I FUCKING HATE MY JOB!!!

Pretty much, nuff said in the title. It's an empty complaint. Like beating my fists against a brick wall and screaming and crying with rage. I have been trying frantically to find another job, but times are tough here in the good old Murderapolis job market. My friend Sarabellem said she has been sending out 5 resumes a week and not getting any response but the occasional thanks-but-no-thanks letters. On Friday, the bitches at US Bank changed the way we do my job AGAIN to make it harder for us to get our incentive pay. This is roughly the 8th change since Stinky Fat-Ass took his job. I raised many complaints and spoke for many people in the meeting and felt completely abandoned by everyone else because the majority of them were too chicken-shit to open their mouths. Also, my good friend Choirgirl's promotion was officially announced which means she and I can only have limited contact and cannot go on lunch together anymore because of the bank's fraternization rules. I was so pissed after the meeting that I got off the bus after a few blocks and stomped all the way home because I was so angry. 13 blocks is a long way to stomp. I feel trapped in a nightmare I can't wake from. I just want to cry.

The irony is, I work from 8:00-12:00 today. Off to work!! Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho!!

The Thing That Pays The Bills

My friend The Anomaly and I decided yesterday that we are going to start aggressively seeking other jobs. The job we have has become unbearable lately. Let me lay it all out for you:

For those of you who don’t know I work in Business Card Collections. It’s not nearly as awful as it sounds. I call businesses, not people sitting at home scratching their ass and watching Jerry Springer. I work off lists of accounts and am responsible for collecting a certain percentage of those accounts. Basically, I cold-call businesses all day and very rarely get the actual person I am supposed to talk to. When I do, I can usually talk people into paying unless they give me the obligatory sob-story and I have heard just about everything, believe me. I’m not a jerk. Unlike some of my fellow collectors, I don’t see being a little late on a few bills as the most horrendous moral crime one can commit. I am not condescending, and this gets me far. However, bear in mind that is when I actually GET someone on the phone. When I don’t (which is most of the time) I do nothing but leave messages that I know will not be returned. It is the most futile, pathetic feeling leaving the same message for the same passive-aggressive asshole who won’t give me the courtesy of a call back to tell me that he/she is broke. The job is mind-numbingly boring.

Let me describe the environment. I work on the 24th floor of a building downtown and the place is the worst kind of cube farm imaginable. When I am seated, the walls around me barely come up to my elbows. I am face-to-face with Cynicism Unbound who is, unfortunately, very interesting to talk to. On my left is Catnip, an ex-hippie who once fed an entire houseful of her hippie friends catnip-laced brownies who promptly passed out and, upon awaking, told her it was the best high they ever had. She's got some great stories too. Diagonally from me is my good friend Choirgirl who I could talk to for hours non-stop. Needless to say, the environment is DISTRACTING at best and downright insanely Big Brother-ish at worst. As much as I adore the people around me, I DON’T want to be in their eyesight every second I am there. I want to feel at least a little bit of privacy, and there absolutely is NONE. Even the break room and conference rooms have glass walls. The only place I ever feel like I am totally unseen during my day is when I am in a bathroom stall with the door closed taking a shit, and even THEN I’m not quite so sure.

As far as the money goes, we don’t make nearly enough in base wages (I got a damn TEN CENT raise at my year anniversary. Actually, I looked on my paycheck and it was a .09875642 raise!!) so we have to rely on our incentive plan. If we collect the aforementioned percentage, we get more money on the paycheck we get on the 15th. The problem is, we are responsible for whatever accounts are dealt to us. It is absolutely mathematically impossible to ALWAYS make your numbers unless you cheat somehow. The worst part is, at the beginning of this year, they raved about uncapping our incentive and promptly raised our objectives by 11 or 12 percent. We basically have to work twice as hard for about the same amount of money. Not to mention, the tension in the place lately is enough to make me want to run for the hills. Managers have been dropping like flies lately because their new boss Stinky Fat-Ass is treating them like shit. We already lost my supervisor who was seriously the best supervisor I have had during my long, dark corporate career. Two others have announced they are leaving and there are rumors that at least three more are going to follow in their footsteps. The place has lost any kind of stability and nobody smiles or enjoys coming to work anymore. I stare off blankly into space a lot of the time because I just CAN’T. CALL. ONE. MORE. PERSON!!

So what am I looking for? A job that pays about $15/hour where I sit and answer phones all day and don’t have to rely on people to DO SOMETHING so that I can have a decent paycheck. I don’t want their problems to be too complex, either and I don’t want it to involve any kind of follow-up from me. I want to work in an environment that has walls where I can read a book between calls and not get in trouble for it. I want to work from 8-4:30 Monday through Friday with a half-hour lunch. I want to walk out of the place at the end of the day and not give it another thought because it isn’t the most important thing I will do that day. It is the thing that pays the bills that I will do until I get into some kind of career.

Unfortunately, this is post 9/11 Busherica, not the America I remember during the Clinton years. I was told recently that one of the worst, most unscrupulous places I have ever worked (QWEST!) is now trying to get rid of long-timers in the position I used to be in so that they can hire people to do the same job for $8/hr!! The job I had at AMERICAN Express was outsourced to India. Didja get the irony there? AMERICAN Express!! I wouldn’t put it past US Bank to do the same thing. It would just be bitterly ironic. The worst part is, thanks to Bush corporations get a pat on the back and all kinds of TAX BONUSES for eliminating US jobs. My mother and other people like those crazy Minutemen in Arizona are so worried about “Foreigners” taking our jobs and they SHOULD BE! But they need to aim their hostility at the assholes in AMERICA that are sending our jobs overseas, not the poor unfortunates crossing the border to make a decent living. People who LIVE HERE are having a hard enough time.

Whoa! Tangent there. None of this is new. Corporate America sucks. We all know that. I really just want to win the damn lottery so I don’t have to worry about this shit anymore. In the meantime, I’m watching the damn want ads for a miracle.

1996 PART THREE: "Been Caught Stealin'..."

When I was four years old, I stole a pack of Watermelon Bubblicious from a Super Valu store. It was a very liberating experience. I had figured it all out. I realized that if I wanted something, I could just take it. No need to bother Mommy and Daddy about money, just grab it and it’s yours. I giggled and showed Mommy when we got out to the car, proud of myself and my new discovery. She was not amused. She marched me right back into the store and asked for the manager. After a hurried and private conversation with him, the man came storming over to me. He looked about 75 feet tall.

“Do you realize you can go to JAIL for doing what you did, young man? The police will come and take you away and you will never see your mommy or daddy ever again.”

Panic-stricken, I cried and pleaded and eventually apologized under Mommy's instructions. I was bad and naughty and wrong and bad things happen to bad little boys. I was so ashamed. I vowed to never, never steal again because it was a naughty, disgusting crime that only very, very bad boys committed.

Sixteen Years Later...
The best way to shoplift at Wal-Mart is to do it right in front of someone, preferably someone who works there. A part of their brain will not register the fact that you just stole something. This time at the Wal-Mart in Friendley is no exception. I have a jean jacket with big sleeves and enormous inside pockets which is also a requirement. I head back to the video department and quickly and masterfully slide a recent children’s movie up my sleeve. Before I leave the aisle I grab “Jumanji“ off the shelf.

I walk out the front door without incident. Having worked at a Wal-Mart in the electronics department I know the alarm won’t go off as I stroll through the door. I dump the goods in Brutus, my ancient and beloved Oldsmobile Delta 88, my crash-pad on wheels. I’ve been sleeping in Brutus for a few months since my mom kicked me out of the house.

I go back into the store to look for my friend Vogl. He is elsewhere in the store, looking around, unsure that I will actually go through with it. As an afterthought I walk past the cigarettes and pocket a pack of Marlboro Mediums off the rack. The cartons are wisely locked up at this Wal-Mart. On my way back to the Lawn & Garden area I notice I am being followed by some not-too-oblivious store detectives. I casually nod at Vogl when I pass him saying I will meet him at the car. He looks up, stunned, and watches me stroll past, the store detectives in hot pursuit.

They nab me outside and very politely ask me to take a walk back inside. They shut me in a room with some 14 year old cart-boy as my guard. I stare him down and try to look every bit like the homeless, druggie, unemployed and slightly-off-balance freak I am. He isn’t intimidated.

