7/14/09
I unlock my bike and ride across the street from Cafe Diem to Seven Eleven, doubtlessly bound for cigarettes despite my effort to quit. I have had several drinks and I need a smoke. I exit convenience, pounding my pack, and ignite. I unlock my bike again. I look up as I do this and some girl on a phone, holding her bike, smiles at me. I smile back and mount the tatterdemalion frame. I feel good about this smile, like my night could only end in happiness.
I get several blocks down Park Ave. before I hear WOOP WOOP and see those familiar blue lights. The blue to the shield as the yellow to the stinger. A warning I heed as I look back, pull over. The high-and-mighty pig pulls up next to me, initiating his lecture: YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE TO OBEY THE SAME RULES AS CARS.
I studder, buzzed from firefly, bourbon, and PBR, tell him I'm sorry.
"You just ran two stop signs," he says, and I nod, bobbing my head up and down, acknowledging the fact that they were four-ways and it shouldn't matter because no one was around but him, not that he was "right" in stopping me. Whatever will make him happy will make me free, I figure.
"I'm sorry," I concede.
"You don't even have a front light," he tells me, as if I didn't know. "Where is it?"
"I have one, it's at home. It just ran out of batteries." A week ago.
"I could pin you for three counts of wreckless cycling," he says.
I want to emphasize the WOW I respond.
"WOW," I say. "I'm sorry, sir," I stroke his ego. I shake my head at myself. I am about to get a ticket. And then. . .
"Just go," he frees me.
"Thank you, sir," I continue stroking his ego. The kind of courtesy stroke you give after your forearm is killing you, but it has paid off, so you do it anyway.
I ride off but he is behind me so I wait at the next red light on Robinson. The pig pulls up, parks next to me, persuades my illusions of safety. He leans to shotgun.
"You see those bikes up there?"
I squint and see a faint white light. "Um," I hesitate, thinking he's making shit up, "not really. My vision isn't so good." I lie, "I have glasses at home," which should be true, but since I destroyed them back in twenty-oh-five it isn't.
"Well, if you don't have a front light and I hit you, it's your fault."
Thanks Mom, I think.
"Yeah. I've seen a few friends hit," I tell him, "and it isn't pretty. I'm just trying to get home." The bikes he is not lying about roll up across the street and he activates the blue, the siren. His car ironically runs the red and then he begins speaking with the cyclists. I wait at the red-- I heed his warning-- for as long as it eternally takes to turn green while NO ONE rides through the intersection.
As soon as I lose the cop, I flick my friction shifters to their heighest gear ratio and safely ride home, where I am now, stopped only by my name yelled into the street where I explain the story to near-strangers, writing this.
Fuck you, bacon bits, I know it will be my fault if I get hit.
But I won't.
Right?
Public Announcement: you suck. Hard. But we don't need to get bogged down with that.
I call ten or so of Graham's and/or our friends, and none of you pick up. I text those I don't expect.
I call George. He has a house phone in a small two room studio and it rings once. I hear the echo of the ring in the background as he says Hello. We meet at Baja Bean. The woman at the door puts down her book and IDs us. At first glance, I see tattoos on her arms. But she's actually a burn victim. She gives us stupid pink wristbands that we rip off on our way to Avalon.
Scar-Arms The Door Lady tells us we need to go through the back to get to the cabana, oh, and we can't continue our tab if we decide to come inside. Outside, we decide to drink on drenched steel chairs under a bare tent frame. George tells me he doesn't have much money and asks me to buy him a beer. At the out-door bar I tell him, "People better show up or I'm going to be poor by the end of the night." The bar tender has long blonde hair and a baseball hat on. Backwards. His face is purple and red, discolored from some accident or fight. He hands George a Budweiser, "classic" as the tender says, in a fucking plastic bottle.
