She said “ You’re totally older than me, I mean I’m only sixteen, but we should get together and do something. I think you’re a lot of fun.”
“Here’s my number,” she told me as she handed me a piece of paper. “If my Dad answers tell him that you’re my English teacher. Oh look, there he is!” She waved at a rich looking couple standing outside King Street Station. Holy shit. I needed to get out of here. How many laws had I just broken?
I was happy to get on the bus and get out of there. I got on and a bitter old woman tore into me for the holes in the knees of my jeans.
“What possible excuse can you have for being such a loser at your age?” the baggy old gal carped at me.
“At least I don’t pay two dollars extra for a carton of milk I can get by walking a couple of blocks cause some dot com company will deliver it if I order it online!” I said, completely confusing her and the issue. It made sense to me.
She looked at me like I was crazy. Maybe I was as I continued to look out the window at the snow covered Seattle landscape.
The Dogcatcher Cometh
I never bothered paying the $50 to license my dog with the city of Seattle. I wasn’t the best dog owner. I would make sure she had food and take her for walks but she got left alone a lot. She had all of her shots. She was spayed. She minded well and didn’t run away. Besides, she had a tag with her name and my phone number on it in case. So why should I pay $50 to register her? I only had $30 anyway.
Shakra was a little blue heeler and I was in the habit of taking her to a little park near my house in Green Lake, a district of Seattle, in the mornings and evenings and playing Frisbee. She was a great Frisbee dog and it was fun for me to have people stand around and oooh and ahhh when she’d leap in the air. One morning, I woke up a little later than usual and we started down the street. I rarely used a leash as she was highly trained and would heel on command.
Something felt funny as we approached the park. It was too late by the time I noticed the dogcatcher. He called me over and I nonchalantly told Shakra to heel so that he would see it was no big deal I was breaking Seattle’s leash law.
“Where’s your leash?” he asked me in a belligerent tone.
I held up the Frisbee smiling. “She’s never more than a foot away from this,” I told him. I tossed it so he could see how good a dog she was.
“Is that dog licensed?” he asked, again belligerent.
“Of course she is,” I lied. “See, I have doggie bags too!” I’d brought a pocket full of plastic grocery bags to pick up her shit.
“I’m going to have to write you a ticket for not having her on the leash,” he told me with a smile on his face. “And if she’s not wearing a license, I’ll need to take her in until you can come with the proof of it.”
“Oh, give me a break…are you serious? You’re going to expose my dog to all those diseases and write me a ticket? Come on, have a heart.”
“Are you trying to interfere with a Seattle Law Enforcement Officer’s duties? Should I call the police?” He loved the fact that he was an officer of the Law.
“Yeah, you better call em you fat old fuck ‘cause there’s no way YOU are gonna catch either me or my dog. Get over yourself TJ Hooker.” I couldn’t believe it as the words came out of my mouth. This guy would probably kill my dog now. We had to run.
I bolted into the woods and through the park. I saw him driving his truck around and intentionally ran the opposite direction from the safety of my house. Shakra was beside me, loving this new game. We jumped over hedges, cut through alleyways, and still the dogcatcher’s truck was behind us. He knew these streets all right.
I saw two garbage trucks blocking both lanes of the road ahead. Here was my chance. The drivers were having a little joke. I ran between them and cut left once I was out of sight of the dogcatcher. A short run up a hill and through a rhododendron put me back in my yard in Greenlake. It was a fun morning and a fun run. Thank you Mr. Dog Catcher.
Farters and Axe Murderers on Greyhound
I’ve heard they’ve gotten better but here was what a bus ride on a Greyhound looked like in 1998.
The bus ride was fairly uneventful. The first person to sit next to me was a sweet looking old woman who got on the bus in Centralia, Washington. I made room for her and she pulled out a little crochet pillow and quickly fell asleep. It was about 10 PM. I was reading and watching the lights go by. Happy to be on the road to somewhere.
First she began to snore. I pulled out my walkman and put in a mix tape the girl I was madly in love with had made for me. That’s when I noticed the smell. It smelled like a dirty old turd on that bus. I took off the headphones right after ‘The Revolution will Not be Televised.”
She was farting. About every two seconds that old broad would let one rip. Pfthhhhwwwwrrrp! The smell was horrible. I looked around hoping that there was another seat open. No way. I was stuck. A guy across the aisle looked at me with sympathy and shared suffering.
It was a moral dilemma. Should I wake her up and ask her to please stop farting? Was that rude? Was it more rude than her farting? I looked at her sweet old snoring face and shook her awake.
“Ma’am? Ma’am?” I shook her harder. Another fart came out. She opened her old blue eyes.
“Is everything alright? Oh, goodness, was I snoring honey? “ She asked…
I couldn’t do it. “No, I just need to get by you so that I can use the restroom.” She kept farting all the way to Roseburg. Everyone on the bus seemed relieved when she left.
My next seat companion told me he had just been released from prison. I asked what his crime was.
“I killed fourteen people with an axe,” he said and then laughed, “but the doctor says I’m getting better.“ Was he joking? “Hey have you seen my medication?” Yeah, he was joking. I hoped. Prison humor. Ha ha.
He pulled a bottle of rum and a coke out of his bag and asked me if I wanted some. I handed him my half empty coke and he filled it with rum. I gave him a few of the morphine tablets I had in my pocket figuring it wouldn’t hurt to have him mellow. Just in case.
It was a pretty typical Greyhound experience. Nobody slept on my shoulder though. One of my good buddies had once sat next to a pretty girl on a Greyhound and then fucked her in the bathroom of the bus. Things like that never happened to me.
We arrived in Sacramento at about three o’clock in the afternoon. My buddy the axe-murderer and I grabbed a beer in the dingy bar next to the bus station. He gave me his number and told me if I needed work to call him. I hadn’t told him I was catching a train at nine that evening back to where I had come from.
You gotta love travel just for travel’s sake. Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me.
Airport Crime
I had to pick George Hush up from the airport at 11:58.I took a shower and got dressed. I wore a black suit so I would look corporate but ruined the effect by wearing my old hat. I looked like a petty thief or a conman. I set out to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
When I got to the airport I checked out the baggage claim area then took a walk up to the lost and found. I wanted a black parka. I told the lady that I had left my coat in the Delta section a couple of days before and described the coat I wanted. She went back and looked. “All I found is this black fleece,” she said.