They call the cops, snap my Polaroid and listen to me babble about how I just got off crutches from being shot and that I am used to just shoving things in my pocket because I can’t push a cart. They are less doubtful when I pull up the leg of my dirty jeans and show them the bandage above my right knee. They give me a warning and tell me I am never allowed at that particular Wal-Mart again. If they see me, they will arrest me immediately. I’m glad they don’t call my bluff when I tell them I had the money to pay for the cigarettes all along because I don’t have a cent on me. Earlier that day, Vogl and I ran out of gas literally RIGHT at the pump the second we pulled up. I put every cent I had into gas for the car.

When I get back out to the parking lot I see that Vogl and a crowd of people are hovering around my car. I shoo them away when I breeze up with the keys. Vogl says he was sure they were coming back to search my car and he purchased a package of hangers to pop the lock so he could get the movies out of the backseat and get rid of them. What a great accomplice.

We drive directly from the Wal-Mart in Friendly to the one we both used to work at. We return the children’s movie for full price and take the money to our dealer. Later that night I park down the block and we pop the screen at my mom’s place and creep inside. It’s the weekend so she’s up north with her boyfriend. We kick back on the couch, stoned, and giggle at “Jumanji“.

Vogl crashes on the couch, and I sleep in my own bed for the first time in months.

The Pope, The Hypocrisy and Zombie Fetishism

[I had to include one of the more recent Savage Love articles because Dan Savage totally took the words right out of my mouth about all of this Pope mania which I found VERY hypocritical. Yeah, it's a weird column about zombie fetishism, but it is very appropriate, in my opinion. I can't say I'm glad he's dead, but I'm not going to cry about it either, and here's why.]

I'm a pretty normal guy except for one thing: I'm sexually attracted to zombies. When I was a kid, I loved to watch horror films that featured them. Then as I became a teen, I started to masturbate watching zombie flicks. I fantasize about having sex with zombies while trying not to get bitten, but eventually I end up getting devoured. I also fantasize about a woman gangbanged by a group of zombies who then rip her apart and eat her. Is this a form of necrophilia? Are there any other people out there with the same fetish? When I was about 6, my best friend and I discovered the dead body of a drug addict in an abandoned house. Do you think that has something to do with my fetish?

Concentrating On Rotting People Sexually Exciting

Last week I promised my readers a column dedicated to advice for 15-year-old girls from adult women. But I'm afraid that column is going to have to wait. In light of the passing of Pope John Paul II, a column dedicated to female sexual and social empowerment somehow doesn't seem appropriate. So this morning I went digging through my inbox looking for a letter that better captured the zeitgeist.

Okay, CORPSE, you've got a zombie fetish. That's too bad. Though you're probably not alone, your fetish will complicate your love life. While GGG folks will cheerfully indulge their partners' kinks, there are limits to what a kinky boy can reasonably request. Naughty Catholic schoolgirl? Demanding Mistress? Secretary of State? Those are role-playing scenarios that any reasonably accommodating girlfriend would say yes to. But animated corpses, violent gangbangs, gruesome deaths, and cannibalism? The only women willing to go there will be the ones who share your fetish. (And if they're out there, they're online somewhere.) The sucks-to-be-you fact of the matter is that very few people find death attractive—look at how hard John Paul II clung to life. If a man who was convinced he was going to Heaven was that afraid of death, how do you think the average bar-slut will feel?

As to why you're a zombie fetishist, CORPSE, that's harder to say. Could it be all those movies you watched as a kid? Maybe, maybe not. Lots of kids watch zombie flicks, but only a few become zombie fetishists. Was it the dead body you discovered at age 6? Maybe, maybe not. Did the kid you were with grow up to be a zombie fetishist too? Probably not. I'm afraid there are no easy answers, CORPSE, no good explanations why one kid exposed to zombie flicks winds up with a zombie fetish, and another kid who watches the same zombie flicks does not. People are weird and sex is a fucking head-trip. What can you do?

Okay, speaking of weird and perverse head-trips: This will come as a shock to many of my readers, but I'm Catholic—in a cultural sense, not an eat-the-wafer, say-the-rosary, burn-down-the-women's-health-center sense. I was so Catholic that I attended Quigley Preparatory Seminary North, a Catholic high school in Chicago for boys thinking about becoming priests. Along with my classmates, I got to meet the pope in 1979 when he dropped by our school during his visit to Chicago. We gave him a soccer ball.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't pleased to see John Paul II's papacy come to an end. On one of his other visits to the United States, the pope condemned an "[American] culture that seeks to declare entire groups of human beings... to be outside the boundaries of legal protection." That's rich coming from the same man who ordered bishops in the United States to oppose civil-rights laws that protect gays and lesbians (including hate-crime laws), leaving us "outside the boundaries of legal protection." In 2003, a Vatican screed condemned not only gay marriage, but also adoptions by gay and lesbian couples. Allowing gays and lesbians to adopt children, the Vatican said, "would actually mean doing violence to these children." (Hmm. Violence against children... perhaps we should defer to the Catholic Church's expertise on that subject?) And two days before my boyfriend and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in February, the pope rose from his deathbed just long enough describe gay marriage as part of an "ideology of evil." Gee, J.P., you shouldn't have.

What's maddening about this pope's signature gay-bashing is this: When the pope—the dead one, the next one, the one after that—says something stupid about homosexuality, straight Americans take it to heart. The church's efforts have helped defeat gay-rights bills, led to the omission of gays and lesbians from hate-crime statutes, and helped to pass anti-gay-marriage amendments. But when a pope says something stupid about heterosexuality, straight Americans go deaf. And this pope had plenty to say about heterosexual sex—no contraceptives, no premarital sex, no blowjobs, no jerkin' off, no divorce, no remarriage, no artificial insemination, no blowjobs, no three-ways, no swinging, no blowjobs, no anal. Did I mention no blowjobs? John Paul II had a longer list of "no's" for straight people than he did for gay people. But when he tried to meddle in the private lives of straights, the same people who deferred to his delicate sensibilities where my rights were concerned suddenly blew the old asshole off. Gay blowjobs are expendable, it seems; straight ones are sacred.

So forgive me if I can't get behind the orgy of cheap and easy piety that's greeted the death of this pope. Watching the talking twats on CNN pay their respects to this "universally beloved man of God" (how many of them have had premarital sex, I wonder?), to say nothing of the suddenly so-reverent assholes on Fox News (Bill O'Reilly didn't have many nice things to say about the pope when he opposed the invasion of Iraq), is making me want to throw a bottle of lube through a stained-glass window.

Yeah, yeah: I'm sorry the old bastard's dead, I'm sorry the old bastard suffered. But I'm not so sorry that I won't stoop to working John Paul II into a column about zombie fetishism. I don't want to be a total asshole, however, so I'll close this week's column with a subject John Paul II approved of mightily: male chastity.

7.5 MONTHS Part One: Jailbait, Revisited

April 12, 2003. Lauderdale, MN

I’m in the shower when I hear the pounding. I initially think it has to be the people upstairs fucking around, maybe pounding some nails in. It continues. I finally shut the shower off and listen more closely. Somebody is pounding on my door hard enough to shake the walls. Panic-stricken, I throw some shorts and a T-Shirt on and jog to the front door.

“Who is it?” I inquire.

“Police department, open up.”

When I open the door I hardly have any time to register the fact that I know both of them, before the smaller one says “We’re gonna take care of this warrant one way or another.” He’s the one who pulled me over and let me go because I was so close to home. He’s a nice guy.

Oh god. Parking tickets and a driving after suspension. The big cop tries to placate me. This one helped me when the pipe burst in my bedroom last February. He’s a nice guy, too. He explains that if I can make the payment right then they will send me some info to set up my court date later. Since I am recently unemployed that option doesn’t bode well. I have exactly $1 in my wallet and it’s all the money I have in the world.

When I explain that to them the smaller guy rushes forward, grabs my arm and says, “Then I guess you’re going downtown.” He tries to haul me out the door, bare feet and all. I plead with them to at least let me put shoes on, it’s only minor traffic violations after all. For some reason, I know that they both recognize me and know that I know them at that moment. They look vaguely disappointed that they can’t play the good cop/bad cop games with me anymore. I invite them to wait inside while I put different clothes on. The big cop comments on the new carpeting and how much better the place looks than it used to. I thank him. They both sit on my couch and play with my cat Blaxan. As an after-thought I grab my cell phone. I know from very personal experience that they will give me all of my money back in the form of a check and I will have no way to cash it to make a phone call.

They handcuff me right in front of my apartment building. My neighbors look on, horrified, thinking: “Oh my god. I KNEW him. We passed in the hallway all the time. Just proves you never can tell.”

They let me call Math-girl on my cell phone. I surmise that she may have the $200 cash that might get me out of this. She does, but she can’t make it for another 45 minutes. They tell me that they can’t wait. I’m going downtown again.

