by R. P. Lester
I’ll never forget Don Balls, New Orleans, or the lessons I took away from that life, although there is one memory of the urban swamp I’d love to expel that still sends me screaming into my pillow:
The goddamn sickening sound of Marco’s webbed left foot sloshing in concrete.
Coxman’s Log: 4:00 AM
I’ve spent the last few days on the internet researching old classmates from junior high all the way to high school. Not for the purpose of a heartfelt reunion, mind you, but to see how my life has unfolded in contrast to theirs.
Call it self-torture.
I’ve found that many of my old school chums have gone on to stake successful claims in the fields of finance, medicine, science, and law. Some have lucrative careers in the world of sports. A handful have achieved the American dream of owning their own businesses.
Once I saw the good fortune of some of my peers, my self-worth belly-flopped like the dark and hairy nipples of a fat, aging whore.
Then I saw a bunch of them whose image pics looked like death warmed over as they took another mugshot for crack possession, forgery, arson, murder, prostitution, and passing bad checks.
I didn’t even know there were websites for showcasing that shit.
I instantly felt better about myself.
Chapter Five
To Unnerve and Neglect
“Hello, Officer. Didn’t see you there behind all that thinly veiled evil.....
“Nothing, sir. This scantily clad lady just needed a ride to church to put money in the collection box.....
“Red streaks on the floorboard? I was repainting a fire hydrant next to the orphanage.....
“Cocaine? I find that to be a slanderous accusation, sir. If you possessed any knowledge of human biology, you would know that the tip of the nose is susceptible to moisture and may occasionally require a dash of baby powder.....
“What is your name, my good man? I wish to lodge a formal complaint with your captain. I will require your precinct number, badge number, and banking information.....”
***
As many times as I’ve had this exchange with the exact same cop, you’d think he’d get tired of the paperwork and just let me ride.
***
A civilized society needs police officers. They’re our saviors and protectors. The foot soldiers who come to blast the unholy hell out of the guy trying to get a cab by wagging his middle finger at the driver. Wherever evil is giving good a Dirty Sanchez, you’ll find the long arm of the law yanking the wind out of its sails like the rug from under a blind person.
In my opinion, every member of law enforcement is a messiah of truth with the most capital of good intentions. A guardian whose sole purpose is to see that the unjust rue the day they ever double-parked or bought a dimebag. They are the buffers between our crazed sexual urges and that lady of the night who only comes over at noon (false-advertising bitch). If it weren’t for the good men and women of the Kevlar, we would swiftly fall prey to our hedonistic tendencies. Caligula’s reign would rank just above a Mormon insurance seminar compared to our ensuing debauchery. Police officers everywhere deserve our trust and eternal devotion. To the death, if necessary.
***
Who the fuck am I kidding, man?
Okay, good people, I can’t keep up this charade any longer. It’s much too taxing. If I attempted this sort of endurance with a woman my prostate would implode.
Those of you who’ve never had the joy of getting probed with a nightstick should just bypass this shit right now. I don’t think you’d understand my point of view. Those of you who work in law enforcement in any capacity may want to skip over this section, as well.
If you’ve managed to read this far into your paperweight without setting it on fire, you’ve extracted that portions of my long-ago behavior have landed me in more trouble than I’d care to admit.
I’ve broken the law once or twice. I did it a few times after that. The four hundredth time was a lot easier than the first two. I lost count after batting a thousand.
Thank God and a shitload of luck I’m not in the clink ‘til Judgment Day.
There was a period of my life when I swam through the justice system like an inept goldfish, the turbulent waters full of violent offender sharks who stored shanks in the most unlikely of body cavities. I don’t consider myself a milquetoast by any means, but it’s fair to say I was scared out of my gourd:
I had to handle restroom duties in a dorm full of bored, impulsive men.
On the rare occasions I got a hard-on, I had to roll over and face the wall to catch a nut—when I had the good fortune to land a bunk next to a wall.
And inasmuch as I blamed other people for having to fight to preserve my precious manginity, I can point the finger at no one but the guy in the mirror.
But I’m not here to speak on the detestable state of our prison system. Lockup has done quite well with that imagery over the last few years so there’s no need to expound on it. Besides, if you really want to know what it’s like to be in jail, you can ask my cousin who was busted for stealing porn from the corner newsstand (what an embarrassing reason to go to jail, dude). My purpose today is to discuss the peacekeepers who brought me there. Or rather, those who maced me in the elevator on the way up to holding.
***
In my past life as a criminal, I was fortunate enough to exchange pleasantries with all types of law enforcement personnel. Sometimes, fate went out of her way to provide me with the civil servants whose lives shit on them with explosive diarrhea—those who were bullied as children, beaten with the ugly stick, or mistreated by a funny uncle. As those people grew—cramming all their childhood suffering into white-hot balls of fury—they were given tasers, firearms, and billy clubs to go forth and protect society from people-
Just.
