Danocrates discusses stories
February 7th, 2007 — himself, stories
It was the summer of 1988. I was visiting my family in Daytona Beach. My cousin Marty and I had spent the entire afternoon skimboarding…well—he was, I was trying. Some people ask, “What is skimboarding?” Essentially, a skimboard looks like a cross between a boogie board and a surf board.
I like to call it a “fiberglass razor of death”. How do you use it? Simple: you hold it in your hands, run with it, throw it down, jump on it and hydroplane on an inch of moving water above sand. Easy. No problem. Obviously, this is all theoretical horseshit. It only works if you have the natural athletic aptitude of an Olympian. Unfortunately, I have the natural aptitude of a paralympian. What they forget to tell you is that when the water washes out, the board stops but you don’t. Your momentum launches you into a painful trajectory that only ends when you roll to a stop in the hard-packed wet sand. It’s the equivalent of getting in the back of a pick-up truck on a beach, giving the thumbs up signal to your buddy, wait until he has picked up some speed and walk off the bed of the truck. Doesn’t sound that inviting but for some reason I did that over and over for hours. My body was begging me to stop. My back was bleeding from the sand abrasions. I learned quickly that sand fucking hurts. As I lay in the shallow water bleeding to death, the Sun glistened on the wet sand and made it sparkle. I had an epiphany: If glass was made of sand, then the reciprocal of that is—sand is made of crushed glass. That’s when I decided I had enough. I wasn’t going to continue rolling around in crushed glass for pleasure.
So I decided to abandon this foolhardy attempt to be an extreme messiah and levitate on water. I grabbed my Morey slick-bottom bodyboard and headed into the ocean. My cousin followed suit and got his surfboard. My wounds hissed as the salt water made contact. I felt like a vampire being bathed in holy water. Once the pain subsided, I relished in the moment and realized the conditions were fantastic. Even though dusk was fast approaching, the water temperature was not too cold and the waves were perfect. However, another set of conditions were also perfect which wasn’t desirable: our proximity to the pier (chum, bait, etc…), visible shrimp boats, and my bleeding back—A classic recipe for a shark attack.
We were fearless immortals trapped in teenager bodies. As we were facing the beach and waiting for the next set of waves, we heard screams to the right (north) of us coming from a dozen tourists. They were screaming, “Shark! Shark!” and swimming furiously to land. To a non-Native, this would be extremely alarming but as a townie this was an everyday occurrence. Nine times out of ten it turns out to be a school of bluefish or a dolphin. The key factor in telling the differences between a dolphin and a shark is the fin and the way it moves. Sharks have a triangle and dolphins have a curve. Dolphins go up-and-down and sharks go side-to-side. Basic marine biology.
Marty and I were not going to throw in the towel just because some hillbillies from Kentucky thought Flipper was Jaws. My cousin was closer to the “shark”. He was north-east of me about thirty yards away. We made eye contact and laughed at the idiot tourists who frantically fled for their lives. Marty’s attention went back to the upcoming waves. He laid on his stomach and looked over his left shoulder ignoring the chaos to the north.
I was going to do the same but I still had to swim farther west. About a minute later, I saw the infamous fin that created the terror. Just as I suspected it was rising up like a dolphin, not side-to-side, but it was weird because the small fin never went down, it just went up. Then I realized it was only the tip of the fin that was moving up. It was only the periscope of a nuclear submarine. Once the entire fin had surface, I was staring at a very large triangle that was moving side-to-side. Holy Christ! The hillbillies were right. It was a shark! My synapses and neurons were trying to get the word, “Shark!” out at a volume loud enough for Marty to hear. At the same time, the waves we were waiting for came in. Relentlessly, pounding me away from my cousin. I tried to yell out the monosyllable word but my brain misfired and spat out, “F..fi…fin! Big fin!” My cousin barely heard me over the roar of the surf. “What?” he screamed. I autistically kept rattling off, “Fin, big fin, fin…” “I can’t hear you”, he said annoyed and waved me off as he devoted his attention to the wave that was upon him. I looked to the left and saw the fin speeding in his direction and slipped beneath the surface. With a last ditch effort, I reached within and belted out one more warning, “Fiiiiiiinnnnn!” He looked at me confused, confidently paddled his arms, fluidly hopped up on his board and surfed to the beach with ease.
By Poseidon’s Trident and Odin’s Balls, he did it. He had escaped the jaws of an ancient creature designed with the only purpose to kill. I nearly cried in the joy of his salvation but before I could celebrate, my own sense of mortality overwhelmed me. There was only twenty-five yards between a very disappointed, hungry shark and my bleeding back. The foreboding fin resurfaced where Marty once was. I was petrified. My arms and legs involuntarily started to quiver as if I were being mildly electrocuted. Then the million-year-old cartilage and teeth of death submarine submerged for another attempt at supper. My brain finally regained control of my motor skills and it commanded every molecule in my body to head west towards the beach.
I floundered and thrashed. The waves were tirelessly hammering me. Somehow my one year of varsity training as a swimmer left me and I couldn’t catch a wave with bodyboard. So I detached the Velcro wrist strap and attached it to my ankle. In hindsight, I should have just let the stupid board go but I paid a hundred dollars for the board and I only made $3.35 as a bag boy. Fuck that. So know that I freed my arms, I unleashed two gangly windmills and swam ferociously to shore. I didn’t lift me head to breath nor to see where I was going. I let my intuition and fear drive me in. In fact, I didn’t stop until I felt sand. I practically “swam” twenty yards in the sand. I grabbed a double handful of sand and kissed it. I was immediately surrounded by a circle of hillbillies and I remember hearing them say in a southern twang, “Man, you were lucky. There was a dang shark out there boy.” No shit.
My family still makes fun of me for crying out, “Fin!” They hope that I’m never in a burning building because I would be quivering in the corner screaming, “Heat! Heat! It’s very smoky!”
November 15th, 2006 — stories
I read this at WYSIWYG TALENT SHOW
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
WED | Nov 16th | 8:00PM
Five years ago, my ex-girlfriend’s father generously gave us a seven day ski vacation at the Snowshoe Resort in West Virginia for Christmas. He paid for the hotel, lift tickets, and the snowboard rental. All we had to pay for was transportation and food. This was fantastic; unfortunately I grew up in Texas and didn’t have any ski gear. So I went down to Sports Authority to see what I could buy with my limited funds. Since it was a December 26th, I had spent most of my money on presents. I only had about a hundred fifty bucks to spend. Hat—$15, gloves—$30, goggles—$30, thermals—$20, ski pants—$50…fuck! That only left five dollars for a winter coat. I was born in Daytona Beach and raised in San Antonio and had zero body fat. They could have used my legs as doubles in the movie Warm Springs about FDR’s battle with polio. My chances for survival looked bleak. I needed a coat. Fortunately, the sales clerk was a guy named Ron, a snowboarder/surfer burn-out who hated his job. He suggested that I pick any jacket out and just return it for a refund when I get back. I told him that I would feel weird abusing their return policy and would hate for anyone to question my integrity.
Ron said, “Fuck them, they only pay me six dollars an hour. Do it for me.”
He said it with such eloquence and conviction that it was difficult to say, “No.”
Since the ski season had already begun, the selection was sparse. Especially, since I needed a Size XL-T, the O negative in the winter coat world.
We finally found a bright, canary yellow Columbia® jacket. The sales tag priced it at three hundred dollars or two hundred ninety-five dollars over my budget.
Ron smiled and said, “It looks a little faggy, but it’ll keep you warm.”
“Thanks, you sure it won’t be a problem”
“No, man. People do it all the time. Shit, one dude brought back socks.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in a week.”
Since I never snowboarded before, it was extremely difficult to keep the jacket off the ground. I would have to estimate that in the first 48 hours, I was on the on my back for 93% of the time. Not to mention, my biological cooling system responds to cardiovascular activities by activating by sweat glands. Over a course of five days, my taxi yellow coat absorbed the equivalent of a forty ounce bottle of Old English 800®.
To make matters worse, I felt like I had joined a gang. Not like The Outlaws, the Bloods, or the Crips. Nor like Danny Zuco’s The Thunderbirds or The Sharks from West Side Story. My yellow Columbia® jacket “gang” consisted of used car salesmen, well-funded NASCAR fans, and un-hip middle-aged men called The Douchebags.
My cousin Todd called me and asked me to cut my vacation short because our family pawn shop was being swamped with post-Christmas customers. Including me, we only had four people running the store, so I agreed to drive back to Virginia Beach. He was worried because of an incoming blizzard the next day that would prolong my return.
My girlfriend and her family tried to dissuade me from leaving in the middle of the night.
I didn’t want to get snowed in the next morning, so I loaded up my girlfriend’s 1990 Jeep Cherokee and began my treacherous descent down the winding mountain road. When I was a quarter of the way down, I started to see small flurries. In a matter of minutes, I was blinded by a cyclone of ice.