The big cop tries to make idle chatter as we head for the Castle of Greyskull. He mentions something about how he just got back from a road trip. He helped his brother-in-law drive from California all the way back to Minnesota, blah-blah-blah. It’s a nice day out and I probably won’t see daylight again for some time. In fact, the last time this happened I was MIA for ten hours. This one might last a whole weekend if Math-girl doesn’t come through.

Later that same day. Downtown, Murderapolis.
At least I don’t have to worry about going to work on Monday, I think. That’s the one and only consolation of being unemployed. Time is meaningless. Weekends and weekdays drone together.

We head beneath a very space-age looking building. A state-of-the-art voice-controlled garage door goes up. I have the vague feeling that I am being volunteered for some hideous science experiment. This is not the place I was last time. These people are almost smiling, and it is a very clean, antiseptic looking place.

They take my shoes and belongings and I say goodbye to the $1.00 in cash I have in my wallet. They feel me up as they frisk me, and I suddenly feel very short and very embarrassed as they shove me into an empty mostly-glass room that is long, narrow and bright and smells suspiciously like a dentist‘s office. It’s barely wide enough for the stone bench I sit on. It creeps me out that they lock me in. Just for the hell of it, I try both doors. A guard eyes me warily and I roll my eyes. “Don’t let the mad driving-after-suspensioner escape!! He might very well drive AGAIN!! Did I mention he is suspended for PARKING TICKETS!! God, he might park ILLEGALLY too!! Oh, the HORROR!!”

I slump back on the bench and see an industrial-looking bucket on the floor for the first time. Gross! It’s a puke bucket for drunks. With the smell in the room it was cleaned recently. I look back up and two of them are watching me, while maintaining a conversation. It all seems to come together. This is an observation room of some kind. They are watching to see if I am crazy or drunk or prone to puking. I wonder for a moment if I should give them a show. I quickly abort the plan when I realize anything crazy I could do in the room would involve harming myself. There’s no one around to lunge at or slap. I’d have to tear my hair out or throw myself at the door and that would hurt. I could upend the puke bucket on my head and hurl myself around the room in a crazy dance of injustice, but that’s just gross. I opt for pouting instead.

Bored with my pouting, they buzz me out of the room. The door opens by itself and I turn around to watch it shut again. For some reason, the machinery reminds me of a car wash. No one guides me to the next room. There are markings on the floor and a robotic voice telling me to advance to room two. This next room looks exactly like the waiting area at the DMV. I sit in one of the uncomfortably-close connected chairs and a TV buzzes on. I think vaguely that this woman is going to tell me that Big Brother is watching, but she says: “You are in the custody of the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department...” I watch in bemusement. It’s an instructional video that is here to give me some helpful tips about my stay. I watch it in its’ entirety about 6 times. My favorites scene involves how disorderly conduct is handled if you are given an orange jumpsuit and made to stay. The example they use is of two frumpy white guys playing checkers. One guy is a really poor sport and tips the board over and tries to bitch-slap the winner. He is quickly taken down by the burly guards and hauled away, struggling. I think: “Dude, it’s CHECKERS!“ They show him looking particularly mournful, with an “I learned my lesson the hard way” look in solitary confinement. It also talks about how to make your bed and that you are expected to line up promptly at 7AM.

After six viewings of this I am called by an electronic voice to a window. There is a surprisingly friendly woman behind bullet-proof glass and a speaker box. I am told to stand on a yellow mark on the floor. I do as I’m told and am certain a trap door will swallow me and I will go shrieking down a slide to the dungeon when I see her reach for a button. I realize that it is picture time. I know I’m looking tore-down. A few months back I bleached my hair and the orangey-yellow is darkening badly at the roots. I am also wearing a t-shirt that is a shade of gray that makes me look particularly pasty and dirty, loose khakis. I look like a white-trash petty thief who chugs Miller High Life and attends Monster Truck Rallies. Well, a gay one anyway with bad hair.

“Smile!” the picture-lady chirps and I know she is only happy and bubbly because there is bullet-proof glass between us. I don’t smile. I see the camera flicker and then she asks me what I am doing there. She looks up my information and looks vaguely horrified when she sees how many parking tickets I have. She tells me I will be given a court date. After a few minutes, a machine buzzes on her side of the glass and a thick, hospital-like bracelet prints out with my name, race, sex, height, weight, birth-date and horrid-looking picture I just took. There is also a bar-code that the cops can scan if I am mutilated beyond recognition at some point during my stay.

Another door buzzes open and I am told to sit in one of the many open rooms along the wall on the left. On the right are two cops huddling around a computer screen chuckling and whispering. I’m pretty sure they are looking at porno sites.

I go stir-crazy in the empty room. There is literally no one else around and the door is wide open. All there is to do is sit on a bench and stare at the floor. It isn't even big enough to lie down on. I count the tiles. I multiply them. I figure out their square roots. I am so bored I want to fake a seizure just to see what will happen. I also consider pissing or shitting my pants just to see what they will do and how they will handle it.

I eventually begin to plot the cops’ deaths in elaborate detail. People who aren’t as bored as me don’t deserve to live. Though we are essentially trapped in the same area, they have the whole INTERNET to entertain them and I see this as grossly unfair.

I decide the cute one on the left needs to be slapped around and toyed with sexually just because I am so bored. Then I need to shove his head in the puke bucket from the glass room and bang it against a brick wall until he lapses into a coma. The other, less-cute one needs to have the computer monitor smashed on his head so that his brains cook and fry. I suppress a manic giggle at the picture.

Partway through, with mounting horror, I realize there is a big wall clock over by the cops, too. I watch the second hand sweep. Two hours go by as I watch the clock. Every fucking second of two hours.

Nonchalantly, one of the cops leaves the porn, gets up and brings me over to a big machine that will either chop my fingers off or take my fingerprints electronically. A powerful light swoops by and I feel a vague radioactive sensation. Then I have to wait another 45 minutes for them to run my prints and make sure I’m not a psycho killer of some kind. I am a gibbering lunatic by the time they direct me through a door at the end of the room and shut it behind me without giving me any explanation.

It is a narrow, dimly-lit corridor. I walk down it and see that it twists and turns until I feel like maybe I am in a maze. I finally round one last corner and there is a desk with a dour-looking old guy sitting at it. He pushes me into the smallest phone booth on earth and I call Math-girl. I give her the information about paying my bail which is conveniently stenciled above the phone. I tell her I will call her when I am out and thank her profusely.

After the phone call I am asked if I have trouble with any certain type of people. “Republicans, religious zealots and really bored Lauderdale cops,” I mutter. I don’t appreciate the nasty look I am given at that so I decide the man who asked me must be all of those things. I am just telling the truth, after all. I realize dimly that he is trying to get me to admit I am racist or homophobic or that I don’t get along with Indians.

I am led to the final room which has two angry black guys in it and a crest-fallen looking gay guy. I listen to the two black guys cuss about how the guards are just being assholes by passing them over every time they release people. I sit down near the gay guy and wonder if he is Mr. Right. You never know, after all. What a story to tell our adopted children some day! How daddy and daddy met in jail!!

I eventually get the guy to talk and he tells me how he stole all the money from the Subway he was closing down one night and got a bunch of drugs with the money. Then, very high, he went to his bosses house and robbed him too, for good measure. This would be hot if a butch-looking guy were telling me, but this guy looks like a drag queen with no make-up. I’M butcher than him and that’s saying a lot. Mr. Wrong drones on about how he’s going to be put away for a long, long time. “Right on, sister,” I think.

Halfway through the two and a half hours I am in this room, the room gradually fills up. At the maximum there are about 6 of us. One of them is a horrified-looking suburban Asian guy and a smart-ass druggie that I instantly take a liking to. He’s in for parking tickets, too, and pretty pissed-off about it. We talk for awhile about getting high and then watch the black guys give the guards the finger and pound on the glass.

Eventually, a cop opens the door and stands there with a clipboard. He’s a total smart-ass. He sees my eager look and refers to me as “You with the bad dye job!” I tell Mr. Wrong that it was nice talking to him and the cop says, suggestively: “What do you mean by that?”

He makes us all line up in the hallway outside the cell. He walks up and down the row for a minute. He sighs, dramatically, thee put-upon cop facing the dregs of humanity once again, shakes his head and says: “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you punks. You’re all going downtown!!” I roll my eyes and the other guys murmur about bad jokes and dead cops under their breath. The Asian guy doesn’t get it and whimpers: “PLEASE, sir!! You don’t understand! There’s been a mistake! Please!”