Like.
Them.
History has shown us that the human race is the most devious, uncontrollable, and irrational form of life on the planet. How else do you explain the ancient Romans throwing men into battle with lions for the sake of sport? What conceivable reason could someone have for setting a homeless person ablaze as they slept on a park bench? Who will rationalize as to why a first-world government can swoop into a foreign country under the facade of salvation only to ransack its natural resources? And what disjointed motive would a man have behind stabbing the guy in the next apartment for bumping ‘N Sync at 1 AM? (Nevermind.)
In addition to opposable thumbs and our capacity for critical thought, nature has also embedded us with more savagery than any animal you’d find in the jungle. To my knowledge—and correct me if I’m wrong—we are the only organisms in the world who kill each other over cell phones, clothing, fender benders, lottery tickets, vehicles, religious beliefs, parking spaces, liquor, plane seats, drugs, stereos, money, jobs, sports, heavy traffic, Christmas toys, facial expressions, pride, just because we want to.....
Great Jesus. The list goes on and on.
I have grown. I have matured. I have greying pubic hair. So now I fully grasp the necessity for law and order in our communities. Maybe in our lifetime the Earth will do us all a favor and swallow humanity into its jowls to be digested into a better plane. One devoid of hate and callousness. But for the time being, the only things preventing most of us from throwing someone under a speeding garbage truck are a collective sense of decency coupled with daily exercises in restraint.
And a few overzealous cops.
Do Unto Others Unless You’re in Charge
They say that necessity is the mother of all invention. I say that’s a bucket of runny whale shit. Lust for profit is the parent to much of humanity’s creations, whipping necessity’s ass for cheating on a test and sending it to its room without dessert.
I mean really—how many of you know someone who’s ever “needed” a Snuggie?
Necessity is, however, a leading agent in the modernization of our world. There’s no denying it. While not everything on the planet is born of need, the id
ea of necessity has brought forth such conveniences as the automobile, air conditioning, gunpowder, the television, and glow-in-the-dark condoms (until you try it, you have no idea how cool it is to wave Mr. Johnson around in a dark room pretending he’s a light saber).
I’ve even heard people argue that necessity is the root of our actions: a guy “needed” to push that elderly woman out of his way so he could catch that cab; a mother “needed” to beat her toddler with a wooden spoon because he wouldn’t be quiet; a husband “needed” to lie to his wife about his addiction to prostitutes to spare her feelings; and your soon-to-be ex “needed” to rifle through your cellphone looking at other women’s names so she’d be up on the competition.
Now there are people who would say that the aforementioned actions were the result of some inherent necessity brought on by that individual’s current stimuli. In a sense, I suppose that’s true, although I disagree with the notion that necessity is the be-all-end-all behind mankind’s every exploit:
I didn’t “need” to slap the guy who bumped into me at the orgy, but goddamn if it didn’t feel good.
***
Yes, necessity is a strong impetus behind our activities as a species. It’s been proven time and again. However, one would be hard pressed to affirm its superiority to the invisible force that is present in all of us from the day we are born: emotion. The complicated vortex of human emotion can drive a person to mania, causing some of us to do the most unspeakable acts ever performed under God’s watchful eye:
Meek parents slaughter the one responsible for hurting their child.
A priest beats the man who burned his church to the ground.
Two friends disagree over a card game; one ends up bleeding out on the green felt from a bullet wound.
Boyfriends and husbands who beat their women to death for looking at another man.
A stepfather shoots his stepson with a .44 for breaking curfew (Justin deserved better than that).
Two men go to blows because one pulled into a parking space the other felt he’d laid claim to.
A father hangs his two-year old out of a sixth-story window to get back at the baby’s mother for her infidelity.
Good Christ in the sky, we’re insane.
I’m no social scientist, good people, but I don’t think I’m speaking out of school when I say that human emotion is the strongest catalyst in the universe.
***
Admittedly, my past emotions have caused me to fly off the handle at inappropriate junctures.
Contain your shock.
I’ve even given in to my hysterics in the workplace. There was the time blows were exchanged on a construction site. I recall a shoving match on a tugboat in the middle of the Mississippi River. One day I went off the deep end and teabagged an old boss of mine at his desk, raking my curlies over his nose with the balance of a Lithuanian acrobat. I’ve even sacrificed decorum for the greater good of stapling a coworker’s fingers together and showing him the inside of a computer as I shoved his face through the screen. (He was looking at child pornography on his company laptop. It was strange to have the police on my side for once.)
What I’m laying down is this: whenever I jammed a knee in the groin of professional behavior, the only tools at my disposal were huge fists, awesomely braided nuts, and a sense of shamelessness shown only by women in gang bangs. What I did not have during any of these occasions were a metal baton, an abusive demeanor, weaponry capable of wasting small villages, and a silver badge to back it all up.
***
I’m almost certain that some of my readers have never used cocaine or crystal meth.