I gripped the steering wheel with my left hand and down shifted to second gear with my right. In tense situations, I had a bad habit of licking my lips to soothe my nerves. When I was a kid my nickname was “Hot Lips” because my adolescent anxieties chapped my lips. This moment redefined the word, tense. My brain responded by sliding my tongue from the 9 o’clock position with the intention of sliding to the 3 o’clock position in one fluid motion. However, when my tongue reached high noon, directly underneath my nose, it slithered back inside my mouth without warning because of an unexpected salty flavor. It tasted brackish and metallic. I looked into the mirror and was frightened by my gruesome reflection.
The change in elevation had turned my nose into a faucet of blood. I tried to look around for a napkin or towel. I had to improvise with a Wendy’s® bag and a grocery receipt. They both proved to be non-absorbent and rendered them useless. I was concentrating so hard on stopping the salty, crimson cascade that I forgot I was still driving in a blizzard. I suddenly noticed a Suburban 4×4 up ahead spinning out of control, engulfed by an invisible tornado. It finally swirled to stop on the side of the road. Fortunately, no one got hurt—shaken not slain.
I would have stopped but it would have been more dangerous to slam on the brakes, so I had to selfishly pass them by. Sorry. Darwin’s Theory is that stronger species descend by modification. Future Man is being modified by apathy, emasculation, and self-interest. Anthropologist in the year 3030 A.D. will discover that I was the link between Homo Sapien and Homo Cowardus.
My salvation came when a general store appeared in the distance. I pulled into a parking space, jumped out of my car, took off my stained jacket, laid it on the hood, and went to the entrance. To my misfortune, the door was locked and had a hand-scrawled sign on the door that stated, “I’ll Be Back Tomorrow”. I found a bottle of water in the Jeep and began pouring it on the jacket and started to scrub it with my hat. I felt like Lady MacBeth, frantically trying to remove the dreaded spots.
My coat started to illuminate as if a ray of holy light was cast down by the heavens above. Being agnostic, I was taken aback by this and didn’t know how to interpret this “miracle”. Then entire Jeep lit up, my shadow grew larger on the hood, I turned around to be blinded by retina-roasting halogen lights from the Suburban 4×4 that I had left stranded. Once they parked, I rushed over to their tinted passenger side window. Someone had triggered the automatic window lever and it slowly slid down to reveal a family of four from Pennsylvania.
As I was about to ask for a towel or more water, the window went up twice as fast as had came down. The driver rammed the gear selector in reverse, slammed his foot on the accelerator, and the ass-end of the Suburban exploded way from the parking lot. They had successfully managed a 180° turn. Now perpendicular to the road, the driver cranked the wheel to the right and sped down the hill like he possessed by a suicide bomber with his eyes glazed over with visions of forty virgins and the embrace of Allah.
I didn’t understand what happened. Yes, I can understand there animosity for me for not helping them in their time of need, but that was an extremely bizarre response to witness.
What had I done to invoke such a shocking reaction? Confused, I went back to my pain-staking, hand-numbing task of cleaning my three hundred dollar “leased” jacket. Somehow I managed to get the blood out. After that episode, the rest of the descent down the mountain seemed like whimsical stroll on the beach.
Once back in Virginia Beach, I had the jacket professionally dry cleaned and went to the customer service counter of Sports Authority. I sheepishly told the clerk that I didn’t like the jacket and wanted a refund. She seemed unconvinced and stared at me with a sneered look of skepticism like I had just told her I was Elvis. I bit my lip, casually looked away, did a little drum tap on the counter, looked at my watch, looked at their clock on the wall, clicked my tongue on the top of my mouth, nodded my head, looked at the ceiling…and she still just stood there staring at my waiting for me to break.
Fuck that, I hated that jacket. It was tense for a few minutes, but the line started to grow, so she succumbed and began the refund process.
Then Ron walked by and said, “Hey, dude! Glad you made it back! Heard there’s been some crazy serial killer cutting people up and tying them to ski lifts.”
“What are you talking about?”, I asked.
“You know, like Jeffrey Dahmer and shit…he’s been doing for a month now. I didn’t want to scare you before you went up.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh yeah, good thing you returned that jacket…the news is saying that the police are looking for a guy in a yellow jacket.”
It all made sense. Each event in the space-time continuum is multi-faceted. It glistens differently depending on which angle you view it. The family of four from Pennsylvania freaked the fuck out, because a serial killer with a yellow jacket, blood soaked goatee was about to kill them.
Life is all about perspective.
February 23rd, 2006 — stories
I was asked to deliver an eulogy last night at their 2-year anniversary of How to Kick People at Mo’Pitkins.
Here it is:
I will never be able to forgive God for this despicable thievery of two talented wordsmiths. God damn you, God! Why did you take these precious souls away from us? Was it because Bob was an atheist or was it because Todd was a Jew? Well, he didn’t have a choice. His mother inflicted him with her Hebe-o-nistic blood. He was just a baby, he didn’t know any better. Sorry about that. I just needed to get that out. My therapist calls this ‘cathartic bursts of clarity’.
I do thank God for taking them at the same time. One could only imagine what kind of an alcoholic Bert would have become without his life partner Ernie. Oscar without Felix, Batman without Robin, Lion-O without Snarf or insert the names of the countless other ambiguously gay but seemingly platonic relationships that have existed between two grown men.
If they were in fact gay, though we will never know, Bob would have definitely been the “top” and Todd would have been the “bottom” or the “cow” as they say in Chelsea.
Two peas from two different farms destined to be in the same pod. Bob’s farm was in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia. Todd’s farm was in Albany, the capital city of this great state of New York.
Evolutionary biologists have claimed that the DNA in humans only varies 2% from chimpanzees. Bob and Todd’s had to have been less then .001%. If scientist had made a comparative analysis of their DNA strands, the only difference would have been the additional strands of hair attached to Todd’s face.
They’re similarities surfaced at a young age. At the age of twelve, they both played Dungeon and Dragons. Todd always played a frightened, half-elf druid who dreamed of being a bard and Bob played an enigmatic, seductive female necromancer who had an unhealthy relationship with her cat.
They both started a monthly show in high school. Todd’s show was called, How to Embrace Self-Doubt and Bob’s was called I Enjoy Kicking People.
It was predetermined by the “scientist” above for them to collaborate together. Two similar protons placed in a particle accelerator destined to collide and create an astronomical show, How to Kick People.
The hippest show in town. Its been featured in the New York Times, The Onion, TimeOut New York, and L Magazine. You name it, they’ve been on it. Since its inception, I’ve always wanted to perform on How To Kick People. As a performer, the first email request is always a delicate situation. You have to be assertive but not invasive—funny, but not too funny—flirtatious but dismissive at the same time. I’d like to read my first e-mail to Bob and Todd requesting to be on their line-up.
May 28th, 2005
Hola,
Congrats on both your nominations for the Emerging Comics awards.
I’m available this year but 2006 and 2007 do not look good. If you have any cancellations or future spots available, I’d be delighted.
I’ve written a few pieces that I would like to work out.
-Dan
I figured they get thousands possibly millions of emails everyday. So I waited. I decided to make a follow-up email six months later.
November 8th, 2005
Gentlemen,
I’m willing to give hand jobs for a spot on H2KP
-Dan
I finally got a response.
December 18th, 2005
Keep your pants on Allen. We hear you.
-Bob
Unfortunately, I never got to give those hand jobs.
I’d like to read a poem entitled, Where are you Bob and Todd?
(cue music: Rose from The Titanic Soundtrack)
Where are you Bob and Todd?
The Village needs you.
Who will the hipsters turn to?
Our daily reality is affected by your possible mortality.
Grief, Anguish, Heartache
Embryonic Vonneguts aborted at the first trimester of life.
Transient textual prophets taken away against their will.
At least Hemingway controlled his own demise
with Cheney’s weapon of choice.
Damn you Thanatos! Damn you Osiris! Damn you Hades!
Fortunately, their words have been immortalized on the Web.
God bless the Web,
God bless America,
and God bless the troops!
Where are you Bob and Todd?
The Village needs you.
(fade music)
Andre Du Bouchet hosted the funeral. Mike Albo, Dan Cronin, Lisa Whiteman, and Chris Regan also delivered eulogies as well. Mr. and Mrs. Levin also renewed their vows under the direction of Todd’s will.
February 5th, 2005 — stories
I forgot to mention that when I was performing at The Baltimore Comedy Factory, they had come up with a wonderful idea to sell out all six shows.
$15 cover includes All You Can Drink!…and comedians
We became an Alcoholic Magnet, which attracted every thirsty local with an affinity for whiskey. A lot of XXX-L NFL jerseys, large silver medallions, and throat tattoos. I counted four tear drops on one fellow and was amazed at the intricate spider web tattoo on another. It appeared that a prison was having a field trip of some kind, and we were responsible of the entertainment.
I felt like Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, except nerdier and without the respect that Johnny exuded.
Fortunately, the headliner (Will Marfori) and I were able to tame the mob for 83% of the shows. The final show on Saturday at 11pm had the feel of a live Jerry Springer taping.
