Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The Wildnerness Years - Rental Cars

Looking back now if i was that guy's supervisor and he let me drive off the lot in a fat ass Crown Vic i would have fired him on the fucking spot... you see i had spent the previous few weeks sliding down an ever beautiful and treacherous slope of desperation, rampant boozing and copious drug use, in fact thinking back to the poor old man who drew the short straw and had to pick me up (because that's what their ad says they do) he must have been smirking at my wastedness or high on my fumes, i was oblivious to it all, i thought it was perfectly normal to be sitting shotgun in a minivan on my way to rent a car, the waves of booze emanating off of me like waves of heat shimmering off the sun, so potent you could actually see them and i just sat there and smiled and made a little small talk and tried to get my bearing and stop the world from spinning so much...

The office was in West Ocean City which is akin to left hind tit geographically speaking, hot and shitty and the wonderful ocean breeze nowhere to be fucking found, i sat in what felt like a small airplane hangar but was really one of those weird half-tubes of corrugated metal slapped on top of a few cinder blocks, i sat and watched the puke yellow and light blue walls move and breath and buck and bend, i smiled at the young man booking my auto, he stated there was a problem and i wondered whatever could it be? it couldn't be the gentleman if front of him with the long natty hair, pinned out eyes and reeking of Jagermeister could it? he said he needed to speak to someone and i smiled politely and asked if it would be alright if i stepped outside while he did? sure he said and gave a wink and i quickly made for the door where i immediately high-tailed it around the corner and began throwing up whatever i had been drinking the night before which judging by the smell, contents and color of the Pollock painting taking shape in the grass was Jager and beer and who knows what else, there was definitely no food involved and i'm quite sure my liver was none to happy and i realized i was still in the same clothes i had on from the night before and could feel the little, empty bag in my pocket containing the weak brown that had been my new favorite pal to hang with every few days, i spit and shook my head and nonchalantly as i could for a guy who just got done tossing his cookies, ambled towards and trash can and clandestinely tossed the bag in the garbage, after a quick inspection of course to make sure it was empty, then headed back inside...

It was at this point that the bright- eyed recent graduate of Salisbury State University came wandering back over beaming from ear to ear, it began to dawn on me that i looked like a skid row derelict and most likely smelled like one as well as the temp and humidity picked up and i began to sweat and realize that there was more than a hint of boozevomit in my aura, luckily this kid was undaunted and must have really wanted to rent this car and score a commission or some such shit cuz he looks at me and explains that they didn't have the mid-sized sedan that i was looking for but because they didn't have such a vehicle on site that he had given me a free upgrade and would a Crown Vic be alright, i almost burst out laughing but didn't want to risk puking in my lap, i felt the sweat dripping down my back and my ass crack and forming stains around my armpits and smiled, saying sure that would be just fine... it wasn't until we were out inspecting the car with his co-worker that my boy began to get the feeling something was amiss, i believe his co-worker, who was looking at me in what one would call a horrified manner, was whispering to him that the aroma coming from my direction was not after-shave and that he was about to let someone who still smelled legally drunk and most likely under the influence of narcotics drive off the lot in a rather new Crown Vic... another five minutes and i smiled as i took the keys from his hand, opened the door of the car, rolled the windows down and cranked the AC up and headed back over the Rt. 50 bridge...

So as our hero rolled back over the Rt. 50 Bridge and towards that cesspool of downtown OCMD we might ask ourselves as David Byrne once did, how did we get here? and the honest answer would be i don't fucking know but i did know, sometimes late in the summer exhausted and staring at the ceiling and listening to the gulls and the traffic and the random drunks screaming for their mothers it would come creeping in, this life was a fucking mess at the moment but that didn't seem to phase me, shit turns you know but at the moment? well it was a fucking mess, after dropping out of grad school and at one point being down to my last four bucks, finding out the building i was living in was condemned, having numb-nut neighbors attracting the attention of John Q. Law, which wasn't all that hard to attract with a bunch of over-zealous work study criminal justice majors all with painful hard-ons to kick ass and almost giddy to use their clubs-pepper spray-handcuffs-sucker punches on any summer local they could collar, a relationship falling apart, a cat getting lost (and then found after a 16 hour work day), one concussion, a cast of roommates doing their best to make sure i never spoke to them again, hell it was damn near the perfect plate of shit sandwiches, working like mad just to get my head above water, so even though the pad was paid up until Labor Day i jumped at the chance to move down to 2nd St. near the bay just for some fucking sanity, even if i had to pay rent again...

