Rough Living

by Vago Damitio

  After lots of pressure from the public who read of the problem in their newspapers and saw stories about it on their local news, the city granted a special permit allowing the citizens of the building to have a special garage sale to sell off their valuables.

  Sam told me that for two days he and the other residents nearly continuously carried his accumulated trash downstairs and for ridiculously high prices sold it to the predators that were hoping to prey on the misfortune of these poor people.

  It was a three-day permit and at the end of the second day Sam had nearly $200,000 in cash. He got spooked and left the rest of everything to the other residents.

  He flew to the Caucus Mountains and bought a huge inventory of beautiful rugs and then returned to America where he sold the rugs and bought a small ranch and an RV with his legitimate profits. He still sells the rugs and he still picks through the garbage despite being a millionaire.

  This kind of random junk can go for big bucks at Flea Markets.

  Conversations with Unremarkable Men

  George Hush and I got on his bikes (George always keeps a couple of extra bikes around for his guests) and rode down to the industrial beach where I had parked my bus. This is where Aquillo Mallot and the other bums we like hang out.

  He was sitting in a tent with a couple of other bums. Aquillo introduced me to Jeff, the older guy whose little tent we sat around as we smoked more ganja. Jeff, it turns out, is the heir apparent to the throne of Wales. True or not, none of us knew, but on the sand or in the streets, you don’t question anyone’s story. For all we knew he could be the King of Sweden.

  Aquillo put it another way when he, George, and I moved down the beach. “Everybody is entitled to their fantasy, and what the hell, he could be a fucking alien from the Dog Star.”

  George started a fire. It was starting to rain and we set up Aquillo’s dingy as a wind/rain break. Then we just chilled out. Talking.

  “The fundamentalist Christian’s told me that peace in Israel would mean the end of the world in 3 ½ years,” I told them.

  “It’ll end sooner than that if they keep spraying this chemical shit from these high altitude jets,” Aquillo said, “They’re trying to immunize us, or poison us, or something, but I’ve seen the chem.-trails for three days running now.”

  “I hear that Maitreya has been having secret meetings with the United Nations and letting the world leaders know what they need to do to fix the planet, but they won’t listen.” George told us in a conspiratorial whisper about the future Buddha and his hidden agenda. “Maitreya is gonna fuck up the leaders man. He’s the fighting Buddha.”

  It’s funny how enjoyable the free things in life are. Sitting on a beach in the rain, having a fire, riding bikes, and talking about anything and everything.

  George’s cell phone rang as I recovered in the silence. It was our friend Ursula. Sort of a surreal moment when she found out we were with Aquillo and asked to speak to him. George and me looked at each other with huge shit eating grins as Aquillo Mallot sat on the beach, next to a fire, dog leash in hand, talking to a pretty girl on a cell phone.

  Aquillo had never used a cell phone before. George kept whispering and giggling, “Look, Aquillo’s on the cell phone.” She tried to talk him into coming over but Aquillo doesn’t like sitting indoors. We sat on the beach drinking whiskey instead until sleep called us away one by one. I woke up in the morning and was going to leave when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw Aquillo and his dogs coming down the hill. I shut off the bus and waited.

  “It’s a good thing you waited,” he told me with a grin “We’re about to smoke a joint.”

  Shannon and Hopalong weren’t far behind him. We smoked and fell into our usual patois.

  “Here we are, “ I said. “2001. We all survived the bigY2K…no problems.”

  They laughed. Shannon shook his head. “ The country is heading into a recession but why should that bother warriors of alternative means?” We all laughed louder.

  “2001,” Aquillo roared, “ A homeless oddity.” We all roared with him.

  We sat by the fire drinking whiskey, smoking pot, and listening to each other talk pure bullshit.

  The Duck. I stopped and talked with the bum who was lying in the grass listening to country music on headphones and complaining about the rain as he smoked a cigarette. He told me a lot of the tramps had been getting their gear stolen. We talked about life on the road and he told me he was going to Phoenix. “Get where it was still warm and didn’t rain.”