Immediately when I walked on stage, Dan Tracey, the manager and booker of the club, was tactfully informing a couple to be quiet so others could enjoy the show.
The liquored-up “lady” responded by pushing Dan and screamed, “You’re nothing, but a big fat pussy!!”
Dan continued to stay calm and tried to escort the “lady” out of the club. Mind you, this all transpired in front of the stage. I commented the entire time, trying to distract the crowd, which was impossible to do.
Once Dan placed his hand on the “lady”, her dirt-bag husband ran to her “rescue”. Even though she was the attacker, and Dan was protecting his vital areas.
Sir Whitetrash-a-lot ran forth to defend his maiden, and yelled in a rural twang, “Get your damn hands off my wife!”
Thank The Creator that the bouncer, Alabama, a 350 lb dude with dreadlocks, didn’t call in sick that night. He heard the battle cry from Sir Douchebag, responded by opening his arms like he was going to be crucified and ran into the party of three with full force.
Momentum equals mass times velocity.
Alabama generated a tremendous amount of momentum!
He easily cleaned up the scuffle, and pushed them out the door, which was about 15 yards away stage right.
All of that took place in course of about 2-3 minutes. It was surreal. A mind-bending reality created by uneducated humans who consume too much alcohol.
The greatest part was that I still had to perform for 25 more minutes to these people. They will surely love my poetry, D&D references, and math jokes. Good times!
I love being a comedian. It actually was fun for the first ten minutes, but then I became a fireman. Dousing out verbal fires with venomous lashings, I didn’t know I housed such rage.
I had one moment of lucidity, and was aware that at one point I was screaming, “Shut the fuck up, and listen to me, you fucks!”
Ironically, people still approached me after the show and said they enjoyed it.
I pray to the comedy gods, that I will someday be able to consistently perform in front of theatres of alcohol-free audiences.
November 14th, 2004 — stories
I was leaving Flatbush, Brooklyn about to get on the Belt Parkway going towards JFK, and suddenly my temperature gauge looked like a speedometer in a drag race. It went from cold to hot in a nanosecond, and then without warning steam billowed out from the hood like a volcano about to erupt.In a normal city, one would cautiously drive to the side of the road and call for roadside assistance. Very simple solution. It would be a tad bit annoying, perhaps inconvenient, or ill-timed, but not horrific. Now if you were in my situation, stuck in heavy traffic on Ocean Parkway and Avenue Z, your problems would be compounded exponentially.
I had to endure three light changes, and then drive around to find a legal parking spot. I must note, several hundred cars and trucks were blasting their horns at my incompetence and shitty 90’ Honda Accord. Of course, it was MY fault. I ingeniously pierced a pinhole in one of my radiator hoses which released all the contents of my radiator at a furious rate. Yes, I agree with all of them, I’m the asshole. I purposely sabotaged the coolant system, knowing full well the chain of events that would lead to this dubious occurrence. Hee hee…I win! Fuck everyone! My little ploy will disrupt so many lives.
My proficiency level of auto repair is on par with Richard Simmons before he came out of the closet. I can fake it. Basically, I can act somewhat knowledgeable in front of mechanics, so my bank account is not entirely depleted. Unfortunately, that only works with mechanics I know. Not in Brooklyn, north of Coney Island known as Russian Mafia Land. The only Russian I know is, “U tebya krasivie glaza.” Which I am told means, “You have beautiful eyes.” Not a big bargaining chip in repair shops. I had to walk ten blocks to find a ratty little gas station with a hand written sign that said, “CASH ONLY”. It was the only shop in a five mile radius. I went inside, and figured out who was the kingpin.
ME
How much would it cost for an upper radiator hose for a 1990 Honda Accord?
SHOP OWNER
You bring car. I fix. I tell you price.
ME
I need to know how much to get from the ATM. How much will it cost?
SHOP OWNER
You bring car. I fix.
ME
The price shouldn’t be different. Can I get a ball park figure?
SHOP OWNER
(Furious) YOU BREAK THE BALLS! YOU BRING CAR!! I FIX!! I TELL YOU PRICE!!
It’s the only line of business allowed to practice this way. Your blood pressure would be 120 over your heart bursting like a Hubba-Bubba bubble, if every transaction during the day was conducted in this manner.
ME
How much is a small Americano?
BARISTA
You bring cup. You drink coffee. I tell you price.
ME
I just want some coffee?
BARISTA
DON’T START ME! YOU BRING CUP!! YOU DRINK!! I TELL YOU PRICE!!
ME
OOH TIEV KARSEE VIE YA GLAZA!!
BARISTA
Spa`sibo, my comrade. Today you get coffee on the house.
September 7th, 2004 — stories
Congratulations, and welcome to a new way of living. Hold your hands out …look at them…soon you will control their true ability…these flesh covered extensions of your soul are your answer to the universe. Once you have mastered this technique, you will be able to walk out and command any field on a blistery March day. Children will revere you, women will adore you, and men will fear you. You are the best of the best, I have personally hand picked you out of hundreds of applicants. Well perhaps not hundreds, but a number greater than the number of individuals who are present right now. Each one you have a story of — why you are here. Seekers of Wisdom. Hot shot fliers, who think they have a chance at The Big Game. All big fish from small ponds. You will look back at this very point in time and laugh at the shell of a person you are now. I applaud you. You will forever be in my debt. When people read your resume…and see that you trained with Kent Powers, you WILL be respected. In the next nine months, you will LIVE, EAT, and DREAM about kites!!! This will be your new religion, and I am your SAVIOUR. I will say this once, you will address me as Kent Powers. There are NO shortcuts or abbreviations in The Art of Kite Flying. The decision you have made will alter your reality. One word can define what we do, “Control!” Cerf-volant! Drachen! Aquiline! Cometa! Vlieger! Every language has a word to describe it. Kite! An invention developed 5000 years ago in Ancient China. This workshop will transcend mathematics, history, geography, physics, and psychology. I don’t like to drop names, but perhaps you know a few of my students: Steve Coates, flies with Skynasaur Kites their first “professional kite flyer”. In fact I just had lunch with Gary Gabriel, the vice president, last week. He professed to me that he wished all the new pilots would take my seminar. You are going to see that this career not only takes skill, but a tremendous amount of networking. Hey, if you got an eccentric, billionaire uncle ready to drop tens of thousands of dollars on you…more power to you. But if you are like the rest of us, corporate sponsorship is the key to success. Sure you could stay Regional, and grab a few cash prizes. Peanuts! Chump change! Trophies feed your ego, but companies fill your bellies with filet mignons.
You will learn how to axel, fade, 540s…the amount of tricks will be limited by your creativity. Perhaps someday you will be able to patent your own trick someday. In order to do this, you have to give up everything…carnal pleasures, luxuries, vices…and trust my every word. Gentleman, let’s fly.
September 1st, 2004 — stories
Congratulations, and welcome to a new way of living. Hold your hands out …look at them…soon you will control their true ability…these flesh covered extensions of your soul are your answer to the universe. Once you have mastered this technique, you will be able to walk out and command any field on a blistery March day. Children will revere you, women will adore you, and men will fear you. You are the best of the best, I have personally hand picked you out of hundreds of applicants. Well perhaps not hundreds, but a number greater than the number of individuals who are present right now. Each one you have a story of — why you are here. Seekers of Wisdom. Hot shot fliers, who think they have a chance at The Big Game. All big fish from small ponds. You will look back at this very point in time and laugh at the shell of a person you are now. I applaud you. You will forever be in my debt. When people read your resume…and see that you trained with Kent Powers, you WILL be respected. In the next nine months, you will LIVE, EAT, and DREAM about kites!!! This will be your new religion, and I am your SAVIOUR. I will say this once, you will address me as Kent Powers. There are NO shortcuts or abbreviations in The Art of Kite Flying. The decision you have made will alter your reality. One word can define what we do, “Control!” Cerf-volant! Drachen! Aquiline! Cometa! Vlieger! Every language has a word to describe it. Kite! An invention developed 5000 years ago in Ancient China. This workshop will transcend mathematics, history, geography, physics, and psychology. I don’t like to drop names, but perhaps you know a few of my students: Steve Coates, flies with Skynasaur Kites their first “professional kite flyer”. In fact I just had lunch with Gary Gabriel, the vice president, last week. He professed to me that he wished all the new pilots would take my seminar. You are going to see that this career not only takes skill, but a tremendous amount of networking. Hey, if you got an eccentric, billionaire uncle ready to drop tens of thousands of dollars on you…more power to you. But if you are like the rest of us, corporate sponsorship is the key to success. Sure you could stay Regional, and grab a few cash prizes. Peanuts! Chump change! Trophies feed your ego, but companies fill your bellies with filet mignons.
You will learn how to axel, fade, 540s…the amount of tricks will be limited by your creativity. Perhaps someday you will be able to patent your own trick someday. In order to do this, you have to give up everything…carnal pleasures, luxuries, vices…and trust my every word. Gentleman, let’s fly.