But let's not start the violins just yet, you see that move was brilliant and refreshing, it was a bit of a fresh start, i knew i wouldn't be there long but i had a room and it was quiet, i worked with the new roomie and he liked to get as fucked up as i did, i had spent most of the summer gobbling acid and drinking and smoking dope, i worked that way, of course one advantage was the Fry Hut damn near encouraged drinking, it being the closest thing to a factory job you could ever get on a boardwalk, surrounded by cookers and fryers and sweating out the booze every other hour and paid for the one in between which when it was the evening shift was spent at the bar drinking and playing foosball and during the day was spent reading or sleeping or at the bar drinking and playing foosball, it was a simple life and yet it seemed all the people around me were making it complicated, i obviously had nothing to do with it, i spent the few off hours i had typing out short stories on an old electric typewriter, somehow producing page after page of drivel and heartache and insanity, i typed out shitty poems, then i moved into this new room and set the typer on a chest and gazed out the window at the Big Assawoman and typed some more when i had the chance...

Still, let's be honest, even reading it now i'm a little surprised i navigated my way through, you see it's at this new place i met a kindred spirit, a friend of the new roomie's, and he'd come down on weekends with his girl and we took to having long booze and ganja filled conversations about all kinds of shit, music and art and the like, i mentioned my appreciation of one William S. Burroughs and he mentioned he could score, i told him that would be swell and the next weekend i took a walk in the park but never actually left my room, just another bad habit to add to an ever growing list but this one actually made me adhere to a regimen, there were rules and no matter how much i wanted to break them i knew not to, i had the utmost respect for Mr. Brownstone and at one point i had to lecture my new friend on the dangers of every day use, which was funny coming from a guy who only sobered up every few days just to indulge in the same, until of course i figured out how to mix and match and get even more out of my head, a few weeks shy of 25 it's amazing how invincible one can believe they are... but there i was and the summer was winding down and things just kept on getting stranger...

I was vaguely aware that my career as a migrant tourism service worker was coming to it's end, it was my fourth season and it was cruel and punishing and yet it seemed at times as such a sweet, dirty and beautiful existence, hand to mouth, working months on end without a day off and yet still finding the time to write and drink and trip and fuck... and as i stared down the end of August and everything after (see old post of said title) i continued dropping quarters in the jukebox, one night being asked point blank "if i liked to eat pussy" and myself nodding and the woman standing there asking me if i'd like another drink cuz if i like to eat pussy she'd love to take me home but to not tell her friend who had some sort of school girl crush on me and what could i do but shrug and smile, there were the nights in my dimly lit apartment, pinned out and listening to the birds on the bay, music playing softly behind me, my bottle of water leaving wet rings on the floor, there was a visit from the letter writer and an injection of passion into an exhausted man-child to help him stumble towards the finish line, an all-nighter as the boys of the Fry Hut said their goodbyes, a night of powder and pills and grass and liquor, a night spent shooting the shit until the sun came up and some of us went straight to work and a few lucky ones slept away the heat of the day... and then the last night, the night they took Captain Cock to the psych ward while i sat doing bumps and drinking Jager and beer, i should have probably ended up in the hospital but instead i wandered the alleys toward my place, stopping occasionally to spit up, gazing up towards the lights and sounds of the boardwalk and then it all faded to black...

That morning i woke up in my room with my bags all packed and my trunk locked, there was a pounding at the door and a friendly old eastern shore geezer stood there asking if El Kono was here cuz he was here to pick him up, seems he had rented a car, i squinted and smiled and said i'd be out in a minute, in the bathroom i threw some water on my face and chuckled and then made my way down the wooden steps, past where i tried to woo the girl who threaded hair and reminded me of Audrey (see the post Marriage Proposal) and towards the mini-van which would take me across the Rt. 50 bridge heading west for the second to last time, just a day shy of my 25th birthday, how the world was my fucking oyster...

3 comments:

daisyfae said...

my guts were in a knot reading this, my friend. i have no idea how you made it past 25, but glad that you did. gives me insight into the stumbling walks my son would take some nights...

he and i have often thought about renting a UHaul truck, taking out all of those "walk away" insurance bits, and then driving it into trees, under low bridges, and generally destroying it... i'll be sure to let you know if we ever do it...

do you have any of those writings from your electric typewriter days?

Exile on Pain Street said...

How long could you have sustained that? Didn't it get old and dull? Do you hope your boys have the same kind of experience?

Speaking of old and dull, I wish I could do acid one more time but now that I'm old I'm too afraid. My friend Cindy makes an annual trip to Disneyworld with her friends and drops acid. She says it's "hilarious."

Kono said...

Daisy- funny thing, i was cleaning up the garage and i found a storage bin with all kinds of loose pages and stories and what not, one of these days i may even pull them out to look at.

Exile- the experience never got old and dull, the angel dust did that but that was one of it's side effects and that was 2 summers previous, i sustained it for 15 years? this was still early doors as they say, would i want the boyos to experience it? it's not my life it's theirs but as their old man no i wouldn't, not all of it anyway, i think there are some things to be learned with certain substances but also the inherent danger of doing and procuring, i'm hoping their nothing like their old man.

And i agree with your friend, i often want to drop and go to this local 24 hr. Wal-Mart, i despise the Walton family and rarely if ever step foot in the place but when i do it feels like i'm tripping so why not go all the way and hang out there one night, think i'd have to bring a film crew for a documentary if i did it.