“That’s the one!” I lied and then joked about being forgetful while putting on my new coat.
George got off the plane. He was one of the few people who weren’t already talking on their cell phones. Most of them seemed to be attempting to find the perfect pose for a sophisticated television commercial. Trying to impress the crowd with their importance. George looked like a mobster in his shiny black leather coat. We shook hands.
“Hey, I met these kind folks on the plane and they’re going to Anchorage and have a long layover can we take em to a mall or something?”
“Yeah, no problem. You got bags?”
He introduced me to his new friends. They lived deep in the interior of Alaska. We all went to baggage claim where George got his bag and I got a suitably corporate bag of my own. The girl freaked out when she noticed.
“My god, you’re stealing someone’s bag. Put it back”
“What? We just met, what are you implying?” Yeah. I was stealing a bag. It was a stupid thing to do, but I wanted to see if I could. I should have listened to her.
“Put it back.” She whispered.
“I can’t believe you’d even imply that” I said. “Are we ready?” I pulled out the handle and wheeled my bag behind me.
George walked next to me.
“That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, pretty crazy” I said.
“You,” he laughed, “You’re crazy.”
Once we got in the car, the girl was the first one to unzip the bag. Her boyfriend let out a yell.
“All right! You got a video camera.”
They inventoried everything out loud. Lots of tooth whitening products, skin products, a few porn mags, and the video camera. The girl started feeling guilty and started to make light like we could go back and get lots of stuff and take it to the pawnshop. She gave me a karmic warning with a story about how she stole and it came back to her. I laughed and told her that I fully expected to lose all of my possessions. I never planned to keep anything for very long anyway.
We dropped them off at a mall so they could see a movie and then George and I went to breakfast. We sat at a table where the sun was keeping us warm. The waiter kept asking us if we wanted him to close the blind, we kept saying no, and finally he closed it halfway and said “otherwise its in my face:” I wouldn’t mention it, but it’s a great example of how people often pretend they are concerned about you, but they are actually trying to accomplish their own ends and make you feel obligated at the same time. He could have just said “Do you mind if I close the blind?” Instead, it was that whole charade.
It was near Halloween and George needed to go to the fabric store to get material for his costume. He was going to be Mr. Hanky, the Christmas Poo, a giant turd that spreads Christmas cheer. George even had fart spray. Leave it to George to spray fart spray in his own bedroom. About 10:00 PM the whole gang showed up. Tom, the spaceman, Mike, the leprechaun, Evelyn the peacock, Andie as old topless Bo-Peep, George as Mr. Hanky, and me as a Zombie Detective.
I was out of money and wanted to avoid going to a bar, after all there were free drinks waiting at the party, but the girls were insistent on stopping by Le Chat Noir for a couple of drinks. My friends don’t live like millionaires, but they like to live it up by going to their favorite semi-fancy bar once in a while. It was always the same and always a little bit of a shame on my empty wallet and on George’s this time. George covered my three whiskeys. I loved that place. Random, the bartender, always treated us like we were important, even if we were just a bunch of bums.
“Hey, guess what?” Little Joe came up and put his arms around George and me. “ I finally told my family I’m gay…by e-mail. I sent it to my mom and she forwarded it to my dad and brother.” The girls had to keep telling him to leave us straight boys alone.
We all got in cars and set off for the party where we parked on the street and smoked cocaine. Suddenly things were kicking up.
We drank and smoked out in a hot tub at a house Little Joe had been watching. The owners of the house were away on vacation. A very drunken hot tub party that was hell on those of us wearing makeup. We made use of their gourmet kitchen, their hot tub, their wine cellar, and their liquor cabinet.
I tried to let the social lubricant work its magic. It just didn’t happen. I kept drinking the huge drinks. A little later I looked up from my stupor and a cop walked in. He was looking around with a flashlight. I was beyond remembering I was at a costume party. I saw a cop drinking and dancing with pretty girls and then suddenly pulling his gun out. The horror of a drunken cop waving his gun around freaked me out. I felt the cold steel of the 45 on my forehead, my temple, and under my jaw. I’d had lots of bad experiences with guns, this just sort of brought everything together. Then I threw up and walked back to George’s.
I asked Little Joe the next week if he got in any trouble over it.
“Nah, it turns out they came back two days late and the owners brother had a party after I vacated… he got the heat… how do you like that?” We both laughed.
China Luck
I called my brother about a week into 2001.He was disappointed that I was living in my car.
“It may seem cute at 29, “ he said, “But it won’t be so cute when you’re 50.” I thought about Aquillo… no he wasn’t cute, but he was definitely better than some lonely and jaded stockbroker living in a mansion. At least to me.
“I just don’t like the culture we have here.” I told him.
He thought for a minute and then said, “You should go to Asia. It would do you good to see how other people live.”
I agreed with him, it would be good for me to go to Asia. I’d always had a fantasy to climb Mt. Taishan, a holy Taoist mountain in China. Sure, Asia would be great. Neither of us bothered thinking about how a homeless, unemployed guy manages to travel halfway around the world.
He said it and I agreed with the result being a decision on my part to go to China. If I saved my unemployment checks, I figured I could be in Beijing in early March. I wasn’t doing a real good job of saving so far, but I figured once I had my traffic fines paid off, it would be easy.
As I drove to Bellingham the moon was rising over a mountain and being reflected onto a lake. It was a huge oblong yellow disk like a Chinese painting of Tao. I knew it was a good omen and knew I would stop at the casino and win enough to pay off all my fines and give me a head start on the travel money.
"Ah ha! That’s how I’ll get to China.” I inherited an addiction to slot machines from my grandfather. It’s easy to rationalize a reason to gamble. I thought about the foolishness of spending half my $38, but I figured I would only spend $18 on the dollar slots and then I would leave.
I was doing okay, up to $39 from my starting $18 and then I started losing. I stopped at $23 and figured I should walk out a winner. There was something about the slot machine that told me to get another $18 and go for it. I lost for three pulls in a row, then hit the double diamond gold and won $800! Grandpa spent a lot of time in Asia too and I figured he was helping me out.
The first thing I did was to pay off the remainder of my fines. Next I bought breakfast and a Lonely Planet guidebook to China, and started to visit travel agents. It looked like I would need about $1500 total to make the trip work.
I drove down to the beach and got a little fire going and one of Jesus’s reformed heroin addicts came and filled up all the quiet with so much Jesus mumbo jumbo. It seems like Jesus saves a lot of addicts by replacing heroin with himself.