December 26th, 2000 — stories
Five years ago, my ex-girlfriend’s father generously gave us a seven day ski vacation at the Snowshoe Resort in West Virginia for Christmas. He paid for the hotel, lift tickets, and the snowboard rental. All we had to pay for was transportation and food. This was fantastic; unfortunately I grew up in Texas and didn’t have any ski gear. So I went down to Sports Authority to see what I could buy with my limited funds. Since it was a December 26th, I had spent most of my money on presents. I only had about a hundred fifty bucks to spend. Hat—$15, gloves—$30, goggles—$30, thermals—$20, ski pants—$50…fuck! That only left five dollars for a winter coat. I was born in Daytona Beach and raised in San Antonio and had zero body fat. They could have used my legs as doubles in the movie Warm Springs about FDR’s battle with polio. My chances for survival looked bleak. I needed a coat. Fortunately, the sales clerk was a guy named Ron, a snowboarder/surfer burn-out who hated his job. He suggested that I pick any jacket out and just return it for a refund when I get back. I told him that I would feel weird abusing their return policy and would hate for anyone to question my integrity.
Ron said, “Fuck them, they only pay me six dollars an hour. Do it for me.”
He said it with such eloquence and conviction that it was difficult to say, “No.”
Since the ski season had already begun, the selection was sparse. Especially, since I needed a Size XL-T, the O negative in the winter coat world.
We finally found a bright, canary yellow Columbia® jacket. The sales tag priced it at three hundred dollars or two hundred ninety-five dollars over my budget.
Ron smiled and said, “It looks a little faggy, but it’ll keep you warm.”
“Thanks, you sure it won’t be a problem”
“No, man. People do it all the time. Shit, one dude brought back socks.”
“Okay, I’ll see you in a week.”
Since I never snowboarded before, it was extremely difficult to keep the jacket off the ground. I would have to estimate that in the first 48 hours, I was on the on my back for 93% of the time. Not to mention, my biological cooling system responds to cardiovascular activities by activating by sweat glands. Over a course of five days, my taxi yellow coat absorbed the equivalent of a forty ounce bottle of Old English 800®.
To make matters worse, I felt like I had joined a gang. Not like The Outlaws, the Bloods, or the Crips. Nor like Danny Zuco’s The Thunderbirds or The Sharks from West Side Story. My yellow Columbia® jacket “gang” consisted of used car salesmen, well-funded NASCAR fans, and un-hip middle-aged men called The Douchebags.
My cousin Todd called me and asked me to cut my vacation short because our family pawn shop was being swamped with post-Christmas customers. Including me, we only had four people running the store, so I agreed to drive back to Virginia Beach. He was worried because of an incoming blizzard the next day that would prolong my return.
My girlfriend and her family tried to dissuade me from leaving in the middle of the night.
I didn’t want to get snowed in the next morning, so I loaded up my girlfriend’s 1990 Jeep Cherokee and began my treacherous descent down the winding mountain road. When I was a quarter of the way down, I started to see small flurries. In a matter of minutes, I was blinded by a cyclone of ice.
I gripped the steering wheel with my left hand and down shifted to second gear with my right. In tense situations, I had a bad habit of licking my lips to soothe my nerves. When I was a kid my nickname was “Hot Lips” because my adolescent anxieties chapped my lips. This moment redefined the word, tense. My brain responded by sliding my tongue from the 9 o’clock position with the intention of sliding to the 3 o’clock position in one fluid motion. However, when my tongue reached high noon, directly underneath my nose, it slithered back inside my mouth without warning because of an unexpected salty flavor. It tasted brackish and metallic. I looked into the mirror and was frightened by my gruesome reflection.
The change in elevation had turned my nose into a faucet of blood. I tried to look around for a napkin or towel. I had to improvise with a Wendy’s® bag and a grocery receipt. They both proved to be non-absorbent and rendered them useless. I was concentrating so hard on stopping the salty, crimson cascade that I forgot I was still driving in a blizzard. I suddenly noticed a Suburban 4×4 up ahead spinning out of control, engulfed by an invisible tornado. It finally swirled to stop on the side of the road. Fortunately, no one got hurt—shaken not slain.
I would have stopped but it would have been more dangerous to slam on the brakes, so I had to selfishly pass them by. Sorry. Darwin’s Theory is that stronger species descend by modification. Future Man is being modified by apathy, emasculation, and self-interest. Anthropologist in the year 3030 A.D. will discover that I was the link between Homo Sapien and Homo Cowardus.
My salvation came when a general store appeared in the distance. I pulled into a parking space, jumped out of my car, took off my stained jacket, laid it on the hood, and went to the entrance. To my misfortune, the door was locked and had a hand-scrawled sign on the door that stated, “I’ll Be Back Tomorrow”. I found a bottle of water in the Jeep and began pouring it on the jacket and started to scrub it with my hat. I felt like Lady MacBeth, frantically trying to remove the dreaded spots.
My coat started to illuminate as if a ray of holy light was cast down by the heavens above. Being agnostic, I was taken aback by this and didn’t know how to interpret this “miracle”. Then entire Jeep lit up, my shadow grew larger on the hood, I turned around to be blinded by retina-roasting halogen lights from the Suburban 4×4 that I had left stranded. Once they parked, I rushed over to their tinted passenger side window. Someone had triggered the automatic window lever and it slowly slid down to reveal a family of four from Pennsylvania.
As I was about to ask for a towel or more water, the window went up twice as fast as had came down. The driver rammed the gear selector in reverse, slammed his foot on the accelerator, and the ass-end of the Suburban exploded way from the parking lot. They had successfully managed a 180° turn. Now perpendicular to the road, the driver cranked the wheel to the right and sped down the hill like he possessed by a suicide bomber with his eyes glazed over with visions of forty virgins and the embrace of Allah.
I didn’t understand what happened. Yes, I can understand there animosity for me for not helping them in their time of need, but that was an extremely bizarre response to witness.
What had I done to invoke such a shocking reaction? Confused, I went back to my pain-staking, hand-numbing task of cleaning my three hundred dollar “leased” jacket. Somehow I managed to get the blood out. After that episode, the rest of the descent down the mountain seemed like whimsical stroll on the beach.
Once back in Virginia Beach, I had the jacket professionally dry cleaned and went to the customer service counter of Sports Authority. I sheepishly told the clerk that I didn’t like the jacket and wanted a refund. She seemed unconvinced and stared at me with a sneered look of skepticism like I had just told her I was Elvis. I bit my lip, casually looked away, did a little drum tap on the counter, looked at my watch, looked at their clock on the wall, clicked my tongue on the top of my mouth, nodded my head, looked at the ceiling…and she still just stood there staring at my waiting for me to break.
Fuck that, I hated that jacket. It was tense for a few minutes, but the line started to grow, so she succumbed and began the refund process.
Then Ron walked by and said, “Hey, dude! Glad you made it back! Heard there’s been some crazy serial killer cutting people up and tying them to ski lifts.”
“What are you talking about?”, I asked.
“You know, like Jeffrey Dahmer and shit…he’s been doing for a month now. I didn’t want to scare you before you went up.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh yeah, good thing you returned that jacket…the news is saying that the police are looking for a guy in a yellow jacket.”
It all made sense. Each event in the space-time continuum is multi-faceted. It glistens differently depending on which angle you view it. The family of four from Pennsylvania freaked the fuck out, because a serial killer with a yellow jacket, blood soaked goatee was about to kill them.
Life is all about perspective.
November 7th, 1995 — stories
I was a horrible person in 1995. My sense of responsibility was non-existent. I laughed at every bill that arrived in the mail. The fate of the envelope was one of two possibilities: opened and thrown away or unopened and placed in a growing pile. My financial situation was comparable to a Baghdad chandelier maker during Desert Storm. I felt like a truck driver who had jack-knifed his 18-wheeler and the ass end of the trailer was facing 45 degrees from the cabin—a point of no return. No matter what I tried to do to rectify my situation, it was pointless.
If potential success was measured in water, God let me fill up my bathtub and then pulled the plug in April 1994. I had dropped out of the Aerospace Engineering program at Texas A&M University, because of two reasons: I found out I was two inches too tall for the Space Shuttle, and I ran out of money. So I moved back to San Antonio for a few months, ultimately had to abandon everything and hopped on an Amtrak train bound for Daytona Beach, FL.
My life changed dramatically: Thursday Thermodynamics Pizza Night became Wet T-Shirt Contest at Razzles. Gone were the dreams of terraforming the surface of Mars into a hospitable ecosystem and replaced by large quantities of beer, shitty cover bands, lame raves in Orlando, and menial jobs.
I was employed at Aunt Catfish Restaurant on the Halifax River as a waiter. Tourist loved the overpriced fried crap, and waited up to three hours in the Florida sun for the experience of eating coconut shrimp and cornbread and the privilege of drinking super sweet tea out of Mason jars. To top off my misery, I had to introduce myself as Cousin Dan, because they wanted everyone to believe that we were all relatives of ole Aunt Catfish.
