparently, at least according to Fox, "a thing of real beauty." Clyde had come in the door looking as if she'd just had an orgasm. Maybe she had.

  "Oh, Sunshine!" she gushed. "You really should have been there!"

  "We could've used you for a lookout," said Fox. "The cops were all over the neighborhood, like flies."

  "So were the flies," said Clyde.

  "We had to wait until almost Tour-thirty to bring in the truck," said Fox.

  "What truck?" I asked.

  "Septic-tank truck I sort of borrowed," said Fox. "Holds five thousand gallons of raw sewage."

  "I got to ride shotgun!" said Clyde.

  Starbucks, indubitably, now realized that these pranks were far from random acts of vandalism. They well knew that a concerted campaign of no-holds-barred, rather sophomoric insanity was being diabolically waged against them for reasons, I'm sure, they could hardly fathom. But they, assuredly, as we learned from occasional reconnaissance missions in the following days, did not plan to go down without a fight. More security guards, more cops, more sanitation people, and always more baristas were brought aboard to replace those who had succumbed to the stench. Customers had to choose on any given morning between their desire for mocha latte and their desire not to gag before they walked in the door. But after a few more days, the place was amazingly right back to its sanitized, antiseptic, spiritually cauterized self. Fox, who could walk out on a limb in a hurricane with the best of them, felt it was time to stand down for a few days. The attacks had been coming fairly fast and furiously and we couldn't expect to get away with it for much longer. Unmarked squad cars could now be seen cruising by the front of Starbucks in twenty-minute intervals, twenty-four hours a day. We had to change our tactics or it would be only a matter of time before the game would be up. But Fox's sense of completion got the best of him. He wanted to work in Elephant Dump Number Three before we took a hiatus.

  "Of course, we can't get real elephant shit," he said one afternoon as the three of us shared a large pepperoni pizza in the apartment. "I've contacted the circus and it's just not practical. In order to get enough, we'd have to follow the circus from town to town with an elephant wheeler."

  "It's probably highly perishable, too," said Clyde, favoring me with a broad wink.

  "So I've talked to a stable in Westchester and it looks like we're going to have to settle for horseshit."

  "I hate it when that happens," I said.

  "We'll requisition a Ryder truck," said Fox. "We'll line it with heavy canvas. We'll go to the stables and fill it up. Should hold, if my calculations are correct, a little under a ton. Then one night later this week we'll deposit the load in a lightninglike maneuver on the sidewalk right in front of Starbucks."

  "How do we do that?' I asked. "It's not a dump truck."

  "Permit me to hold on to some of my trade secrets," said Fox. "You'll find out in very short order."

  "I don't know about dumping a ton of horseshit on the sidewalk," said Clyde.

  "Almost a ton," Fox corrected.

  "I don't think it's a very nice thing to do to the garbagemen who'll have to clean it up," she said.

  "Ah, but that's the sweet part," Fox continued. "The city sanitation department will never agree to remove a ton of horseshit on the sidewalk."

  "Almost a ton," Clyde said sweetly.

  "It's something in their bylaws," Fox went on. "They won't touch it for love or money. Starbucks will have to hire their own private carting firm, you know, the Linguini Brothers or something, and that's really going to cost them. They'll be at the mercy of the horseshit mafia, but it's the only way they're ever going to get it out of there."

  "Sounds like a plan," I said encouragingly.

  Actually, it sounded like sheer madness but it did represent the kind of cinematic action sequence that Sylvia Lowell had found so lacking in my manuscript. Even I, as an author, could appreciate that Hollywood would not love many chapters of conversations between three crazy people tempora
rily keeping their heads down in a basement apartment. I could appreciate what Hollywood wanted but I wasn't going to give them what they wanted. Besides, I reckoned, when was the last time anyone in Hollywood actually read a book? No self-respecting author should ever write for Hollywood. You shouldn't write for the Sylvia Lowells or the Steve Samets of the world either. And especially, whatever you do, you should never write for yourself. In fact, if you're going to write at all, you might as well write for the customers of Starbucks. They are the mindless, faceless, meaningless mainstream without whom no author or artist can be successful. They are the ones, between the sidewalk and the stars, between the windmill and the world, who let Mozart, Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Anne Frank, and Jesus die in the gutters of eternity.

