But the fucking bike was gone.
I loved that bike. I dream about it now. Speeding down the hills with trees flashing by. When I had it the tires were always going flat. I live at the top of a fucking mountain and I fucked up my knees and hips grinding back home from work. But still. I loved that bike. The White Fences were the big gang on her block, the girl told me. They steal a lot of bikes. Kidnap people’s dogs for ransom. I called the cops. Yeah, it could have been the Whites, the guy said. Could have been the Whites that stole your bike. I pictured the other cops behind him listening, without context. Thinking: what the fuck?
After the yard sale I went into Hollywood to file a police report. So I can call them when I find it in a pawn shop. Which I fucking won’t, it’s gone. But I keep looking. Like a mother who lost her child. I can’t stop thinking about it. My only comfort is to search uselessly. Driving the streets around the girl’s house slow, eyefucking everyone. Someone’s gonna beat my ass.
There was a girl in front of me in line at the police station. She had the best ass I’ve ever seen. Little daisy dukes, prefect orbs of meat hanging out the bottom. She was a victim of ATM fraud, she was saying. The cop looked like an owl. He kept explaining that she needed to call the bank. Just, call Wells Fargo. Just tell them what you told me. Say it in the same tone. I believe you. If you say it emphatically like that, the way you’re saying it now, the bank will too. She’d stop. Tell the story again. My friend pulled me out of the house and she was alone in my room and my information is in the top drawer there. It was her. I don’t know her name, just her nickname. Officer Owl was frustrated with her. Ma’am, I can’t arrest a person just because she was in your house. To his right was Officer Sanchez, talking on the phone. I kept trying to make eye contact with Sanchez. To say: is that not the best ass you have ever seen? His eyes never left his computer. Another cop came in . Six foot eight black guy. Here would be an ally. I shot him the eyes. Is this not, my countenance asked, the best ass you have ever seen? Hightower didn’t give a shit either. What do these cops see to ignore an ass like that.
There was a girl drinking her coffee on the stoop, when I came out to find it gone. She was gorgeous. Perfect. I’m so sorry, she said. If I see it, I’ll get in touch. Who were you staying with? I uh… shit. Apartment five? I didn’t know her name. I only know her internet name, I said. She laughed. I had to explain to my host that I had outed her. Your neighbor thinks you’re a whore now. Well shit, she said. Talk about a whore, you oughta see the men she has over. I made a mental note.
The bike is an all matte black Electra beach cruiser with subtle olive drab stripes on the sides, if you ever see one. Serial number EAC3A00464. If you find it I will give you a cash reward. If you see it on the street, if you see her, being abused by these miscreants, shoot me an email. It was stolen from North Kingsley Drive, near Santa Monica Boulevard. Locked up in a gated yard.
It’s just a piece of metal but it meant something to me. My buddy bought it as a gift. Old friend from up north, where I used to work part time and ride my beach cruiser around all day with my shirt off. Whales breaching in the bay beside me. It meant something. Reminded me of days when I was free. Now some cholo is bunny hopping her off a high curb, laughing at the jerkoff he got one over on. The streets are full of thugs. You will lose everything that isn’t nailed down. God damn Road Warrior universe out there with these dirtbags, their pregnant stretch pants sharpie eyebrow girlfriends, their un-neutered pit bulls chained to rusted out washing machines, their back yards full of stolen goods and roosters. Or who knows. I have no idea who took it. I shouldn’t stereotype. But still.
Fucking Whites, man.
Hangover Diary: Rocktober
Fuck. God damn man. Still hung over. 2 days later. I did cocaine and took valiums and drank a fifth of brandy. OK. It will be fine. Tomorrow you will feel better. Tomorrow. Go to work. Have a productive day. It’s cold, feels like winter, it’s sixty eight motherfucking degrees. Jesus Christ man, you have to stop getting drunk, doing hard drugs. You have to stop this shit. Eat a fucking salad and perform vigorous compound exercises. Read quality literature, watch birds in the forest. Clean your motherfucking act up and be a functioning human being. This is what happens. This is why people have to have kids. To have something to do all fucking day. Keep the thing from squirting roach spray in its gullet. Run around making sure he doesn’t jam his finger in the outlet. Or your wife does that, I guess. You go to work. Sit on a train in a suit and a stupid hat and read the financial papers. Martini at the end of the day, golf on weekends. Anyone under 40, your concept of normal life is from TV. A dead dream.
The other guy stole the second gram. I was pissed at the time. Now I think: good. I hope it’s really gone. Never again with that shit. From now on, fruits and vegetables. A nice beef broth. Put me in one of those FDR wheelchairs with the plaid blanket and park me in front of an old timey radio. Jesus Christ. I am too old for this. I’m too old for drugs, liquor and pussy. But what else is there. Jesus. Gardening, I don’t know.
Hold it together. Get in the car. Some nice NPR playing. It’s the stupid mid morning show they have, with “A. Martinez” or “Kye Risdall” or whoeverthefuck, they all sound the same. Milquetoast yuppies from Brown University. Their stupid bullshit show about business and finance. The Dow is up seventeen points, on news that congress is close to reaching a deal. Seventeen points out of fifteen fucking thousand. What use is this to anybody. “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing” plays saucily on the piano, since the NASDAQ is down. News of a disappointing IPO from a company that helps you send dick pics. Didn’t find enough suckers. Money you don’t have is being made by people you don’t give a shit about. Switch to music.
The classic rock stations are playing a cut from the first Boston album, something by the Steve Miller Band, something by Styx. It is Rocktober. Every single person in every single car on the freeway would be a million times happier if you loaded up some AC/DC you dumb sacks of shit. On the AM dial it’s sports or Rush Limbaugh. Ladies and Gentleman, the LIBERALS in this country… this is what happens when you do NOT have a real, conservative opposition. The LIBERALS in this country, well… I wouldn’t go so far as to say they EAT white infants. I would catch a lot of flak for that, ladies and gentlemen. I don’t want to go so far as to say that the NEGROES want to cannibalize your grandmother and shit on the bones they’ve picked clean while playing jungle drums and sacrificing your baby to an idol of a giant welfare check, but… Barack Obama, you have to understand, he has a plan here folks. You can get in a lot of trouble for saying something like Barack Obama HATES this country, that he worships the European Socialist model. That he wants to turn this great nation, ladies and gentlemen, into DENMARK, where black folks are encouraged to SKULLFUCK little blonde haired girls with their… ladies and gentlemen, the sheer girth of the, uh, the adult male members of this population, is, wow.
Back to NPR. Larry Mantle is having a roundtable with experts on Women in Tech. Why aren’t more women entering STEM fields, they ask. They have a point. There are more women talking about the lack of women in STEM fields than there are women in STEM fields. It is the sexist culture, they will conclude. Well no, I yell into my instrument console. Engineering is horrible. Coding is horrible. Math is horrible. Why aren’t more women hanging off a high steel beam shooting red hot rivets into a skyscraper frame — because it SUCKS to do that, I tell the windshield. Women are smart enough to avoid it. You think the Googleplex is all hipsters high fiving each other over ping pong– that building is a giant sweatshop of the unfuckable and it smells like unshowered fat people and farts. Women don’t want to work there. Me neither. Good for them. What then will they do in the coming knowledge economy, the panel contemplates. The same as the rest of us. Watch as the jobs are shipped to India. You want to talk about a sexist culture, by the way, go climb onto your husband’s burning corpse, I tell my glove box. A 22 year old tells an anecdote. A male manager didn’t like her code once. Mantle burbles sympathetically.