The only thing going for me was that I owned a baby blue 80’ Ford Mustang with cobra decals, spokes and a leather LeBra on the headlights and was making payments on a black 84’ Chevy Camaro. My credit was so horrible that I couldn’t even get a landline telephone in my name. I didn’t have any savings, so I was forced to get a $3,000 loan for the Camaro through a cutthroat used car dealer that required a payment of $75 in cash every Friday or he would repossess the vehicle. My bitchin’ Camaro would have been a lot cooler if it had a working stereo, an air conditioner, and I had a flux capacitor and an 18 gigawatt generator to transport me back to 1984 when a Camaro was “cool”.
The 80’ Mustang on the other hand was never hip, but it was free. My Uncle Howie had used it for years, handed it down to my cousin Marty, and finally bequeathed to me. Since we lived on A1A (a.k.a. Vanilla Ice’s “Beach front avenue”), the Atlantic’s salt air had corroded the exhaust manifold. The engine sounded like a throaty Harley Davidson chopper. I had to stop driving it because every time my brother Chris, and I drove across the Dunlawton Bridge to Aunt Catshit, we would get high as a kite from the carbon monoxide fumes. I parked it on our front lawn, handed Chris the keys, and wished him luck.
I had to carry full insurance on the Camaro, so I dropped the state required liability coverage for The Stang, assuming my little brother would take care of it, which he didn’t and left it untouched in the front lawn of our beach house. In the state of Florida, not having insurance can guarantee the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles in Tallahassee will revoke your license. But as I mentioned earlier, I never read my mail. I had no idea I was driving around town with a suspended license.
One day, a buddy and I were pulled over by a courteous, female police officer a half mile from my house. We were coming back from 7-11™ with a six pack of Icehouse®, Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey® and a can of Kodiak® chewing tobacco. She politely told us that my passenger headlight was out, and asked me for my license, insurance, and registration. She came back to the car and asked me if I knew that my license was revoked. Perhaps she saw the sincere shock and confusion in my face by this information. Since we were only 2,000 feet from my house, she let my friend drive and I told me to take care of this immediately.
When I got back to the crib, I decided to start reading the mountain of mail that I thought would magically take care of itself. It was extremely depressing to finally put an exact figure on what I owed. Each letter dug me deeper into a pit of poverty. Discovery Card, Firestone, Montgomery Wards, Exxon, American Express, AT&T,…it just went on and on. Finally, I found a dusty correspondence from the DMV postdated from six months prior. I opened it and discovered my license had been suspended and I was given thirty days to prove that I had the minimum liability insurance coverage required by state law. I kept reading the mound of unread letters, looking for any “official” scary looking envelopes—I found four more. Two were from Florida DMV, one from The Courts of Daytona Beach Municipality, and the last one was from Daytona Beach Shores Police Department. Not good.
I felt like I had discovered a shoebox of letters from my long lost father that some bastard had maliciously withheld. Unfortunately, that bastard was me. Everyone thought I’d become a rocket scientist for NASA, now I was an uneducated fucking waiter in thousands of dollars in debt.
Each letter I read was more of a demand and less of a warning. It appeared they gave me a chance to pay a small fine and fix the problem, but since I hadn’t resolved it, they had elevated it to Code Red and revoked my license. They set up a court day, which I never showed up to. I guess that’s a big deal, because they issued a bench warrant for my arrest for “Failure to Appear”. I really feel they overreacted. I could understand if it was a big wedding, and the poor prosecuting attorney or bride would be standing there in tears just shrugging his or her shoulders constantly looking at the judge or minister and then self-consciously back at the courtroom entrance hoping I’ll be dashing in with sweat pouring down my apologetic face. But it wasn’t a wedding; just go to the next case.
What the fuck is the big deal? So I didn’t have insurance on a car that nobody drives—who cares? Well, I’ll tell you right now. They cared. They cared a lot.
The next week was shitty: I now had to walk across the Dunlawton Bridge in the balmy Florida heat, so I could be Cousin Dan. I tried to get my license back without going to the police station, but it couldn’t be done. That Friday, from nine am to five pm, I bounced back and forth between the DMV and the courthouse without success. After eight hours of bureaucratic bullshit, I decided I needed a night of drinking to remedy my aggravation. So my cousin Marty and I went to Razzles, the proclaimed hottest night club in the city. Since I couldn’t drive, I gave the keys to my Camaro to Marty. Normally, I always drove, but for obvious reasons, I couldn’t. We drank bottle after bottle of Icehouse®. For some reason, that was my beer of choice in 1995. It seemed sophisticated, yet rugged. Now it seems cheap, yet shitty.
Marty had drunk eleven beers and two shots of Jägermeister® to my seven beers and one shot of Goldschläger®. His toxin tolerance had always been higher than mine. I had the drug tolerance of Sandra Dee in the beginning of the movie of Grease. Since we blew all our money on booze, we couldn’t afford a taxi, not to mention our car would be towed in the morning if we left it over night.
So logically, we decided it would be best if Marty drove since his license wasn’t revoked. We stumbled to the parking lot and climbed into the car. In my head I told Marty to be careful because he was renowned for driving recklessly, but I was so drunk and about to throw up that it came out as, “Let’s get the fuck out of here (hic-cup)”.
He put it in reverse, braced his hand behind my seat, slammed on the accelerator and turned the wheel to the right. I lurched forward and hit my head on the dashboard. He devilishly grinned and stomped on the brake. I flew back to my seat and then went forward again, but I stopped my body with both of my arms. Again, my brain told Marty to be cautious because there were a lot of cops out that night, but it came out, “(belch) Hit it.”
We were only five miles from our house on A1A. Since we were going 60 miles an hour, it would have only taken us five minutes, however, the speed limit was 35 miles per hour. I started to hear sirens, so I looked in the rearview mirror and thought it was a team of fire trucks going to a high-rise apartment building on the beach. I started to scream, “Pull over, pull over, there’s a fire.” Marty slowed down and veered to the right to let them pass.
Except the fire trucks didn’t go by. Instead cop cars surrounded my Camaro and forced us to stop. Both our car doors opened at the same time, and several cops materialized on each side with high-powered MagLites aimed at our retinas. It felt like my corneas were melting. All the commotion was making me queasy. One officer took Marty’s license and went back to his patrol car. About five minutes later, he came back and ripped Marty out of the driver’s seat. He had some prior felony charge and this offense apparently broke his parole agreement. They demanded mine as well—I told them it wasn’t necessary because I wasn’t driving and that it was suspended. They told me to, “Shut the fuck up” and hand over my license. So I did.
Well, remember that “Failure to Appear” bench warrant thingy. Once they ran my license, it came back with a warrant for my arrest. Somehow, their system couldn’t differentiate between me being a rapist, my lack of insurance, or if I had illegally ripped off a mattress tag. For all they know, I could be a serial killer.
When they came back to the car, an officer snarled, “Well, looky here boys, looks like we got a goddamned fugitive from justice. Step out of the car, son.”
I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Confused I said, “No, I’m not a criminal. My license is just…”
At that point, he became enraged, grabbed me by my arm and pulled me out of the car. I could still taste the hot, cinnamon Goldschläger® and felt the Icehouse® swish around in my stomach. My mind raced back to my 2nd grade science project when I made a papier-mâché volcano: vinegar, baking soda, and little orange food coloring. Except this time, I was Mount Vesuvius and Officer Pompeii was going to get hit with my lava. He kept shaking me and telling me to stand up. Like carbonated soda, I reached the threshold of containment. I began to puke on the cop, straight from the scene from The Exorcist. I sprayed him with $47 worth of alcohol. I started at his waist and worked my way down to the tip of his shoe.
He screamed, “You better not have AIDS, boy!”
Disgusted, he turned me around and threw me to the hard-packed ground. He stepped on my back and roughly put handcuffs on me. The other officers were laughing, while Marty cheered me on. Bad move for him. An officer pushed him head first into the back of a squad car. Two different officers grabbed me and put me in the same car with my cousin. Once in, I passed out.
What I awoke to was the one of most disturbing things that I have experienced in my life. A goober police officer who looked like Ned Flanders from The Simpsons held my wrist with his left hand and was driving his fingernail of his right index finger into the flesh beneath MY index finger on MY right hand.
I yelled, “FUCK! OW!! What the fuck are you doing?”
I snatched my arm away and noticed I didn’t have my shirt on. I heard my cousin behind me inside a cell slur out, “They’ve been pinchin’ your nipples, tryin’ to keep you awake, the sick bastards.”
Officer Flanders went over to his cell and said, “Shut up, boy. We’ll take your boxers from you if don’t shut your monkey mouth,” and raked his nightstick across the bars.
“You’ve been puking since you got here. We didn’t want you to die in your sleep, so we’ve had to keep you awake.”
Rubbing my sore nipples, I said “Have you ever heard of smelling salts?”
I still couldn’t understand why I was in jail. I never had any trouble with authority. In fact, throughout my entire academic career, I had only visited the principal’s office three times in my life.
