“My mind is a machine gun, my body is the bullets, and the audience is the target!” —
“My lifestyle pretty much consists of what you see: I got a pair of pants, one jacket, a shirt; whatever can fit into a paper bag. I’m the type of person who has to be able to get out of town quick,” one said.
“I got a wild soul that’s too confined in this life,” another said. The fat motherfucker lay down and sang the next three songs in a semi-conscious state.
Seth and I left and went to a nearby convenience store. “What would happen if a girl tried to cut herself onstage?”
“The crowd would go crazy — they would try to stop her.”
We walk outside to where it had started to rain. What if she killed herself on stage?
We can no longer pass over bridges, only under them. The clerk behind the register was obviously wearing a wig and a large fake beard. I guess if you’re on the run you still have to make a paycheck.
We tried to rob him. He grew frustrated and threw down his disguise. “We’re not your enemies — we’re just like you! I don’t give a shit about this place. I’m just as predisposed to pulling some kind of crap like this on my own. And I do! I don’t give a fuck. I tell my friends to pull up to the back and say ‘Load it up with whatever the fuck you want.’ Just the other day I stole from the 7-Eleven up on Lancaster. Don’t give a fuck!”
“Fuck you, man. Just keep talking. You hate me and I hate you.”
Poised, coffee in hand. The world at large can go fuck itself… coffee fills my mind with thoughts of escape. A scattering of dead leaves loosened their way to the ground with the memory of one day last fall as I sat out in front of a flattened patch of ivy and hay where our trailer used to be hitched on the outskirts of Eugene, deep in the forest. I had already lived there with Seth for a few months, surviving off crumpled tins of white noodles, doggy bags he brought me from the restaurant. It seemed like whenever I came back home I would find him fucking around with the trailer — trying to patch holes or hook up some hose or other — until that one day when I walked up and the trailer was just gone. All I came upon was some vaguely reminiscent place in the woods. Some dude several yards up the gravel road approaching me with a huge sleepy hound dog on a chain, yelling at me to get away and then starting to chase me. I ran away with one last noodle in my mouth like a bird. The next thing I recalled was waking up in a strange man’s bed, maybe in the morning, with that smell that had taken over my life, like coffee burning on the stove. A sudden realization from far away shook me even more. From the window I watched a small, sharp-jointed day laborer pick a spot in front of Big Creek Lumber. I heard a man stirring and waking up next to me, nightmares causing his jerky fitfulness. I could dream his dream too, if I chose, complete with his perspective on the kids he knew who were fed up with the county system, kids in tight, smelly jeans and monkey boots who were delivered to his house on a weekly basis. One kid came back early in the morning with bruises from this killing. To our surprise there would be an article on him in the newspaper, a story about some guy who picked him up for work but actually took him up to live with the old dude’s secret family, a bunch of children fending for themselves up in the hills. But before the cops knew the whole story they had found a body at a storage facility next to the freeway. The trucker, who had lay there without help for so long he died of his wounds. Later the kids stupidly tried to beat their way through a room of caseworkers. They had got a pretty fucked idea of what they were up against so all anyone would admit to was the story about one kid throwing a handful of gravel in a guy’s face and the rest of them running for it.
It was as if Angel Father had visited me in the night with a reminder of my role that left me feeling hot, swollen with the crawling nausea of an all-over mosquito bite. I feared I would soon begin to rot. That spurred me on, all right.
Early one morning I sat at the edge of a truck bed in a maintenance yard in some green camo sunglasses I got at a Halloween store. Seth said stop clomping your feet against the bumper, “It’s making me crazy.” Instead we walked on the train tracks leaving a trail of beer cans and sweaty footprints. I sat outside and smoked while Seth bought a car for fifty dollars at a police auction. We drove back to the camp in this piece of shit Chevy Celebrity. He kept saying 50 bucks, 50 bucks, and all this bullshit about it only having 48,000 miles on it despite it being 18 years old. Nobody’s fuckin buying it but at the same time most were slowly crawling inside to go to sleep.
Rummaging around in the trunk Seth clicked into his Bird Mind. This whole car thing has made him more Bird than usual. He could be overwhelmed but also fuckin ruffled like an uptight parakeet. It starts when he gets a crazy gleam in his eye, they half-close like he’s going to sleep but instead he goes into a neurotic trance. That night while sitting on the hood of the car Seth pointed to his chest, “You can get away with anything if you’re wearing an apron.” He was very convincing because “it’s a proven fact,” people wearing aprons of regulation colors like red, blue, or green are beyond suspicion when walking up to a store, for example, and taking off with a couple plants or a case of water bottles. “Think about it: go to an elementary school, hang around the hallways in your apron. Did anybody care? Go to a motel, take all the brochures from the front desk, nod to the office person and leave. If there’s trouble, point to the apron and bail. See a golf cart? Jump in cuz you’re wearing an apron. Go to a busy intersection, put black bags over the parking meters, paint the curb white — no one will stop you cuz you’re wearing an apron.” He ran up to the Safeway entrance and came back with armfuls of flowering plants. He put some in the back seat of the Celebrity, others he just left on the hood. It was a repossessed car, in police storage for 16 years. The only residue of humanity was a heavy metal tape I found in the glove box. We drove it for three days then the alternator went. We left it in the Safeway parking lot after it wouldn’t start again and I use it to crash in when I’m tired.