When we line up at the window to be given our belongings back, I realize that you can see through this window to the other window where the whole process began. When the person at our window walks away for a minute, the smart-ass druggie goads a sobbing suburban girl who is at the beginning of the process. “Oh man, you’re at the START!? You’re gonna be here a fuckin MONTH, man! Get comfortable!!” The girl shrieks in despair and sinks to her knees to pray or something. I snicker as I put my shoes back on and take my check for $1.00.

It FELT like a month, anyway.

The Amityville Whore

So, The Nurse and I went to see "The Amityville Horror" on Saturday. I had a free ticket to it, so at least I didn't waste my money. It was FAAAR too over-produced to be taken seriously. A lot of loud noises and special effects. Though it claimed to follow the "True" story closer than the 1978 version, it went even further from it. The escape from the house at the end is accomplished in a SPEED BOAT for Christs' sake.

Anyway, the movie sucked but you should still go and see it if you want to look at a really beautiful man for 87 minutes. Ryan Reynolds, who was previously in some "Van Wilder" movie and "Blade:Trinity" is being completely pimped by his agent in this film. There isn't a scene he is in where he isn't either dressed in a very flattering tight, white undershirt or flat-out shirtless. The man is GORGEOUS! There is a scene where he falls into the river shirtless and comes back out all glistening. And then the endless, shirtless wood-chopping scenes? YUMM!!

Math-girl wants me to get the DVD and just record the parts with him shirtless and add some music to it. Keep your eyes on this guy. We'll be seeing a lot more of him soon. If not, we'll always have "Amityville".

Planet Cell Phone

While discussing the 1999 film, "The Blair Witch Project", an acquaintance burst out: "Who would go out in the woods like that without their cell phone? Are they STUPID?" I calmly defended the film by explaining that it takes place in 1994 and I know from personal experience that the whole pager phenomena hadn't even gotten a firm foothold at that time in mainstream consciousness. Back then, cell phones were for doctors, they were roughly the size of a shoe box, and it was a rare treat to get a call from someone using one: "You're calling me... FROM THE CAR!!?? SERIOUSLY??"

These days, one of my friends is considering giving her twelve year old son her old cell phone. They are so commonplace that they have literally blended into our culture. They have changed so many facets of our day-to-day lives, it is astounding. Gone are the days of the long phone call. Now, everyone is calculating their minutes in their heads and how much that particular call will cost them. Or, the dreaded: "Hurry up!! I have pre-pay!!"

Being a shopaholic, cell phones have changed the way I shop with friends. When I was 5 years old I got separated from my family at the Minnesota State Fair midway right near "The Glass House" with all the clowns. I still have latent abandonment issues about that and don’t even get me STARTED on clowns. Today, if my friends and I lose each other in a crowd and we all have cell phones, we simply call one another. "Sorry, I was checking some guy out. I'm over here by this annoying glass house thing. Yeah? Oh... I see you." This has also, conversely, affected our ability to find each other if we DON'T have our cell phones on us. "Where's Sarah?" "I don't know. Call her." "She doesn't have her phone on her..." "OH NO!! What EVER shall we do?"

Cell phones and laptops are gradually edging out the novel or newspaper as the preferred PLEASE DON'T TALK TO ME shield on public transportation. They make us the unwilling witness to people's private lives. I have been subjected to many loud half-conversations. "Baby, I didn't mean to hit you, but you made me so MAD. Why you do that to me, baby?" I work in a call center and after fielding the 8th phone call from so-and-so's boyfriend I found myself INCENSED that the woman refuses to get a cell phone. Who wouldn't want one? Is she nuts?

There is a sinister stalker aspect to cell phones, too. Consider the "Scream" trilogy. "Who is this? Where are you calling from?" "RIGHT BEHIND YOU WITH AN AXE!!" That would never have happened with even the best cordless phones. They have also become a punch line in bad horror movies. The psycho killers don't need to cut the phone line anymore, they just wait patiently for you to realize you have no signal.

Taking this sinister turn leads me to my ultimate number one pet peeve about cell phones. They are great for convenience, for missed appointments, for losing someone in a crowd and for stalking someone. They are not now nor will they ever be great for replacing a land-line phone. I don't care if you have the most expensive cell phone on the planet, it still sounds like you are talking in a tin can half the time. My sister uses her cell phone and has no need for a land line except for her computer and her alarm system. Therefore, if she becomes scatter-brained after a movie (as she often does) and forgets to turn her phone on there is literally no way to contact her. "I'm being robbed and beaten and thrown into a ditch!!" isn't the kind of thing you want to leave on a voice mail. Not to mention, the woman is my "In case of emergency..." person. What if a disgruntled employee burst into my place of work and shot the place up? "Your brother has been shot!!" is not an appropriate voice mail message either.

A good and bad thing about cell phones is that they remind you that you are talking on the phone. They are crotchety and particular about where they are being used. They don't do tunnels and if the person you are having an intimate conversation with goes through one, you are likely to be left cold with dead silence and a hunk of shockingly expensive plastic pressed to your ear. If you go for the ever-vilified pay-as-you-go route, you can be cut off in mid-conversation. With no minutes and no money to add more, your cell phone becomes a very expensive electronic phone book. Still, these glitches remind us that talking on the phone is a poor substitute for real contact.

And what about remembering people's phone numbers? That seems to have fallen by the wayside, too. Because of caller ID and cell phones I have had several friends give me blank stares when I ask them what my phone number is, just to test them. They reach for their cell phones instead to bring up their "Contacts" list. I have remembered phone numbers since I was four years old when I cherubically recited our phone number (minus area code cause there was just ONE then) much to the shock and amusement of my parents. I never use the contacts list. I don't want to be unable to call people if I forget my cell phone and (god forbid) have to stoop to the level of using a pay phone. Remember pay phones?

Yesterday, I was heading to breakfast with a friend. We were about to pass a mutual friend’s house and I mentioned that we should call and ask if she wanted to accompany us. The friend I was with said: "Give her a call." I explained that I didn't have my cell phone with me and didn't have minutes on it anyway, because I am on the aforementioned pre-pay. Not to mention, it was sitting in my school bag at home, probably dead to the world because I hadn't charged it in a week. Apparently, this was in poor form for a cell phone owner. I was given the third degree and accused of having a "problem" with cell phones because I was writing this paper. This paper had poisoned me to the wonderful things about cell phones, supposedly.

I think cell phones are just one more electronic gadget we have become dependent on and Verizon, Cingulair, T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile are laughing all the way to the bank. Like all electronic gadgets, there are bad and good things about them. They can come in handy when you are stranded on the side of the road, provided you have them sufficiently charged and with an ample number of signal bars, but they also cause way too many accidents by people not following the hang-up-and-drive laws. They certainly don’t seem to have made our lives any simpler. Are we truly any less busy because we can carry phones in our pockets or have we compensated for the freed-up time with even more tasks?

Finally, since cell phones are getting smaller and smaller it is practically inevitable that they will soon be implanted in our brains. We will be in the middle of actual human contact and a person will get a blank look on their face and say. "Hold on. I'm getting a call. Answer. Volume. Hey, what's up? Yes, that's right! You're calling my BRAIN!!" The implications are astounding.

Tha Tax-Man (A Confession) The Blackout and The Head Cheese

Taxes, taxes everywhere but not a cent to pay with. Everybody has been freaking out about taxes lately to me. My sister Forensics told me about her tax horrors, my good friend Sarabellem was having a last-minute freak-out and then there's a cover story in the City Pages this week about Tax Scoff-Laws like me.

I want to be as open as possible on here, for whatever reason so here goes: I owe back-taxes. A LOT in back taxes. In fact, since some ghetto bitch at AT&T turned me on to the idea of changing your deductions for a little while, I haven't gotten one red cent back from either the State or Federal governement. I do my taxes like everyone else and realize I just created a bill that I need to pay. Me and paying bills have had an on-again off-again relationship ever since my very first bill for a JC Penney card I opened at the state fair one year because I wanted a free fanny pack (Shut up, fanny packs were COOL back then!!)

This last year I turned over a new leaf and decided that 29 is as good a time as any to get my act together financially. It didn't help that Crucial, a work-friend of mine used to look at her paycheck online in my presence and say: "Uh-uh. They ain't finna git MY money!" as she bumped up her deductions. I did the same. WOW did I have big paychecks, but damned if I don't owe the Feds a HUGE amount of money right now. Relax, Mr. Tax-Man, I have payment arrangements in mind. I just have to call you next week and set them up. I know from the experiences of my good friend The Nurse (student loan issues like every other college student) that garnishments are no fun. It's better I negotiate how much comes out than they decide for me.