My first time was in 2nd grade at lunch, when I got spanked by a sadistic, draconian principal, who thought he was Shaft, because I had dropped my K.I.S.S. Thermos® which leaked all my Tropical Punch Kool-Aid; forcing me to go to the drinking fountain without asking for permission. I turned the white handle and my parched pallet enjoyed the refreshing arc of H2O. While standing there lapping the water like a thirsty little puppy, Principal Marquis de Sade pulled a paddle riddled with holes for less air resistance to deliver more speed and produce higher momentum to punish four to ten year olds for lack of obedience. He blasted three swats to my ass in less than second. He turned me around and shouted, “That will make you think twice before getting up and drinking water!” I was speechless. Terrified. I wanted to cry, but I was afraid he would slap my face and call me a baby. So I decided to piss my pants instead, like a man. The lunch room exploded with laughter and he spanked me again for peeing.
That same year at a different school, I pissed my pants again in P.E. while hula hooping and had to go and get a new pair of jeans from the vice principal.
My final and most recent episode, I was sent home my senior year at Robert E. Lee High School by idiot Vice Principal Valdez because my shorts were three inches above regulation. I pleaded with him to let me take my calculus test first, then go change, but he denied my request. Obviously, my GPA was not as important as properly-covered femurs.
Since I was an Air Force reservist at the time, I tried to reason with them and show them I also sucked Uncle Sam’s cock and said, “I’m in the Air Force. Have you guys ever served? I just got transferred from Kelly AFB, I was an air transportation specialist, now I’m at Patrick in Cocoa Beach with the 301st Search and Rescue Squadron. Call my unit. Talk to my First Sergent. Hell, I got Airman of the Year.”
They couldn’t care less and said, “Just shut up, Puke Boy, we’re taking you to county.”At least I had graduated from Piss Boy to Puke Boy.
About three in the morning, they let me put my shirt back on. Then they handcuffed our wrists behind our backs and led my cousin and me outside to a cruiser. We didn’t know where we were exactly, but it was a hot and muggy and I smelt salt in the air so we knew we were still on beachside. The two weasel cops signed us over to the new trooper and pushed us into the backseat.
Since belts can be used as weapons, they had taken Marty’s away. He was wearing extremely wide oversized pair of JNCO jeans, which were barely in style. Without a belt, they were at his ankles and revealing his purple, “Yabba-Dabba-Doo” Fred Flintstone boxer shorts.
We were both writhing in pain from having our body weight against our pinned back arms. Being 6’6” with disproportionably long legs, I had to do something. So I slid my wrists down, hooked them underneath my feet, and brought them to my chest. What a difference. I stretched back and forth and cracked my neck. It was a small victory in a shitty situation. I felt like Anne Frank enjoying a jam sandwich. I wasn’t free, but damn this jam sandwich tasted like a dream. I wanted to share my contortion technique with Marty so he could benefit from my discovery.
Since his bulky JNCOs were at his ankles we couldn’t get his wrists underneath. I guess we were making a lot of noise because the officer told asked us what we were doing.
I politely replied, “Just getting comfortable.”
He saw my hands were free in the rear view mirror and his eyes bulged out like the Run Away Bride from Georgia. He slammed on the brakes and our heads slammed forward. “Who do you think you are—goddamn Houdini? Tryin’ to escape, that’s a felony offense!”
“I’m not trying to escape,” I said, “I’ll put them back if you want.”
He finally settled down and we drove to the Volusia County Correctional Institution. Scenes from Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor flashed in my head. I prayed that our cellmate would be like Cheeseburger, an intimidating exterior with a teddy bear heart.
We had to relinquish all our valuables, which were annotated. Nicotine products were confiscated and thrown away. Marty had a pack of Marlboro Light® and I had a can of Kodiak®.
We then joined ranks with ten other “criminals”. Single file, heel to toe we marched raggedly one at a time into an office and were told to undress. My flaccid penis shriveled to the size of a tator tot. They manifested your clothes to your list of items and issued you an orange jumpsuit, flip-flops, a comb, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. In most rap videos you see a young hip-hop artists sporting a fly, loose-fitting suit, they’re tailored for the average 5’11’ thug not a seven-foot, albino Ethiopian.
I needed a custom job. Perhaps an XXLT, but they gave me a Medium. Essentially, it was an orange bathing suit from the 20s. A tight-fitting, one-piece pair of knickers that exposed my calves and gave the appearance of me smuggling golf balls in the groin region. Also, it accentuated my normally flat buttocks into an Orange Dreamcicle®. I think this was my punishment for puking on the cop and trying to escape. After dealing with city cops, I had come to terms with the apathetic nature of my captors and nonchalantly said, “Would you mind if I had a bigger size? This one is a little tight?”
The officer didn’t even look up from his paperwork and said, “Why? You want to look pretty for the ladies?”
“No, this will be fine. I’m sure everyone will enjoy it. Thank you. It must be really hard living your life with such a little dick.”
Not the wisest comeback. It was somewhat of a blur after that. Things went downhill from there. They separated Marty and I and put me in a holding cell with some more drunk kids.
Now I had no idea what time it was. I was really hungry and was surprised when they delivered brown bags containing bologna and cheese on Wonder Bread and rotten apple. However, they had miscounted the prisoners and shorted us by one. I wasn’t quick enough to snag a bag, so I called a guard over to tell him they made a mistake. To my great fortune, it was Officer Little Dick and he just sneered at me and turned his back.
I dosed in and out of sleep on the bench in the corner as my stomach growled. Hours later, we were escorted out of the holding cell and told we were being assigned to Cell Block Ten. Fuck. This was it. My innocence would soon be gone. I tried to replay my crappy Taikwondo moves in my head, but I had to drop out at yellow belt because I ran out of money. My self-defense only worked if they grabbed the left lapel of my jacket with their right hand. My flip-flops were especially loud and my orange jumpsuit was riding up my ass. I clutched my toothbrush and vowed I would gouge out the eyeball of any dumb motherfucker who tried to mess with me.
When we arrived at Cell Block Ten, it was filled with a couple dozen tables with newspapers and televisions suspended from the walls. Sunlight bathed the area from white portholes near the ceiling. Expecting the worse, I was surprised to see more now-sobered people like me staring into the distant in their own insular world. I released my Kung-Fu Grip off my toothbrush, found my bunk, and went to sleep.
Marty finally found me and shook me violently, “Wake up, dumbass! They’ve been calling your name for the last ten minutes. Someone bailed you out.”
“Me. Who? Who knows I’m in here? I just want to sleep.”
“Get the fuck up! Go sleep at home.”
I rolled off my bed and got dizzy when the blood drained out of my head. Marty started to laugh when he saw my skintight body suit. “Shut up, dude. My head hurts,” I said.
I slowly walked to the exit door and a guard grabbed my arm. We went back to the receiving room and retrieved my belongings minus the can of Kodiak®. As I was filling out the final paperwork, I asked who bailed me out and how much was it? They told me that someone named Mr. Galbreath had dropped $500 bucks to set me free. I couldn’t place the name and then I realized it was the name on my paycheck. It was the owner of Aunt Catfish, the restaurant where I worked at. I crept outside and fortunately it wasn’t the owner but his son, Brandon.
He was really good-natured about the whole thing and said everybody was laughing about it back at the restaurant. No one could imagine Cousin Dan in prison. I laughed half-heartedly to make him feel comfortable. The air-conditioner felt wonderful in my face as I rested my head on the passenger window. I asked him why his father had bailed me out. “We need you to work section seven upstairs, and you’re the only one available who can handle it,” he said.I couldn’t fucking believe the only reason I was being bailed out was because they couldn’t fill a shift. God forbid, another fat fuck NASCAR fan doesn’t get his hush puppy and homemade cinnamon roll.
But I was just glad to be out so I said, “Great, can we swing by my place so I can shower and get something to eat?”
When we drove up to my house, I saw the reason for my night in hell. The baby blue 80’ Ford Mustang with cobra decals, spokes, and a leather LeBra on the headlights.
We should be proud of our legal system. They had righted a wrong. I was a criminal because I didn’t have insurance on an un-drivable car that was permanently parked.
God Bless America!
October 2nd, 1995 — stories
I was a horrible person in 1995. My sense of responsibility was non-existent. I laughed at every bill that arrived in the mail. The fate of the envelope was one of two possibilities: opened and thrown away or unopened and placed in a growing pile. My financial situation was comparable to a Baghdad chandelier maker during Desert Storm. I felt like a truck driver who had jack-knifed his 18-wheeler and the ass end of the trailer was facing 45 degrees from the cabin—a point of no return. No matter what I tried to do to rectify my situation, it was pointless.
If potential success was measured in water, God let me fill up my bathtub and then pulled the plug in April 1994. I had dropped out of the Aerospace Engineering program at Texas A&M University, because of two reasons: I found out I was two inches too tall for the Space Shuttle, and I ran out of money. So I moved back to San Antonio for a few months, ultimately had to abandon everything and hopped on an Amtrak train bound for Daytona Beach, FL.