  I walked all the way through Vancouver to reach the on ramp and this tramp named Duck walked with me part of the way. He complained about the rain and bum’s gear getting ripped off. Curiously, he had a huge bag of stuff he complained about too.

  He asked “You drunk?”

  It was about 10 AM. “No,” I replied.

  “I am. Been tramping a long time. You got any cardboard?” “Just my sign.” I showed him the sign I’d made which simply said "Bellingham."

  “Well I gotta get me some so I can fly some cardboard and get me some spending money.” He was dressed all in camouflage.

  “I gotta piss… I wouldn’t be a tramp if I couldn’t piss and walk at the same time."

  I started walking a bit faster as he slowed down. Suddenly I heard the additional splash of urine on the sidewalk. The Duck didn’t seem to mind that it was daylight or think that the couple walking behind him would mind a little extra precipitation.

  I walked about 20 feet ahead of him and tried not to burst out laughing. He kept cussing about the rain and pissing. I turned around once and saw him pissing all over himself. That was the last I saw of The Duck.

  A Random Bender in Seattle

  I was bored, not knowing what to do with my time, so I settled down in my bus and read Oscar Zeta Acosta’s Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo. Costa was the Chicano lawyer who gained fame through representing and carousing with Hunter S. Thompson. The overall effect of the book on me was to create an overwhelming urge to drink.

  I decided to head to downtown Seattle and see what I could see. I thought bus fare was a buck and a quarter and asked a woman at a Pony Express Postal Service if she could give me change for a dollar. She refused She nearly spit at me as she belched out “ I don’t give change!” She said it like she was saying "I don’t suck strangers cocks." As if I were asking the old white cow to give me a blowjob. I just wanted change for a buck. The cab driver at the counter looked as shocked as I felt at her reaction. She must have thought I was going to go play some demented video games or visit the peepshows.

  I got change at a Mexican restaurant. The Mexican lady was nice about it. The cabbie came out of Pony Express and asked me if I still needed change. Turns out I didn’t need the quarters until later when I visited the Peep Shows on First Avenue and played some demented video games at Wizards of the Coast because bus fare was just a $1. Why had I thought it was $1.25.

  I caught a bus to the U-district and made sure to get a transfer. Bus transfers are such fantastic things. Useful for an all day trip around the city and all for a measly dollar! I was good and drunk when I got on the bus. A tall black man in a short white coat sat next to me. He broke bus etiquette by holding out his hand. "Hi. I’m Tim." I knew something was coming after that.

  "I used to go to church to pick up pussy," he told me. “I used to come home with these nervous, prudish girls white girls and just fuck em. But then I got sucked into the religion."

  This was where I thought the pitch would come. He was going to tell me about God. "I became a Christian and a cult in California. It was run by a Hollywood agent named Christopher who came to Seattle to scout talent. Man, that guy used to fuck us all with his big cock. I even let him fuck me!”

  Maybe this was a gay pickup. I was too drunk to be bothered by his weird confession, but I liked the lesson. He had joined a church to get fucked and then gotten fucked. I made a mental note to my self to stay away from religious girls. Next up when Tim got off t
he bus (with no solicitation at all, by the way, just the odd confession) was a crack whore in torn fishnet stockings and a silver dress. She too, sat next to me and broke bus etiquette.

  “This is a crazy fucking bus,” she whispered. “All the people that ride this bus are fucking nuts!”

  She smiled, a big gnarly tooth crack-whore smile. “That’s why we’re both here, right?”

  Maybe they smelled the booze on me. I laughed anyway. We both laughed. “I’m Mary Jane.”

  Not a surprising name but I had thought she’d be Twinkie for some reason.

  Behind us were two big black guys. They were laughing and joking with each other. Telling stories. In front of us was a short white guy, and a large fat Indian woman with a tiny red bindi on her giant fat face.