I'm paying what I owe the state tomorrow for sure. The Feds are going to get about $50 per paycheck and whatever else I can throw at the debt until it's paid off. And my deductions? NEVER EVER EVER AGAIN WILL I BE THAT STUPID!! I want to break even like every other single person, thank you.

On a lighter note, Olympics, a pretty cute straight guy at work, confessed to me that he went out drinking last weekend and got so trashed big chunks of the nights were missing. Apparently he got him and his friends thrown out of damn near every bar in downtown Murderapolis. I jumped on this and told him that I wasn't comfortable with him hitting on me at the bar Saturday night and that I really wanted to keep things on a work level. He believed me for a second. He is slightly less capable of joy.

His friend Biceps (the health nut workout freak witht he great body) showed me a piece of head cheese today. I damn near hurled. It looked like a piece of flat pizza or fake dog vomit. If having a body like that means eating shit like THAT, I will stay fucking fat, thank you!!

1996 PART ZERO: Inventory

[This was the first hint of the crap I was going to experience in 1996. Less than twelve hours later, I met the aforementioned Italian Stallion. Certain family members may want to skip this one. This may be too much information. I've told myself from the beginning that I was going to be completely honest and I had to get this out. If you read on, don't say I didn't warn you.]

December 1, 1995
1:17AM
The Suburbs, MN

The night is misty. One of those nights where an inch of crud builds up on your windshield just driving a few feet. The first snowfall of the season isn’t holding up to the bizarre spot of warm weather we are getting. I’m driving to pick up my friend Red after a hellish long night of inventory at Wal-Mart. I am sore. I feel like the dust imbedded under my fingernails will be my permanent companion. I am pissed at the world. The plan is to go to Perkins and get something to eat and for her to commiserate with me. Red is always up for late night talks.

When I see the flashing lights in my rearview mirror I am confused at first. I pull Brutus over to the side of the road and the gravity of my situation starts to slowly sink in. I see the checklist in my head. No insurance? Check. Bench warrant? Check. Unpaid speeding ticket? Check. Expired tabs? Check. It’s all over. Jail time for sure. Red will be pissed when I don’t show up for ten to twenty years.

I see him in the smudged side mirror; a mountain of a cop swaggering up to the car, but I guess they always look bigger than life when you are sitting there behind the wheel in a shitload of trouble. My palms are sweating all over Brutus’ steering wheel. I roll the window down. A car hisses past. My heart nearly stops when I look up at the expressionless man. His face is literally devoid of anything. Even in the dim I can see cold, glittering eyes.

“Do you realize you’re driving with expired tabs?”

“Yes, sir. Haven’t gotten around to that yet, I’m sorry.”

There is an odd, blank moment, as he studies me and I fidget under his gaze. I think he is looking for drugs and I try to remember frantically if there is a roach in the ashtray. “License and registration.”

A statement, barely a request. Monotone and commanding. My hands are sweaty and shaking as I fumble the information out of my wallet. My heart is thudding. He’s going to run my license number and all manner of horrible things is going to come up on his screen. He will call for backup and they will tow my car. They’ll probably bring me to the station and pistol-whip me too, just for good measure.

“Be right back,” he says as he takes my information in his leather-gloved hand and swaggers back to his car. I sink down so the spotlight isn’t in my eyes anymore and try to calm myself in those endless minutes. I watch cars hiss by, everyone staring at me. “They got you, sucka!” they are all thinking, shaking their heads and thanking god it isn‘t them. Maybe they are humming that annoying “Cops” theme behind fogged windows. I want to scream and cry.

They can’t hurt you, I tell myself. Not legally anyway. Rodney King was a tweaked-out freak when he got his ass kicked. He was trying to get up. Just cooperate and everything will be fine. It’s not like you’re some serial killer or something. You just got paid. Maybe there’s a fine you can pay for now. Money. Maybe that’s it. Didn’t some jerk in the break room just talk about getting out of some trouble with parking tickets by paying the fine in cash when he got pulled over?

He’s back at the window, looking even more expressionless than before. It creeps me out because I am so wrapped up in my thoughts I have no idea how long he’s been standing there. Panic does funny things with time.

I look up and notice that there are water droplets on his bulky leather coat. It’s dripping off the brim of his hat. He wasn’t wearing his hat before.

“Any idea how much trouble you’re in?”

“Some,” I mutter, fighting back tears. “I know I have a warrant for some parking tickets and a speeding ticket I haven’t paid yet. The thing is, I just got paid. Isn’t there anything I can do to get out of this?”

[Let’s stop here for a moment. Please take those last words in context. I was talking about MONEY. To the best of my recollection, those are the words I said. I was in NO WAY propositioning this guy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I was utterly horrified and completely intimidated. Sexual relations were confined to the dustiest regions of the back of my brain at that moment and I was certainly not thinking of sexual relations as a mode of transaction. Not that I hadn’t fantasized about cops. I think it’s a requirement for gay guys to have the standard fantasies about cops and firemen. But fantasy is a world away from reality, as I would soon discover.]

There is the oddest, longest moment of silence and motionlessness from him. I think for one crazy moment that he is a robot and has just run out of battery power. He is staring at me, and his eyes are shaded by that damned dripping hat. I realize he is a live human being when he slowly crosses his arms over his chest, leather of his jacket squeaking. The red and blue lights are flashing on his face.

“No we’re never gonna survive unless we go a little crazy...” insists Seal, from my radio.

“How rude,” I think. “RUDE to have the radio on when you are pulled over. Plain rude.”
I reach to turn it off and hear him mumble something as I lean over.

“Excuse me?”

“Shut off your engine. Follow me.”

He turns around and walks back to his car without another word. He gets in and shuts the door. The spotlight goes off and it is suddenly too dark in my car. My brain is trying to process this. Follow him? Follow him where? To his car? Why? Oh, Jesus. I’m going to jail.

I check for traffic and there is none. I get out and will my knees not to give out from beneath me. I walk to the passenger side, chilly mist on my face. I am seeing all kinds of crazy spots from the damned spotlight being in my eyes for too long. I start heading to the backseat, but I see him quickly move some stuff out of the way in the passenger seat. He props the clipboard and papers up behind the headrest against the plexi-glass partition, unceremoniously.

I open the door and lower myself to the seat. I shut the door and try to settle into the cramped confines. There is hardly any room because there is a glowing computer thing between us. Time does that funny thing again, as I look around. I’ve never been in a cop car before. There’s a buzzing, crackling radio sputtering out gibberish and ten-fours, a pile of papers on the floor, and a shotgun in the window just behind my head. It’s definitely well-heated, because there is hot air blasting from the heater. It rapidly becomes too hot.

He shifts in his seat and it seems I am reminded that there is another occupant in the car for the first time. He’s staring straight ahead. I smell leather, and some type of cologne. There’s also the faint smell of cigarettes and something else, something oily. Kinda like motor oil. His hat is off, the hair beneath curly and damp. There is water glistening on his cheeks.

He flips some switches and I see that Brutus isn’t flashing red and blue anymore, he‘s just sitting there looking lonely on the side of the road. He pulls the car onto the street without even a backward glance. He doesn’t say a word or crack a smile or give me any hint as to what is going on. I am terrified, but when I try to say something he turns and looks at me. There is something so cold in that gaze, a gaze I know I will never forget. Nothing will make any words come out of me.

"Psycho cop", I think. "He’s crazy. He’s gone off the deep end. He’s going to fucking KILL me or something." My heart starts to pound so hard I can feel my pulse vibrating in my neck. I feel rushes of adrenaline all through me and consider briefly that it might be a good idea to throw myself from the car. Then I think of him dashing out and shooting me.

We end up behind a restaurant in a vacant lot where an apartment complex is being built. On a night like this, we may as well be on the dark side of the moon. Once he parks the car and turns the headlights off, it is all business. He turns slightly, and moves his seat back. I see him fumbling with his belt and hear the creak of leather as it comes off. Then his zipper comes down. He is glancing furtively around, which is the most human thing I have seen him do up to this point.

There is something very arrogant about the way he angles his hips toward me without saying a word. He’s more worried about getting caught. He won’t make any kind of eye contact or say anything. I’m no idiot. This is a man looking for a blowjob. A big man with cold scary eyes, a habit of turning into a freakish robot once in awhile, and a gun strapped to his hip. Not someone I care to argue with.

He seems very unconcerned about the lack of space in there, and very unhelpful. I try to lean across and discover that I can push the computer out of the way a little. I lean into his lap and know where that oily smell is coming from. It’s coming from the big gun a few inches from my face. Gun oil?