My life changed dramatically: Thursday Thermodynamics Pizza Night became Wet T-Shirt Contest at Razzles. Gone were the dreams of terraforming the surface of Mars into a hospitable ecosystem and replaced by large quantities of beer, shitty cover bands, lame raves in Orlando, and menial jobs.
I was employed at Aunt Catfish Restaurant on the Halifax River as a waiter. Tourist loved the overpriced fried crap, and waited up to three hours in the Florida sun for the experience of eating coconut shrimp and cornbread and the privilege of drinking super sweet tea out of Mason jars. To top off my misery, I had to introduce myself as Cousin Dan, because they wanted everyone to believe that we were all relatives of ole Aunt Catfish.
The only thing going for me was that I owned a baby blue 80’ Ford Mustang with cobra decals, spokes and a leather LeBra on the headlights and was making payments on a black 84’ Chevy Camaro. My credit was so horrible that I couldn’t even get a landline telephone in my name. I didn’t have any savings, so I was forced to get a $3,000 loan for the Camaro through a cutthroat used car dealer that required a payment of $75 in cash every Friday or he would repossess the vehicle. My bitchin’ Camaro would have been a lot cooler if it had a working stereo, an air conditioner, and I had a flux capacitor and an 18 gigawatt generator to transport me back to 1984 when a Camaro was “cool”.
The 80’ Mustang on the other hand was never hip, but it was free. My Uncle Howie had used it for years, handed it down to my cousin Marty, and finally bequeathed to me. Since we lived on A1A (a.k.a. Vanilla Ice’s “Beach front avenue”), the Atlantic’s salt air had corroded the exhaust manifold. The engine sounded like a throaty Harley Davidson chopper. I had to stop driving it because every time my brother Chris, and I drove across the Dunlawton Bridge to Aunt Catshit, we would get high as a kite from the carbon monoxide fumes. I parked it on our front lawn, handed Chris the keys, and wished him luck.
I had to carry full insurance on the Camaro, so I dropped the state required liability coverage for The Stang, assuming my little brother would take care of it, which he didn’t and left it untouched in the front lawn of our beach house. In the state of Florida, not having insurance can guarantee the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles in Tallahassee will revoke your license. But as I mentioned earlier, I never read my mail. I had no idea I was driving around town with a suspended license.
One day, a buddy and I were pulled over by a courteous, female police officer a half mile from my house. We were coming back from 7-11™ with a six pack of Icehouse®, Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey® and a can of Kodiak® chewing tobacco. She politely told us that my passenger headlight was out, and asked me for my license, insurance, and registration. She came back to the car and asked me if I knew that my license was revoked. Perhaps she saw the sincere shock and confusion in my face by this information. Since we were only 2,000 feet from my house, she let my friend drive and I told me to take care of this immediately.
When I got back to the crib, I decided to start reading the mountain of mail that I thought would magically take care of itself. It was extremely depressing to finally put an exact figure on what I owed. Each letter dug me deeper into a pit of poverty. Discovery Card, Firestone, Montgomery Wards, Exxon, American Express, AT&T,…it just went on and on. Finally, I found a dusty correspondence from the DMV postdated from six months prior. I opened it and discovered my license had been suspended and I was given thirty days to prove that I had the minimum liability insurance coverage required by state law. I kept reading the mound of unread letters, looking for any “official” scary looking envelopes—I found four more. Two were from Florida DMV, one from The Courts of Daytona Beach Municipality, and the last one was from Daytona Beach Shores Police Department. Not good.
I felt like I had discovered a shoebox of letters from my long lost father that some bastard had maliciously withheld. Unfortunately, that bastard was me. Everyone thought I’d become a rocket scientist for NASA, now I was an uneducated fucking waiter in thousands of dollars in debt.
Each letter I read was more of a demand and less of a warning. It appeared they gave me a chance to pay a small fine and fix the problem, but since I hadn’t resolved it, they had elevated it to Code Red and revoked my license. They set up a court day, which I never showed up to. I guess that’s a big deal, because they issued a bench warrant for my arrest for “Failure to Appear”. I really feel they overreacted. I could understand if it was a big wedding, and the poor prosecuting attorney or bride would be standing there in tears just shrugging his or her shoulders constantly looking at the judge or minister and then self-consciously back at the courtroom entrance hoping I’ll be dashing in with sweat pouring down my apologetic face. But it wasn’t a wedding; just go to the next case.
What the fuck is the big deal? So I didn’t have insurance on a car that nobody drives—who cares? Well, I’ll tell you right now. They cared. They cared a lot.
The next week was shitty: I now had to walk across the Dunlawton Bridge in the balmy Florida heat, so I could be Cousin Dan. I tried to get my license back without going to the police station, but it couldn’t be done. That Friday, from nine am to five pm, I bounced back and forth between the DMV and the courthouse without success. After eight hours of bureaucratic bullshit, I decided I needed a night of drinking to remedy my aggravation. So my cousin Marty and I went to Razzles, the proclaimed hottest night club in the city. Since I couldn’t drive, I gave the keys to my Camaro to Marty. Normally, I always drove, but for obvious reasons, I couldn’t. We drank bottle after bottle of Icehouse®. For some reason, that was my beer of choice in 1995. It seemed sophisticated, yet rugged. Now it seems cheap, yet shitty.
Marty had drunk eleven beers and two shots of Jägermeister® to my seven beers and one shot of Goldschläger®. His toxin tolerance had always been higher than mine. I had the drug tolerance of Sandra Dee in the beginning of the movie of Grease. Since we blew all our money on booze, we couldn’t afford a taxi, not to mention our car would be towed in the morning if we left it over night.
So logically, we decided it would be best if Marty drove since his license wasn’t revoked. We stumbled to the parking lot and climbed into the car. In my head I told Marty to be careful because he was renowned for driving recklessly, but I was so drunk and about to throw up that it came out as, “Let’s get the fuck out of here (hic-cup)”.
He put it in reverse, braced his hand behind my seat, slammed on the accelerator and turned the wheel to the right. I lurched forward and hit my head on the dashboard. He devilishly grinned and stomped on the brake. I flew back to my seat and then went forward again, but I stopped my body with both of my arms. Again, my brain told Marty to be cautious because there were a lot of cops out that night, but it came out, “(belch) Hit it.”
We were only five miles from our house on A1A. Since we were going 60 miles an hour, it would have only taken us five minutes, however, the speed limit was 35 miles per hour. I started to hear sirens, so I looked in the rearview mirror and thought it was a team of fire trucks going to a high-rise apartment building on the beach. I started to scream, “Pull over, pull over, there’s a fire.” Marty slowed down and veered to the right to let them pass.
Except the fire trucks didn’t go by. Instead cop cars surrounded my Camaro and forced us to stop. Both our car doors opened at the same time, and several cops materialized on each side with high-powered MagLites aimed at our retinas. It felt like my corneas were melting. All the commotion was making me queasy. One officer took Marty’s license and went back to his patrol car. About five minutes later, he came back and ripped Marty out of the driver’s seat. He had some prior felony charge and this offense apparently broke his parole agreement. They demanded mine as well—I told them it wasn’t necessary because I wasn’t driving and that it was suspended. They told me to, “Shut the fuck up” and hand over my license. So I did.
Well, remember that “Failure to Appear” bench warrant thingy. Once they ran my license, it came back with a warrant for my arrest. Somehow, their system couldn’t differentiate between me being a rapist, my lack of insurance, or if I had illegally ripped off a mattress tag. For all they know, I could be a serial killer.
When they came back to the car, an officer snarled, “Well, looky here boys, looks like we got a goddamned fugitive from justice. Step out of the car, son.”
I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Confused I said, “No, I’m not a criminal. My license is just…”
At that point, he became enraged, grabbed me by my arm and pulled me out of the car. I could still taste the hot, cinnamon Goldschläger® and felt the Icehouse® swish around in my stomach. My mind raced back to my 2nd grade science project when I made a papier-mâché volcano: vinegar, baking soda, and little orange food coloring. Except this time, I was Mount Vesuvius and Officer Pompeii was going to get hit with my lava. He kept shaking me and telling me to stand up. Like carbonated soda, I reached the threshold of containment. I began to puke on the cop, straight from the scene from The Exorcist. I sprayed him with $47 worth of alcohol. I started at his waist and worked my way down to the tip of his shoe.
He screamed, “You better not have AIDS, boy!”
Disgusted, he turned me around and threw me to the hard-packed ground. He stepped on my back and roughly put handcuffs on me. The other officers were laughing, while Marty cheered me on. Bad move for him. An officer pushed him head first into the back of a squad car. Two different officers grabbed me and put me in the same car with my cousin. Once in, I passed out.
What I awoke to was the one of most disturbing things that I have experienced in my life. A goober police officer who looked like Ned Flanders from The Simpsons held my wrist with his left hand and was driving his fingernail of his right index finger into the flesh beneath MY index finger on MY right hand.