We sit on the wet metal mesh. Miserably hunched from a 10 minute deluge, the tree above us occassionally drips water into our beer or on our heads. The two of us are in terrible shape and should not be drinking. "[My] typmanic membrane ruptured," says the Doc-in-the-Box. Hearing loss and pain. So I'm on antibiotics and local anesthetics. Little pain-killer drops I drip into my ear, like the tree's tear in my beer. George took zanex earlier for whatever he takes zanex for. He sways, his back pain ignored, and tells me it's probably close to wearing off.
A few people call or text me to say they can't make it. Graham finally shows up. "Got a beverage for me?" I get him a beer, but before he makes it inside to go down, through the hall, and up the stairs to get outside--"Shit, I forgot my ID." He rides off and his beer begins to sweat. Lauren F wanders by and says hello. She invites me to a cookout with the words "baby" and "shower" attached. I tell her no way and she edits herself until, the words eliminated, I accept. She meets and invites George. Graham returns, Lauren passes and I ask her if the bar will give him a free beer for his first stupid, drinking pink wristband ever.
"We can give him a straw hat to drink in."
I buy a few more of the beers and pay my seventeen dollar tab so we can go take shots.
I order four shots of rail bourbon. The inside tender asks how many people are taking the shots. Three. I point to George, "One for this guy and me," I point to Graham, "two for the guy who just turned twenty-one."
ABC laws won't let me serve four shots, he says, and fumbles the explanation behind this. His apology is a lame, "I mean, if you were at my house, you'd be shit-faced." Whatever, I tell him, let's have the three shots so we can leave.
The pink off, unlock, we take off. I am down thirty dollars. George gives me a five, so I guess I'm negative twenty-five. Graham wants to stop at the upper-scale martini bar. The one with the giant neon martini glass. It is closing. We walk back to our bikes. A kitten mews at us and Graham tries to capture it. It smells the neglect for Zeus Dankstar Belligerence all over us and flees. So do we, to Avalon.
Further down Main, George nearly hits my backwheel, jams on his breaks, and flips. A remarkable flip that burns itself to the back of my eyes in one glance. A loud smack and a frame-scraping-asphalt sound accompany. He is flat for only a moment, rolls on his injured back and springs up, gaining height with a gaping mouth and wide eyes.
He looks at his right palm and rubs his back with his left, "I'm going to feel that tomorrow." We laugh the kind of laugh that relieves concern.
We sit at a booth in the back. There are metal-heads and yuppies drinking in low yellow tones. Some rosey female voice asks What's Up, Guys. It is Jeanne C. I haven't seen her in probably three years, so I give her a hug in earnest and ask her if she wants to buy Graham a drink. She says she will, joins us, and labors over what to get. Eventually, she orders him a Blow Job. He picks it up with his hand and we slap it down with words of dismay. Jeanne explains the point of the drink, and now Graham's face is covered in white cream as he goes down on the flute.
He says: "This is really hard."
: "My mouth is too small"
: Choking Noise.
Graham envelops the top third of the flute and pulls back with his neck, tipping liquid. He gurgles and releases, the glass falters, falls. Pale brown liquid goes everywhere, the glass crashes. His giant cum-load allegory ends with George slurping off of the table.
He tells me later that he didn't realize he was drunk until The Village. I realize Graham is drunk when a white Ford demonstrates awesome breaks. Run a red light, now he and the driver are in the middle of the intersection, staring at each other.
The tender at the Village, his name is Graham too. He tells us it is last call. Graham orders something like eight shots, three for me, of assorted liquor. This guy who we can't stop running into since meeting him, named Louis, sits next to us at the bar. His friend in the neck brace isn't around. I guess that's because she's Sober-and-not-calling-herself-straight-edge-for-obvious-reasons. Louis buys Graham a shot and wishes him a happy birthday. Graham asks Graham for whatever will fuck him up the most in the last five minutes before two AM. He gets one-fifty-one and a coke chaser. I insist we walk the two blocks to our house.