Bully-fuckin’-hoo for you.
For those of you wise enough to have never touched either one of these substances, I shall explain the alternatives available to an addict nearing the end of his stash:
When you’ve whittled the contents of your plastic bag down to the last grains in the corner, your options are finite, but present. There’s always the tried and true method of accepting the conclusion of your binge, realizing that you’ve had a fun night (or five days) of ruining your body and coasting a gentle comedown. Usually, the synthetic endorphins are counteracted with whiskey, pills, or a large bag of marijuana that’s been set aside for this very reason. Of course, if you were a poor drug addict and didn’t plan ahead, having spent all your money on uppers and leaving none to help diminish your buzz, you have no choice but to take the second option and do it the hard way: you ride it out until the end. This route is generally avoided by most cokeheads and speed freaks, as it leaves your eyes bulging out of your face for anywhere from a few hours to an extra two days. Sleep is an elusive dream that never seems to come, and I don’t care who you are—whether it’s a family that needs tending, a job you must show up for, or your monthly meeting with a probation officer, eventually, you have to get straight to deal with some important part of your life.
Then there is the third option that is the most popular, at least among myself and the people I used to run with: you wave your dick at the idea of going without your precious narcotics and go get some more, by God.
***
I recall a time in my youth. I was big, tattooed, devilishly handsome, and villainously intelligent.
Not a lot’s changed.
My old buddy Jay and I had been knee-deep in three eightballs of glass for four days. That’s almost eleven grams for the squares. Raptious had been up with us for the duration. She was so strung out that she’d started arranging the coat hangers in our closet according to size and color (plastic hangers were saved; wire hangers were either trashed or turned into stem cleaners for our pipes). We’d gotten down to the last chips in our last bag. Jay and I were in my kitchen volleying a joint trying to take the edge off the top-notch redneck speed. We were seated at two of the barstools surrounding the counter. The one hundred-watt light bulb we’d modified for smoking the glass lay between us on the beige formica next to a straw used for inhalation. We passed the joint over two ounces of weed and what appeared to be less than a quarter gram of the clear crystals in a small, zip-locked jewelry bag. It was 1 AM.
“Hey, man,” I said, “do you have anything to do tomorrow?”
“Not really.”
“Neither do I. You wanna go see Dude and get some more speed?”
“Yeah. Sure. But don’t you have to go to work, Innis?”
“Nope. Not for a couple more days.”
“How did you manage that?”
“I told Bobby my aunt neutered her Yorkie. Said that ever since she did it the little bastard had been trying to kill her in her sleep and I had to go keep watch over him while he got used to being nutless.”
“Oh. Cool!”
“Yeah, no doubt. Too bad it’s all true except the part about me going to visit.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, that kinda sucks.”
“Hey, Jay, you think Dude’s even awake?”
“Yep. Should be. He makes his own shit. Cooks never sleep. You want me to call him?”
“Yep yep. How much money you got?”
“‘Bout a hundred. You?”
“I’ve got two bills. Three hundred should buy another ‘ball with a little extra.”
“Hell yeah it will! Does he know your cell number?”
“Nah. I use the landline when I call him. He recognizes that one.”
“Sweet. I’ll take care of it. My cell phone’s in my car, though.”
“You wanna call him from here?”
“Yep. Is your house phone on this month?”
“Sure thing. Give him a holler.”
***
Dude’s real name was Darrell. He lived in the country about twenty miles from my house. He’d fallen in love with The Big Lebowski and insisted that from then on his friends call him “Dude.”
I wasn’t his goddamn friend. To me he was a reliable meth connection with great product. Nothing more. To keep our business transactions going smoothly—and to minimize the threat of that crazy hi
llbilly pulling a gun for the smallest disagreement—I would’ve called him “Bubbles” if that’s what he wanted to go by.
Dude lived on State 116. It only ran about ten miles from beginning to end, but it was a long rural highway with minimal side streets. At least minimal for ten miles of road. Save for a few bends and a ninety degree curve, it was more or less a straight shot. The benefit of this quality was that you could see police coming in your direction. The flipside, of course, was that they could see you, too. One side intersected with State 28. The opposite end came out by some railroad tracks next to an active army base. There were trees set twenty yards from the highway in some places, thirty or more in others. Dusk-to-dawn lamps dotted the shoulder every couple of miles.
For law breakers, it was an imposing stretch even during daylight hours, for if the cops hit their lights there was almost nowhere to go. You’d be forced to pull over. If you chose to run and made it to one of the streets that led into the woods, good luck—maybe you hit one of the few that was actually paved. A great number of them were gravel and you’d lose control in a high-speed chase. Most people who made a break for it down one of these roads realized they were fucked after the first mile and stopped. Those who tempted fate usually flipped their vehicles or careened into the surrounding wilderness. At night, the blacktop of 116 seemed to extend forever. The only way to see any law enforcement was if they were behind you with their emergency lights on.