  Time glided by quickly and softly on dragonfly wings. Fox got the truck and the horseshit. Clyde and I took in a few movies, had a romantic candlelit dinner in a small Italian restaurant, and walked hand in hand blithely and blamelessly through the little sun-dappled streets of the Village. By the appointed night, however, all of us seemed more than ready for Operation Elephant Dump Number Three. Fox, as aware as anybody that the heat would be intense, had already schemed with Teddy and a group of homeless people to stage a well-timed diversion at a point several blocks away from Starbucks. We waited on a side street in the Ryder truck and, when the sirens had all passed us by, we moved on the target. In no time, we were backed up to the sidewalk in front of Starbucks and Fox and I, wearing gloves and overalls he'd requisitioned for the project, got out of the truck and tied two strong ropes to the base of a nearby lamppost. Clyde waited in the cab of the truck with instructions to signal us if a cop came by, but none did. I don't know what we would have done if one had, but these are the chances you take in the life you live. Ninety seconds later, Clyde pulled carefully away from the curb, allowing the ropes and the heavy canvas to deposit, with a large, deep, soft whumping sound, slightly less than one ton of horseshit onto the sidewalk in front of Starbucks. Sixty seconds later, we had the rope and canvas back inside the now-horseshitless truck and we were out of there.

  Fox dropped Clyde and me off at the apartment and drove off to get rid of the truck somewhere. I immediately took a shower and when I got out was mildly surprised to find Clyde, wearing only a bra and panties, sitting in the middle of the floor with the one-hitter and a bottle of expensive cognac. Three full glasses were positioned around her on the floor. She'd just taken a deep hit off the one-hitter and was patting the floor next to her, smiling through the smoke. Modest fellow that I was, I put on some jeans and proceeded to share the one-hitter and the cognac. I remember at one point she kissed me and I could taste the cognac on her lips all the way to the depths of my soul.

  By the time Fox returned several hours later, all of us were walking on our knuckles. Fox, after dropping off the truck, had stopped by a small park and passed around a few bottles of cheap wine with Teddy and his friends. Somewhere during that time they had concocted the grand scheme that was to be the climax of the campaign against Starbucks. Fox refused to divulge the precise nature of the plan except to say that the principal figure of the operation was, indeed, Teddy. After some cajoling from myself and Clyde, Fox still steadfastly refused to reveal the inner workings of what he called "the greatest little adventure of them all." He preferred, he said, for both of us to observe it as it unfolded, to bear witness to a carefully crafted spontaneous action of which neither of us was involved in the planning stages.

  "It always makes for more compelling reading, Walter," he said, "when the author himself is unaware of how the story ends."

  So I went into it unaware of the plan, unaware of what would happen, and unaware that it would be the last time the three of us would ever be together.

  twenty-nine

  What you're reading now I pieced together after the fact, partly from what I witnessed myself and partly from little comments made in passing by Fox or Clyde. I don't know how Fox got Starbucks to hire Teddy, but they did. If they'd gone into his record for about twenty seconds, I feel certain they wouldn't have touched him with a barge pole. Maybe a new resume was created just for Teddy so they'd hire him. Anyway, they did, because we could see his large, dark form moving back and forth occasionally near the front windows. Sometimes Teddy would wave to me and motion for me to come into the place, but after Elephant Dump Numbers Two and Three, I felt it was the better part of valor not to darken Starbucks's door.

  This went on for about a week and things seemed pretty quiet. The horseshit, of course, had all been cleaned up and carted away at Starbucks's expense by the Linguini Brothers or whoever the hell it is who carts large piles of horseshit away from gourmet coffee shops. Clyde probably knew more about what Fox was up to than I did. Maybe he'd confided in her and told her the whole plan. I don't know and I'll most likely never know and I suppose that in any way it really doesn't much matter. Fox was right about rage and sadness being just beneath the surface of things people often think of as funny. He was wrong, however, in not foreseeing what sometimes happens when you play with people's lives. I'm not getting up on a moral soapbox here because I'm as guilty as Fox, maybe more so, depending on how you look at it. These days, of course, I prefer not to. Like Starbucks customers, there'll always be plenty of guilt to go around.