  My new friend, Mary Jane the crack whore, got off the bus with me and grabbed my arm. "I’ll buy you a beer," she said. I hadn’t seen that coming. We wandered into Earl’s on the Avenue. Earl’s is a sports bar. Mary Jane bought me a beer. Next to us a very drunk red faced guy was arguing with a priest — both sitting at the bar. “God damn” and “Dammit to hell” were the only phrases I caught. Mary Jane and I were cracking up. No pun intended.

  Mary Jane had a wine spritzer which is a perfect cheap whore drink and I had a Pabst Blue Ribbon which is a perfect drink for a cheap whore to buy you. We moved to a table when I bought the next round. I was hammered. I decided to piss on the floor, under the table. I thought I could do it without getting up. I unzipped and pissed.

  "What the fuck?" Apparently, I got some on Mary Jane. The sound of my stream of piss hitting the brass table legs made a musical sound that caused the priest and his drunken friend to turn around. Mary Jane, much to her credit, started singing "Like a Virgin" to cover up the sound once she’d figured out what I was doing. We giggled together as a yellow stream wound its way across the uneven bar floor.

  We moved to another table and the foul mouthed guy from the bar came and joined us. He was on the bottom end of a thirty-day bender and he kept popping Xanex and putting them back with full glasses of red wine. 46-years-old and proudly told us he had never worked a day in his life because he had a trust fund. A fucking trustafarian.

  "I got a DUI last year," he told us. "I fucking worked the system though. I got off with two weeks of intense relapse prevention instead of two years of treatment. It was my third one." He seemed proud of it. "I laugh every time I drink a beer. I’m a fucking alcoholic, what the hell else am I supposed to do?”

  "I’m a whore," Mary Jane said, which didn’t surprise anyone. "I used to have a pussy made of gold. These days, maybe it’s made of nickel though."

  "You ain’t that bad," Nate said. He wasn’t a nice man, so he was obviously hammered.

  "I can make any man come in less than ten minutes," Mary Jane said. "I still got that going for me."

  The trustafarian bought the rounds after that. He was actually chatting her up. I was ready to go. I used my transfer to catch a bus to 1st Avenue. At Pike Place Market I heard two little English boys talking with their babysitter “Rose, it must be nice to not have to go to school and be able to sit around and do whatever you want all day” the smaller of the two said to her, to which the other replied “Not me, I want an education, I don’t want to have to sit on the street and beg people for money saying

  “Please give me money because I need a prostitute.” I swear. That was what they said. I heard it.

  I dropped a dollar into a bum’s guitar case as he played some old timey bluegrass. It made me feel good — so I gave him a buck. I spent 50 cents in a peep show, but couldn’t really focus on the girl behind the glass. Maybe I spent more than fifty cents…I don’t remember.

  The next thing I knew, I was in a Bingo Hall.

  I screamed out "Bingo!" as the numbers on my card danced in front of me. None of the oldsters were amused. My last number came up on the screen but the caller hadn’t called it yet. I screamed out “Bingo!!” again and the woman next to me yelled. Keep going, "He doesn’t have it!"

  “But all my numbers are covered,” I said.

  “He’s got to call the number before you can say Bingo. Those are the rules.” More dirty looks from the serious Bingo players. The paymaster grudgingly laid $40 in front of me after checking my card very carefully.

  I still had the $40 when I got home. I passed out on the floor. I woke up in a puddle of wine and Chinese food. I’d forgotten about Chinese food. It came back to me suddenly. I started to wish I’d never read anything by Oscar Zeta Acosta.

  Shroomin at the Hot Springs

  Scenic Hot Springs is off of Highway 2 near Snoqualmie between Seattle and Everett.

  We hiked two miles vertically and finally reached the hot springs where about a dozen people were nudely soaking and reveling despite the snow, the icy slick trail, and the difficult hike. By the time we got there, it was dark.

  Someone there offered us some psychedelic mushrooms almost as soon as we arrived and so we settled into the natural hot spring tubs with an expectation of the unexpected. Just as the shrooms began to kick, which I think was faster than normal because we were soaking in the hot pools

  A Puerto Rican man in his 40’s who reached fame through traveling to different hot springs and cooking incredible gourmet treats for those lucky enough to be there. He was, of course, naked, as were we. Everybody was — this, after all was a wilderness hot spring in the Pacific Northwest.