I yelled, “FUCK! OW!! What the fuck are you doing?”
I snatched my arm away and noticed I didn’t have my shirt on. I heard my cousin behind me inside a cell slur out, “They’ve been pinchin’ your nipples, tryin’ to keep you awake, the sick bastards.”
Officer Flanders went over to his cell and said, “Shut up, boy. We’ll take your boxers from you if don’t shut your monkey mouth,” and raked his nightstick across the bars.
“You’ve been puking since you got here. We didn’t want you to die in your sleep, so we’ve had to keep you awake.”
Rubbing my sore nipples, I said “Have you ever heard of smelling salts?”
I still couldn’t understand why I was in jail. I never had any trouble with authority. In fact, throughout my entire academic career, I had only visited the principal’s office three times in my life.
My first time was in 2nd grade at lunch, when I got spanked by a sadistic, draconian principal, who thought he was Shaft, because I had dropped my K.I.S.S. Thermos® which leaked all my Tropical Punch Kool-Aid; forcing me to go to the drinking fountain without asking for permission. I turned the white handle and my parched pallet enjoyed the refreshing arc of H2O. While standing there lapping the water like a thirsty little puppy, Principal Marquis de Sade pulled a paddle riddled with holes for less air resistance to deliver more speed and produce higher momentum to punish four to ten year olds for lack of obedience. He blasted three swats to my ass in less than second. He turned me around and shouted, “That will make you think twice before getting up and drinking water!” I was speechless. Terrified. I wanted to cry, but I was afraid he would slap my face and call me a baby. So I decided to piss my pants instead, like a man. The lunch room exploded with laughter and he spanked me again for peeing.
That same year at a different school, I pissed my pants again in P.E. while hula hooping and had to go and get a new pair of jeans from the vice principal.
My final and most recent episode, I was sent home my senior year at Robert E. Lee High School by idiot Vice Principal Valdez because my shorts were three inches above regulation. I pleaded with him to let me take my calculus test first, then go change, but he denied my request. Obviously, my GPA was not as important as properly-covered femurs.
Since I was an Air Force reservist at the time, I tried to reason with them and show them I also sucked Uncle Sam’s cock and said, “I’m in the Air Force. Have you guys ever served? I just got transferred from Kelly AFB, I was an air transportation specialist, now I’m at Patrick in Cocoa Beach with the 301st Search and Rescue Squadron. Call my unit. Talk to my First Sergent. Hell, I got Airman of the Year.”
They couldn’t care less and said, “Just shut up, Puke Boy, we’re taking you to county.”At least I had graduated from Piss Boy to Puke Boy.
About three in the morning, they let me put my shirt back on. Then they handcuffed our wrists behind our backs and led my cousin and me outside to a cruiser. We didn’t know where we were exactly, but it was a hot and muggy and I smelt salt in the air so we knew we were still on beachside. The two weasel cops signed us over to the new trooper and pushed us into the backseat.
Since belts can be used as weapons, they had taken Marty’s away. He was wearing extremely wide oversized pair of JNCO jeans, which were barely in style. Without a belt, they were at his ankles and revealing his purple, “Yabba-Dabba-Doo” Fred Flintstone boxer shorts.
We were both writhing in pain from having our body weight against our pinned back arms. Being 6’6” with disproportionably long legs, I had to do something. So I slid my wrists down, hooked them underneath my feet, and brought them to my chest. What a difference. I stretched back and forth and cracked my neck. It was a small victory in a shitty situation. I felt like Anne Frank enjoying a jam sandwich. I wasn’t free, but damn this jam sandwich tasted like a dream. I wanted to share my contortion technique with Marty so he could benefit from my discovery.
Since his bulky JNCOs were at his ankles we couldn’t get his wrists underneath. I guess we were making a lot of noise because the officer told asked us what we were doing.
I politely replied, “Just getting comfortable.”
He saw my hands were free in the rear view mirror and his eyes bulged out like the Run Away Bride from Georgia. He slammed on the brakes and our heads slammed forward. “Who do you think you are—goddamn Houdini? Tryin’ to escape, that’s a felony offense!”
“I’m not trying to escape,” I said, “I’ll put them back if you want.”
He finally settled down and we drove to the Volusia County Correctional Institution. Scenes from Stir Crazy with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor flashed in my head. I prayed that our cellmate would be like Cheeseburger, an intimidating exterior with a teddy bear heart.
We had to relinquish all our valuables, which were annotated. Nicotine products were confiscated and thrown away. Marty had a pack of Marlboro Light® and I had a can of Kodiak®.
We then joined ranks with ten other “criminals”. Single file, heel to toe we marched raggedly one at a time into an office and were told to undress. My flaccid penis shriveled to the size of a tator tot. They manifested your clothes to your list of items and issued you an orange jumpsuit, flip-flops, a comb, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. In most rap videos you see a young hip-hop artists sporting a fly, loose-fitting suit, they’re tailored for the average 5’11’ thug not a seven-foot, albino Ethiopian.
I needed a custom job. Perhaps an XXLT, but they gave me a Medium. Essentially, it was an orange bathing suit from the 20s. A tight-fitting, one-piece pair of knickers that exposed my calves and gave the appearance of me smuggling golf balls in the groin region. Also, it accentuated my normally flat buttocks into an Orange Dreamcicle®. I think this was my punishment for puking on the cop and trying to escape. After dealing with city cops, I had come to terms with the apathetic nature of my captors and nonchalantly said, “Would you mind if I had a bigger size? This one is a little tight?”
The officer didn’t even look up from his paperwork and said, “Why? You want to look pretty for the ladies?”
“No, this will be fine. I’m sure everyone will enjoy it. Thank you. It must be really hard living your life with such a little dick.”
Not the wisest comeback. It was somewhat of a blur after that. Things went downhill from there. They separated Marty and I and put me in a holding cell with some more drunk kids.
Now I had no idea what time it was. I was really hungry and was surprised when they delivered brown bags containing bologna and cheese on Wonder Bread and rotten apple. However, they had miscounted the prisoners and shorted us by one. I wasn’t quick enough to snag a bag, so I called a guard over to tell him they made a mistake. To my great fortune, it was Officer Little Dick and he just sneered at me and turned his back.
I dosed in and out of sleep on the bench in the corner as my stomach growled. Hours later, we were escorted out of the holding cell and told we were being assigned to Cell Block Ten. Fuck. This was it. My innocence would soon be gone. I tried to replay my crappy Taikwondo moves in my head, but I had to drop out at yellow belt because I ran out of money. My self-defense only worked if they grabbed the left lapel of my jacket with their right hand. My flip-flops were especially loud and my orange jumpsuit was riding up my ass. I clutched my toothbrush and vowed I would gouge out the eyeball of any dumb motherfucker who tried to mess with me.
When we arrived at Cell Block Ten, it was filled with a couple dozen tables with newspapers and televisions suspended from the walls. Sunlight bathed the area from white portholes near the ceiling. Expecting the worse, I was surprised to see more now-sobered people like me staring into the distant in their own insular world. I released my Kung-Fu Grip off my toothbrush, found my bunk, and went to sleep.
Marty finally found me and shook me violently, “Wake up, dumbass! They’ve been calling your name for the last ten minutes. Someone bailed you out.”
“Me. Who? Who knows I’m in here? I just want to sleep.”
“Get the fuck up! Go sleep at home.”
I rolled off my bed and got dizzy when the blood drained out of my head. Marty started to laugh when he saw my skintight body suit. “Shut up, dude. My head hurts,” I said.
I slowly walked to the exit door and a guard grabbed my arm. We went back to the receiving room and retrieved my belongings minus the can of Kodiak®. As I was filling out the final paperwork, I asked who bailed me out and how much was it? They told me that someone named Mr. Galbreath had dropped $500 bucks to set me free. I couldn’t place the name and then I realized it was the name on my paycheck. It was the owner of Aunt Catfish, the restaurant where I worked at. I crept outside and fortunately it wasn’t the owner but his son, Brandon.
He was really good-natured about the whole thing and said everybody was laughing about it back at the restaurant. No one could imagine Cousin Dan in prison. I laughed half-heartedly to make him feel comfortable. The air-conditioner felt wonderful in my face as I rested my head on the passenger window. I asked him why his father had bailed me out. “We need you to work section seven upstairs, and you’re the only one available who can handle it,” he said.I couldn’t fucking believe the only reason I was being bailed out was because they couldn’t fill a shift. God forbid, another fat fuck NASCAR fan doesn’t get his hush puppy and homemade cinnamon roll.
But I was just glad to be out so I said, “Great, can we swing by my place so I can shower and get something to eat?”
When we drove up to my house, I saw the reason for my night in hell. The baby blue 80’ Ford Mustang with cobra decals, spokes, and a leather LeBra on the headlights.
We should be proud of our legal system. They had righted a wrong. I was a criminal because I didn’t have insurance on an un-drivable car that was permanently parked.
God Bless America!