He doesn’t last long. The leather of his jacket makes my forehead sweat. I dimly see a few letters on his name badge, then close my eyes. Probably best if I don't know. My knees are shaking so bad I swear I must be vibrating the entire car. I am still sore and dusty from the damned inventory. At one point, he grabs me and I feel fingernails dig into the back of my neck. He doesn’t make a sound or give me any warning. It’s a race. I want this over with. I want him to drive me back to my car. I want to go home. I want that gun to stay where it is when this is over. I want out of this vacant lot. I don’t ever want to smell leather and cologne and gun oil again. I am furious that I am this helpless. And the car thing. Why is it always furtively in fucking cars? In fact, the anger seems to fuel the act forward and get it done.

Unbelievable. I am back in my car and I am more than shell-shocked. He never said a word. Completely unbelievable. I can still taste him. My stomach feels funny. He is gone without a word. I am alone on the side of the road. I reach over and numbly turn the radio up again before pulling back onto the street.

“Lie to me. I promise. I’ll believe. Lie to me, but please don’t leave...”

I thank god for Sheryl Crow. I light a cigarette.

I pick Red up and listen to her cuss me out about being an hour late and how she thought I was dead in a ditch somewhere. My jaw is sore. I spit out the window. I try to make my hands stop shaking. I am pissed. I am unbelievably pissed. The anger feels empowering. I am not responding to anything she says. I want to tell her. I want to say something. But who the fuck would believe this? I can hardly believe it myself. She gives up trying to communicate. I gave up before I picked her up.

When we enter the Perkins parking lot and get out, I cringe and almost vomit. Three cop cars in the parking lot. I feel this insane urge to scream. What if he’s in there? We don’t find out. I tell Red I don’t feel like Perkins. In fact, Perkins is about the last thing I want right now. Red asks me about the bleeding cuts on the back of my neck. Where did they come from? I reach back there and feel inventory dust and a warm trickle of blood.

We end up at Denny’s instead.

Rain Makes Everything Stinky

Today at work was as boring as usual. My boss, The Scrump, showed up three and a half hours late. Nothing will happen to her. If it had been one of us lowly collectors, we would have been ass-over-teakettle on the pavement in a few seconds flat. I tried to do as little as possible, work-wise. Mainly I talked to Choirgirl and Cynicism Unbound and emailed Sarabellem. Jesus Freak wasn't at work, which was refreshing becuase that bastard NEVER misses work. The guy who sits about two desks away from me, Biceps, was looking as hot as usual and I was totally driven to distraction. He's one of those typical gym guys. I'm convinced he WANTS me to look at him because every time he catches me, he smiles. Big straight JERK! It's one of those look-but-don't-touch situations, so what's the freaking point? I told The Scrump that I am completely bored in my current position and want a change of some kind. I have been doing the same thing for a year and a half. She said she would look into it and get back to me. Here's hoping.

It rained pretty hard on the way to school. Since I am Public Transportation Guy, I am glad I had the foresight to bring my ridiculously big US Bank umbrella. It is so huge it could seriously cover an entire golf cart and it damn near picks me up off my feet when the wind blows the right way. I arrived at school relatively dry. My class tonight (Technology, Culture and Society) raised some interesting questions. The main one was: What if technology made it possible for us to work a ten hour work week and still make the same amount of money? Would it be a good or bad thing? The class was generally in agreement that it would be a good thing and I reiterated that point by offering up the story of my 8 1/2 months of unemployment. For the first 6 months I was bored and morose and lazy and apathetic. About month 7 I started to write. Yeah, it was crappy Buffy & Angel fan fiction (AKA Gay Vampire Porn) which (if you're TRULY interested, you can find here: http://shakycam3.blogspot.com but it got me writing for the first time in several years. The point being, I think if people truly had all of that time off, they would be bored couch potatoes for awhile, but eventually get energized to do something good with their time, or at least constructive.

One guy brought up that he only works part time and can easily support himself. How? He never buys anything. He buys clothes once every 2 years, only buys enough food for himself to eat and the rest of the money goes to rent and utilities. He calls himself "the anti-consumer". I think that's great. I wish we could all be anti-consumers. I can't help but think of The Man patting me on the head and saying "Good little consumer" every time I splurge at Target and buy a DVD or CD or when I blow a week's worth of grocery money in one sitting at some too-fancy restaurant.

When I was walking home (again in the rain, beneath my US Bank golf umbrella) I realized that everything stinks worse in the rain, including me. I was like: "Man, I have such bad BO right now!!" but then I passed a dumpster and a flattened rotting squirrel carcass and realized that EVERYTHING stinks worse when it's raining.

When I got home my heart skipped a beat. The DVD I ordered from Amazon a week ago is here!! Hooray for consumerism, The Man be damned!

1996 PART TWO: Cinco De-BANG!!!

"A man has gun, hey man have fun..."

From "Hey Man, Nice Shot" by Filter

May 4, 1996. Minnetonka, MN

I try to tell myself that things will be different this time, that we have all changed. It’s me, The Italian Stallion and Blondie hurtling down the highway toward Ridgedale again. I’m homeless now, Blondie is living with her grandmother and The Italian Stallion has a gun. A BIG gun. It’s a 44 Bulldog Special. 44s always did the most damage to zombies heads in Resident Evil. But this is 1996. I won’t know about Resident Evil for at least 2 more years.

Blondie is aiming the gun at the floor of the car, a manic gleam in her eyes. I’m freaking out at her. “Don’t you pull that fucking trigger. I WILL FUCK YOU UP!!” Who knows what will happen? We are flying down the freeway at sixty miles per hour. To this day no one has been able to explain to me what would have happened if she blew a hole in the passenger side of that car as we were driving. She eventually passes the gun back to The Stallion who shoves it back in his backpack. He gives me his, “No harm done” smile.

Later that night, we are in a darkened theater, “Leaving Las Vegas” flickering on the screen. During a boring part, I notice that The Stallion has the damn thing in the theater. I roll my eyes again. Does he think we’re going to get held up in Minnetonka? For what god-forsaken reason does he have the damn thing anyway? Another suburban white boy playing gangster.
It’s dark when we get out of the depressing movie and we all want to get drunk. Nothing new for us. Maybe we found the brutal images of Nicholas Cage drinking himself to death particularly inspiring. The Stallion has a fake ID so he scores us a bottle of Bacardi Limon and some of those fruity Jack Daniels things. Where to drink becomes the dilemma. Normally we’d just go hang out in a field somewhere and get “shitty” as we call it. But, this being Minnesota and all, the beginning of May doesn’t necessarily mean warm and balmy. There is a fine mist sifting down. I know my mother is not home at the moment. She goes to her boyfriend’s home up north every weekend. We head to Da Grove and try to break into the home I am not welcome in at the moment. We fail. We eventually end up at the Starlite Motel in Hilltop, a tiny, trailer-park ridden suburb I never knew existed until I opened the dingy curtains and saw the water tower.

May 5, 1996. Cinco DeMayo Hilltop, MN

A few hours later (past midnight), we are drunk as hell and completely out of liquor. The Stallion says that he and I should go back to his Aunt’s house and get his spare bottle of Captain Morgan’s. Blondie should wait at the hotel and we should leave her with the gun to “protect herself”. It makes perfect sense to me, even though this is a sleepy suburb of Minneapolis where you can probably walk down the street naked with hundred dollar bills strapped to your body and the most that will happen is someone will call 911 to send the paddy wagon because they are highly offended.

I try standing as The Stallion loads a fourth hollow point bullet into the hand cannon. He normally keeps three in there, he told me. He adds a fourth in case Blondie needs to use it while we are gone. Then, he reasons, when he comes back, with the dead intruder on the floor minus a face, his trusty Bulldog will have the usual 3 bullets in it and all will be right with the world. Again, it makes total sense to me as I sit cross-legged on the bed across from him. He is showing Blondie how to use it. He aims. He pulls the trigger.

The noise. The smoke. The fire coming from the barrel that just singed me. There is nothing else. My ears are damaged beyond repair because there is some kind of weird warbling hum. MY GOD THE ROOM IS FULL OF FUCKING SMOKE!! FIRE FIRE!! But something else has happened. Pause. Rewind. BANG-fire-smoke-slight jerk in my body-hummmmm... The fire from that gun really burned me. Even through the pillow on my lap. No. Something is wrong. Very wrong.

“Youjustfuckingshotme...”
“No, I didn’t.”