  Before he cooked, Robert explained the hierarchy of the hot springs to everyone there.

  “There is a class system here” he said, “It goes like this. This place and this energy is a result of Goddess. So first in the hierarchy are the goddesses who come here. Whatever they want, they get. Here they are not girls or women, they are Goddesses and I exist to serve. ” The beautiful girls in the tub with us murmured in delight.

  “Next come those who serve Goddess and the Goddesses who visit. So this young man,” he indicated a dark youth with a secure energy about him who was happily massaging a Goddess’s shoulders. “He is next because he helped me carry my gear up the mountain and he is really pleasing this Goddess. After that come the rest of the guys.”

  The shrooms started reshaping my reality and the snow-capped peak directly across from us began sort of bow and kow-tow to me while the trees began to giggle. Faces and words began to blend into each other and I thought of how the whirling dervish spins so reality blurs together and God can be seen in totality. My reality was blurring into the steam rising into the clouds and the stars that were not there dancing among those that were.

  One of the boys brought out a pipe and propane lighter. We shared his weed. I was intensely reflecting inward while I sat in the corner. Sitting in a bucket looking at my bucket. The Goddesses were lovely and the water was divine at just the right heat. A light snow began to fall.

  Robert pontificated pleasantly from the pool called The Lobster Pot and I settled into a comfortable corner of another called The Bear’s Den. The dark boy and his Goddess were next to me; they were very comforting and real. The Naked Gourmet served up a delicious treat with orange slices that I tasted with my ears and felt with my nose.

  Goddesses first, then helpers, and then the guys. Strange things still blurred the corners of my vision.

  Two very drunk teenage Goddesses came and got in the Bear’s Den with me. They both had huge bottles of beer. I struggled to hold on to the center as their much older boyfriends came and got in with them. Let the molesting begin…

  I felt an urge to speak but each time I tried, I realized, I fit in better being quiet. The Goddess and her dark servant moved to the Lobster Pot and the drunk young Goddesses squealed in delight at the extra room. I felt like I was going to be soaking in their boyfriend’s sperm soon so I moved to the Lobster Pot.

  Robert’s constant patter about the adventures of the Naked Gourmet allowed me to simply listen and exist in my own world. Each time someone got out of the pool, we all shifted to a more comfortable
spot. Slowly faces became distinguishable and words took on meaning. The visual died away and I returned to the somewhat Valhallalike world of Scenic Hot Springs.

  The Naked Gourmet cooked in the snow and then turned from his makeshift kitchen with quesadillas and more orange slices.

  Shortly afterward he began packing his enormous load of gear into a sled and set off yelling “For those of you here tomorrow, I’ll be back for brunch!”

  I stayed in the Lobster Pot for the next 6 hours or so, only getting out once to take an enormous pee in a downhill snowdrift.

  About 3:00 AM, my friends and I dressed as needle like snowflakes flogged our mineral bathed skins. The hike down the mountain was a slick ride on one foot while crouched in the easy parts and treacherous ice in the flatter areas.

  I thought my trip was still going on as a loud buzzing got near deafening and I looked up to see the purplish blue wires coursing up and down the mountain with an eerie ionic glow.

  My friend saw me looking and said “Isn’t that a trip?”

  “You mean it’s real?” I asked.

  “Yeah, freaky huh?”

  I thought about the strange effects all of that electromagnetic energy must be having on my brain, nervous system, and body as I lived among it every day…the same as standing under the same power lines in a city… the thought made me shudder.

  Hunted in Acme: Real or Memorex?

  Shortly after George Hush got busted for stealing parsley, a friend of mine gave me some LSD soaked sugar cubes.

  I figured it would be good to get away from everything for the weekend and knowing the trauma George was enduring after his bust, I asked if he’d like to come along. Part of the reason George had been caught shoplifting was because he had blown his knee out jumping around on a pogo stick. So he hadn’t been able to run when that hand clamped down on his shoulder.