  As near as I can figure it, here's how the whole fiasco went down. Through some nefarious connection or quirk of fate, Mordecai Hoffman, an Orthodox Jewish firebrand and rabble-rouser, received information that the new Starbucks location was situated precisely upon the site of one of the first Jewish cemeteries in New York. Whether or not this bit of historical trivia was correct is probably not relevant now and it certainly wasn't relevant to Mordecai Hoffman. Mordecai, like many self-styled political and/or religious leaders of the day, was forever looking for a cause to get behind, and a parade to get in front of. He jumped like a Cossack onto the Jewish cemetery issue, and soon there were all manner of half-baked, biblical-looking Orthodox rabbis along with a ragged, but rabid, group of zealous followers showing up daily to picket Starbucks. This, of course, though quite a colorful sight to see, did little to deter the stubborn Starbucks aficionados from reveling in life, liberty, and the pursuit of a decaf mocha latte.

  When I think about it, I know it had to be Fox who slipped the little cemetery tidbit to Hoffman because what happened next was about as clear an example of an organic binary munition as was humanly possible to create. This was because its components were not comprised of cockroaches and gecko lizards. The organic binary munition was comprised of two highly divergent groups of human beings. The first element was the aforementioned band of Orthodox Jewish picketers and troublemakers. The second element-well, I'll get to the second element in just a moment.

  First, though, there had to be a triggering mechanism, which was Teddy getting fired. This, quite naturally, was no surprise to anybody except, of course, Teddy.

  It happened one afternoon about a week after Elephant Dump Number Three, and I suppose it happened for the same inviolate reasons everything else happens in this world: "Between the gutter and the stars, people are what people are." You can't blame Teddy for being Teddy and you can't blame the people at Starbucks for being the people at Starbucks. It is the way of their people; it is the way of all people. Anyway, there was, presumably, some sort of misunderstanding, which led in turn to some kind of altercation. Maybe Teddy suddenly started believing he was mixing a secret, sacred, traditional kava potion for a manhood ritual among South Pacific Islanders. Maybe he thought that as king of his imaginary African kingdom, he was entitled to compensation for sales of all Kenyan and Tanzanian gourmet coffee blends. Maybe his wig just snapped from the tedium and the ennui of working every day at Starbucks. For whatever reason, two burly security guards, who looked like midgets on either side of Teddy, escorted him out of the place that afternoon right through the throng of cheering Orthodox Jewish protesters who'd mistaken him for a black Jew from Ethiopia who they assumed had
been involved in an act of passive resistance. Everyone thought that was the end of it, of course. Everyone but Fox.

  The following evening around nine o'clock, at Fox's instigation, I drifted by Starbucks to witness what Fox had said would be "The Show." Clyde, I noticed, was already there, smoking a cigarette, drinking a non-Starbucks coffee, and carrying on an animated discussion with Mordecai Hoffman. I did not see Fox anywhere, but shortly after nine, Teddy showed up surrounded by the other element in the organic binary munition: about two dozen Black Muslims, all decked out in black suits, white shirts, black bow ties, and funny-looking black monkey hats that ironically did not appear to be vastly dissimilar to the ones some of the Orthodox Jews were sporting.

  "Jesus," said Clyde, who'd found her way over to me. "This ought to be good."

  "Did you know this was going to happen?" I asked.

  "I didn't know any more about it than you did," she said. "It just sprang out of the whole cloth of Fox's mind, I guess. He wanted me to see whatever is going to happen with 'fresh eyes,' he said. Maybe he thinks I'm going to write a book."

  "Are you?"

  "One author in the family is quite enough, Walter. Isn't this fun?"

  "Well, it is-um-interesting, certainly at least in a sociological sense."

  "Brighten up, Sunshine," she said, putting her hand on my cheek. "Give me a kiss."

  "Give you a kiss?" I said incredulously. "There's about to be a race riot with the possibility of blood in the streets, and you want a kiss?"

  "What better time for a kiss?" she asked, with an innocence that actually caused a pang in my heart.

  The night was already dark and the mood was turning dark and I kissed her long, deeply, and lovingly, and wondered again about this odd, charming, streetwise girl I was kissing. When I finally came up for air, I noticed that the leader of the Black Muslims, whom I subsequently learned was named Jabreel X, was leading his troops through the crowd of Jews into the Land of Milk and Honey, which, in this case, was Starbucks. I would not exactly say the Jews parted like the Red Sea, but it must be reported that the Black Muslims enjoyed a relatively unimpeded progression through the crowd and into the store. Once inside, they stood around and glowered at patrons in surly fashion while Jabreel X sought out the store manager to inquire about the circumstances of Teddy's termination from his recent employment. It is not a pleasant thing for your average yuppie customer to suddenly turn around and see two dozen Black Muslims standing casually around, not ordering anything but paranoia and bad vibrations. All politics and social commentary aside, it's just not good for business.