I pull the pillow off my lap and the cotton stretches into the hideous wound just above my knee. Panic, screaming, tears. Oh my god I’m going to fucking DIE!! I just got shot. People DIE when they get shot. It’s all over. The Stallion is talking about leaving and how we shouldn‘t mention his name when the cops get there. I start screaming in rage when I see him giving Blondie a passionate goodbye kiss by the door. Amazingly no one has gone for the phone which is right there. “YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES CALL THE POLICE!!”

Blondie shuts the door and loses it. “Ohmygoddude, ohmygoddude, ohmygodude...”
“BLONDIE GIVE ME THE FUCKING PHONE!!”

I call 911 and explain. Just been shot. Some godforsaken motel in Hilltop. I’m going to die. Please help. No. The guy who did it is gone. Don’t let me die. God it fucking hurts. Jesus, I’m still drunk. Don’t let me die. I’m never going to walk again.

The cops are there in about 30 seconds and they promptly point their guns at me. Shit, they’re here to finish me off, I raise my shaking hands in the air. The cops rush in and Blondie is a blonde blur going out the door. I don’t see her again that night. One big cop sends the other bed flying against the wall with a powerful kick and points his gun at the dust bunnies on the floor beneath it. Another kicks in the bathroom door. They look vaguely disappointed as they come to me and demand that I tell them who did this. I start sobbing and flailing saying that “I don’t know, I don’t know...”

A few seconds later the paramedics arrive and the cops are shooed away. They strap me on some blue plastic thing and carry me out. We’re on the second floor of one of those open air motels. A crowd has gathered down below. They carry me headfirst down the stairs, my bare feet catching the frigid, misty wind. I am at about a 45 degree angle, but I’m strapped in pretty good and these guys are strong. They toss me in an ambulance, strap an oxygen mask over my face to get me high and then ask me what hospital I want to go to. Since I’m still drunk and rapidly becoming woozy and light-headed from the pure oxygen I mumble something about the hospital I was born in. They ignore my request and we go bumping along to Hennepin County Medical Center in the heart of Murderapolis, sirens wailing.

It’s about 3AM when we arrive and there’s a lot going on. People OD-ing, drunks, angry fistfights, one guy comes in covered in blood and has to be tied down by five cops, all the while saying: “Stop-it-stop-it-stop-it-stop-it...” Even when he is sufficiently trussed up and left alone, he continues “Stop-it-stop-it-stop-it-stop-it...” I am shoved into a tiny curtained-off cubicle and left alone.

I’m still drunk. Someone behind the curtain on my left is crying.

BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS!!!

At the request of Sarabellem and Cynicism Unbound I am posting the following:

I am starting to find out what summer here in the Stevens Community is going to be like: LOUD!! My very first night in my third floor apartment back in February was an eye-opener. I was bruised and battered and beaten down by the move itself and by a stupid, draining fight between my good friend Wicca and I and was finally ready to hobble to bed. I shut off Mindy Smith and burped from eating too much at the celebratory dinner at Red Lobster with The Nurse and Math-girl and the second the silence enveloped my apartment and my soul for the first time that night I heard: “BLOW IT OUT YOUR ASS!!!” on the street below. Shocked and insulted I limped to the window and looked three floors down to the street. A domestic was going on. I caught the tail-end of it. There were squealing tires and a woman stormed into a nearby building and slammed the door.

The other day, bruised and battered after another day of working for The Man I had just sat down in front of my DVR’d episode of “Queer Eye” when I heard the following ensue, clear as day: “BITCH, I’m aboutta LEAVE yo slow ass!!” “Muthafucka you KNOW I got the fuckin BABY! I don’t know why yo ass wants to go to the sto' when you KNOW I ain’t got my fuckin check yet!!” There was something about putting the baby in the front seat so that she could drive and then: “Naw FUCK THAT!! You KNOW I ain’t gonna sit in the back seat in my OWN FUCKIN RIDE!” Doors slam. Tires screech. The end.

Ahh, the sounds of summer in Murderapolis!

1996 PART ONE: JAILBAIT

[Shakycam here with the first of several 1996 entries. You see, 1996 was an epically bad year for me. Expect several more 1996 entries mixed in with the present-day stuff in the future.]

The Italian Stallion drove the car into the ditch on purpose, I’m sure of it. The guy had amazing driving skills. Like the true hurricane and destroyer of everything in my life that I allowed him to be for those 3 months, this foolhardy and dramatic action was the catalyst that landed me in jail for the first time in my young life.

I threw a tantrum during the sub-zero walk back to Blondie’s house that night, expressing that my car would be pulled out of that fucking ditch if I had to tie a tow rope around it and drag it out with my teeth. Blondie was never good at being subtle and it was obvious to me that this turn of events was right up her alley; the Italian Stallion would be spending the night under her roof, and the two of them could continue their nauseating flirtation, uninterrupted. I, on the other hand, was picturing my own bed back in Da Grove, thank you very much, and the two of them could do whatever the hell they pleased. Blondie said her dad would be home in the morning and that I should just “chill” for the night. I considered calling a cab at one point, which you don’t really do in the suburbs unless you’re loaded and since I was chronically unemployed at the time, that was hardly the case.

I managed to drag a grumbling Blondie out to her father’s F150 and we bounced down the frigid road to the ditch, leaving The Italian Stallion behind in the warm house relaxing by the fire. Blondie tossed the tow rope around the trailer hitch on the back bumper, I got in the front seat and threw the car in reverse. It took about 5 seconds of tugging before the Oldsmobile jerked and Blondie was skidding down the road, pulling my bumper along the pavement behind her, sending up a brilliant shower of sparks like a hundred tiny orange stars.

“Oh shit, dude,” was all Blondie could say when I met her in the road and we surveyed the hopeless damage. It took both of us a great deal of straining and struggling to get the bumper into the back seat of the big car.

When we got back to the house, I stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door. I sat on the toilet and cried for about twenty minutes. After awhile, I stood and glanced out into the rustic backyard and blinked. A family of deer was nestled around the bird feeder, munching serenely. I watched them for about ten minutes, flicking their ears, completely unaffected by my presence, and the frigid temps.

It may have been one of these same deer that lost its’ life a few miles down the road from here a few months from now, when it darted out of the brush and slammed into the very car that was currently resting bumper-less in the ditch. I shit you not. The deer hit me, not the other way around. Stupid animals, really. It fucked my car up pretty bad.

I suddenly realized that no one had come to check on me. They didn’t even care enough to check on how I was doing. Stung, I stomped out of the bathroom and found them on the couch, giggling and cuddling. I threw myself into one of the kitchen chairs which was actually a plastic lawn chair. Blondie’s father had lost everything in the divorce.

I made myself an incredibly strong Bacardi OJ and gulped it down bitterly, hoping for the kind of sour drunkenness that would allow me to unabashedly vent on these two and blame it on the liquor later. I ended up just getting really depressed and really bad heartburn because I had an empty stomach. Apparently, he lost all the food in the divorce, too.

I don’t know where I slept or if I slept that night. If I did it was fitfully at best. Blondie’s father arrived early that morning and he and some co-workers pulled my bumper-less car out of the ditch in less than 30 seconds. Her father scolded Blondie for being a dumbass, telling her that she knew she should have put the rope around the frame somewhere.

For me, that was the beginning of the end of my friendship with The Italian Stallion (the first time, anyway) and it wasn’t just because I knew he had done it on purpose, but because my job as his wheel man was at an end because you can get pulled over and ticketed for not having a bumper and The Italian Stallion had an intense fear of cops. At the time, I also had bench warrants and no insurance and all of our haunts were prowled by hyperactive and incredibly bored suburban cops. The Italian Stallion had, in effect, rendered me car-less, and that was the final insult. Also, a lot of his initial intrigue and mystery had dissipated when I began to realize he was merely fucked in the head like the rest of us.

I drove him home that bright morning, still too young for a real hangover, but complaining of one nonetheless. I was pissed off, laughing at the cops that didn’t notice, daring them to pull me over. He got out at his place saying he‘d call me later when I was sane. I giggled and gave him the finger as I pulled away. I cranked up the stereo, singing at the top of my lungs, and made it all the way home without incident where I finally collapsed in bed and cried. To be without a car in the suburbs is a sad fate indeed, and at last I was alone to truly sink into despair.

February 13, 1996
There is a feeling akin to electrocution when you see those flashing red lights in your rearview mirror and you have no insurance, several bench warrants and unpaid parking tickets under your belt. I believe they call this the fight or flight response. I know why those dumbasses on “World’s Scariest Police Chases” take off. Because running is much less terrifying than “coming down with a serious case of handcuffs” as I heard the over-dramatic narrator dryly intone once. They have nothing left to lose. I knew how they felt. I was a wanted man, a fugitive, and now I was being brought down by the long arm of the law.

I expected he would take me to the nearby Da Grove jail where I had heard they serve you Happy Meals and let you watch Cable TV in your very own roomy cell. Nothing could prepare me for the numb horror that followed the words: “I’m gonna have to take you downtown”. It also wasn’t nearly as thrilling as I expected it to be handcuffed and helped into the tiny confines of the backseat. It’s not like it looks in the movies at all when the hero valiantly struggles and screams desperately: “Wait!! You don’t understand!! You’re making a big mistake!!” That they WEREN’T making a big mistake was one part, but the other part was that all I could manage when I felt the cold steel snap around my wrists was a wimpy “Ow!”

It hurt being in that backseat. It’s not as fun as you might think, being trussed up like an animal in the back of a cop car. I first surveyed this big cop who had been my downfall and tried to picture him saying in a sexy growl, “You’re in a lot of trouble kid. Maybe if you do me a favor I can pretend we’ve never met, heh heh.” It was even harder to picture with the photo of him and the two fat kids grinning cheekily at me from the dashboard. And the chances of that happening twice in one year was just plain ridiculous. This time I was “going downtown” but not in the fun way.

My car looked sad, betrayed and forlorn as it was towed away to god knows where. I finally had to lay down helplessly. It made me mad that this was necessary, an impotent complaint that haunts me to this day. Why wasn’t this jerk after the REAL criminals? Crack fiends, child pornographers, rapists, muggers, pimps and politicians were cheerfully going about their dastardly business that day while they were carting my suburban butt 20-plus miles to the Castle of Greyskull in the heart of the big, scary city.

The big cop tried to give me a pep talk, told me that drugs were bad and when I mentioned I had been hanging around stupid people he took that and ran. “You’re twenty years old. Time to stop running around with a bad crowd and get a life.”

I pictured being a valedictorian of a class of some kind sometime in the future, the bizarre flat square hat perched nobly on my head, my face aged a bit by the passage of time, the hard-won knowledge I had received. I would wait for the cheers to die down, for everyone to take their seats as I cleared my throat and thanked everyone for their contributions because I couldn’t have done it alone, but especially thanks to Officer so-and-so who had stopped my runaway 20 year old train from jumping the tracks and truly helped me be what I am today. I even saw this cop, an honored special guest withered with age with tears in his eyes take a grateful bow at his standing ovation.

But they were just words. This cop was an unbelievable asshole. He was ruining my day and bringing me to a place where unspeakably horrible things were about to befall me. I imagined prison rape (and not the sexy kind in gay porn: “I‘d rather be YOUR bitch. At least you‘re HOT! PLEASE protect me!” -cue the cheesy techno and disrobing), beatings, brutal guards, deadly shanks made out of toothbrushes, being passed like currency between fat, drooling, foul inmates, and being forced to ingest all manner of drugs. I assumed I would be released whenever I was released HIV positive, hooked on smack, beaten beyond recognition and horribly scarred with razor blade tattoos that said “Butch’s Bitch” on what was left of my abused ass. I was no fool. I had seen “Bad Boys” and “Lock-up”. I thank god to this day that “Oz” wasn’t in existence yet. I would have passed out dead at the thought of going to jail if it had been.

When we were downtown and stuck in traffic I made myself look as much like a mad criminal as I could, sneering out of the backseat and scaring little kids and old ladies. Everyone else seemed to be looking at me how I looked at people trussed in the back of cop cars: “Ha Ha!! You got fucked UP!!”

What surprised me the most was the mind-numbing, bone-rattling boredom of it all. At least if I was being raped or force-fed drugs or tattooed I would have had something to do. I literally just SAT there for nearly ten hours listening to mindless banter, being shuffled from room to room (all of them reeked like the locker room in Junior High) with all manner of screwed up humanity as my company. There were drunks, thugs, dope fiends, and other bewildered suburbanites like me.

One of the worst rooms was packed and had a toilet sitting right out in the open. I was so horrified at the thought of having to use it I don’t know if I shit or pissed for a week afterwards. Others weren’t as horrified. A guy sat down and took a shit and I can say it was one of the most interesting things that happened in those ten hours. We all watched.

I truly believe I hallucinated out of sheer boredom. I started getting really nervous about the people around me. Didn’t this guy next to me have something that said “Wanton Serial Killer” around the eyes and mouth? I read everything I possibly could. I tore the labels out of my clothing (including my underwear) so I could read about permanent press, etc. I even considered asking other people for their labels as well. I couldn’t read the labels on my shoes because they had taken them and given me big, cheap flip-flops. Apparently, they thought I might try to hang myself with the shoelaces at some point and as the hours droned on I was stung that I wasn’t left with that option.

At one point in the toilet room, there was a murmur as one of the doors opened and the saddest human being, accompanied by a gruff, brutal-looking armed guard, served us what was considered lunch downtown. Call it an Un-happy meal. It was two soggy baloney sandwiches with nauseatingly thick slices of waxy government cheese and a bruised apple. So that’s how I ate the worst sandwich of my life. On the concrete floor of a holding cell in downtown Murderapolis a few feet from a toilet. I passed the mushy red apple off to a twitchy character near the door.

The next room I was in was full of activity. A guard called our names one at a time and we were made to line up in a grim hallway lined with guards. Then we started a slow-shuffle walk to the end where a guard with a clipboard waited. With dawning horror I realized this was a Nazi-esque selection process. If the guard pointed to the left, you were handed an orange jumpsuit and were staying for the night. If he pointed to the right you were given your ONE PHONE CALL and were going home at some point. My heart thudded dully as I watched the crestfallen men accept their ugly construction-orange jumpsuits and line up against a wall, looking stunned and horrified.

I don’t know if the words that came out of my mouth sounded as much like a prayer to the surly guard as they did to me. “Name?” he growled. “Shaky Please Jesus God Christ Almighty NOT THE LEFT Cam please please please...” He smacked his gum and his evil eyes glittered at me briefly before he grunted and pointed to the right. “SWEET JESUS THANK YOU!!” I don’t now if I actually said that. The funny thing is, I am not even remotely Christan, but any crutch will do in times of abject terror.

I was so giddy at the thought of my imminent freedom I didn’t mind that I was fingerprinted like a common sneak thief with big goopy ink and then had my picture taken with the card (YES THE CARD) held beneath my chin first facing forward, then a profile. I wanted to ask the prison photographer how I could get a copy of the picture to send out as Christmas cards, but I was shoved into another room.

My one phone call was to my mother. She was horrified at the thought of having to come downtown after a hard day at work. Believing my release was imminent I told her to come down as soon as possible. This was 6PM. Little did I know I wouldn’t be out of there until after 11PM. Yes FIVE hours from then.

The last room was the worst because I spent five hours in it. It had the acoustics of a locker room shower and several drunks talking at the top of their lungs. There were a group of thugs from the same gang there that were incredibly nice, contrary to my suburban picture of GANG MEMBERS. They called me “Cuz”. “Whatcha in for, cuz?” “No insurance.” “HAHAHAHAHA!” A little later when a twitchy little dope fiend started hassling me, they told me to come over and sit by them. I spent the last few hours in their company where they mostly talked about their “Bitches”. They never engaged me in conversation, just seemed to watch over me, for whatever reason.

I waited for the phone in this room for nearly an hour. The guy in front of me spent all sixty minutes arguing with his girlfriend. He never once referred to her as anything but “bitch” and “ho”. In fact, those two words flew out of his mouth so many times I think if I had called a female of any kind at that point I would have said: “What’s up, bitch?” because my brain was so polluted with bitches and hoes. As it was, I called my friend Sexy who was befuddled to see “Inmate” come up on his caller ID. I was on the phone with him for about two minutes when a guard came in and called my name. The conversation went something like: “Yeah. No insurance. Can you believe it? I’ve been here for nine and a half damn hours and OH MY GOD I’M FUCKING GETTING LET OUT OF HERE!!”

I remember this cracked everyone in the room up and they howled in laughter when I dashed out of the room and hugged the stunned guard, surliness be damned.

I was given all of my belongings back, and for some reason the money I had (three dollars in change) was given back to me in the form of a check. The gravity of my situation didn’t sink in until I was outside. My mom was long gone and I was stuck in the middle of downtown Murderapolis at NIGHT without even a quarter to call anyone to come and get me. I grumbled something about becoming a real criminal as I stomped to my friend Ryan’s apartment at the University of Minnesota, 3 miles away.