It is dark and not smoky because of the new smoking laws.
It is lame.
I want to sit in a dark and smoky bar, but I’m just in a dark bar instead.
“Chang!”
“What?”
“You know what is wrong with this country?”
“It seems fine to me. Everybody is miserable. I’ve never expected anything less of life.”
“That’s good, but I’m not talking about elevating misery. I’m fine with misery, I’m used to it, I’ve grown up miserable, and now I’m a miserable adult. That’s fine, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about when our fucking government infringes on our right to be miserable. We should be allowed to smoke in bars and get cancer.”
“That’s true. We should be allowed to ruin our lives through free will.”
“Yes, let us ruin our lives!”
“We’re miserable no matter what. We get paid shit to work our asses off, gas prices rise every day, everybody is on anti-depressants or coke or Oxies, our daughters get pregnant at twelve, life is all-around miserable, and they care about smoking,” Chang says.
“Yes, motherfuckers!”
Kathy finally finishes a dance for a customer. She comes over and says, “What do you boys need?”
Chang protects his crotch.
“We need to find a drug dealer to sell Oxies to,” I say.
“Where the fuck did you assholes get Oxies?” Kathy says.
“Mind your own fucking business, and give us a name,” I say, like a badass.
“So now you’re a badass, Vasily?”
“What do you want?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“Okay.”
I pull twenty out and give it to her.
Kathy says, “All right, I’ll make a call and tell the person you’re coming over. I’ll be right out.”
Kathy walks to the dressing room.
Chang looks at me and says, “She’s going to set us up and we’re going to get shot.”
“No, we aren’t.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“It isn’t like we’re going to go in there and piss them off. Drug dealers shoot people that piss them off. We’re going to go in, get the money, hand over the pills, and leave. That’s all. None of that could result in us getting shot in the face and dumped in the Mahoning.”
“No, we’re dead,” Chang says.
“No, we are not, we’re fine. Listen, we tell them our names, they will instantly recognize that I’m Russian and you’re Chinese. They will assume that I’m related to people in the Russian Mafia and you’re related to people in the Triad.”
“That sounds insane. My dad owns a Chinese takeout place.”
“Yeah, so, who gives a fuck. What else do we have to do besides pretend we are people we aren’t.”
“That’s a good point. Being one’s self all the time is taxing.”
Kathy walks out of the bathroom, comes over and says to us, “Okay motherfuckers, the guy said you two can come. He’s at 45 East Evergreen in Youngstown. It is a two-story green house off Market Street. You know where that is?”
“Yeah, who doesn’t,” I say.
“Either of you want a dance?”
“No thank you, we gotta go.”
“See ya later, assholes,” Kathy says.
Chang and I head out the door to Youngstown.
18
Chang and I are driving down Market Street.
Chang says, “This place is a shithole.”
“No shit.”
“It looks like ruins.”
“It is ruins.”
We stop at a red light.
We watch an older white guy with messed-up hair and an unshaved face sit on a park bench. An older black guy stumbling a little walks over and sits next to him. The older white guy hands him something and they both sadly laugh.
“This is really bleak,” I say.
“We need to sell these drugs and get on with our lives.”
“These people live like this every day,” I say.
“That’s why I hide in my room on SSI. I’m hiding from this.”
“You hide from everything.”
“I know, I don’t want to see the rich with their Hummers or the poor with their crack pipes or the blue collar laying concrete. I don’t want it.”
“Nobody seems happy about this,” I say.
“No, nobody is. Since the Renaissance with the help of oil we have been building a nightmare. But we’ve been working so slowly building it, and each person does their own little thing, that we haven’t noticed that we’ve built a nightmare, an absolute nightmare we don’t want, we never wanted. We were five years old and didn’t it want then, and we get older and we still don’t want the damn thing. But we’re trapped in it. We’re all closed in by it. Either we obey the machinery of this monster, or the monster starves us, the monster exiles us to be alone, and who wants to be alone against the monster. The monster is too big, too enormous. It has too many arms, legs, eyes, and guns. The monster even has bibles and constitutions, the monster has laws with policemen and armies guarding the laws. It has television shows, book companies, radio stations, it has the food, the water, the electricity and the oil. It has everything, and it is not operated by humankind any longer. Back in the day one tribe could kill another tribe and take their shit, but there is no tribe. There is the monster, and even if one of the big businessmen decided one day to not be part of the monster, the other big businessmen would kill him, because there is no human behind this. This monster we call civilization, this giant we have built with our minds and hands is now beyond our control. We don’t control the monster anymore, it controls us,” Chang says.
“It terrifies us into submission by being so huge.”
“It encompasses everything. There is nothing the monster has left untouched. We eat the monster’s food, we drink the monster’s water, we watch the monster’s television, and all at the same time we are the monster. The monster has a place for everyone, if it be homelessness or the owner of a Subway.”
I drive in silence.
I feel incredibly hopeless.
I start to wish that the drug dealers will kill us as soon as we walk in.
We are on the street.
The street has mostly abandoned buildings.
Several weeks ago, four men were shot to death in their living room on this street.
It looks like a good place for a horror movie.
We are at the house.
We walk in.
A large black man named Rick sits on a couch playing video games.
A fat white guy plays video games with him.
A white girl who seems to be talking to herself is sitting in the kitchen playing with scraps of paper.
And a skinny little black dude with acne scars is passed out on a loveseat.
We sit on milk crates in the living room.
Rick says, “You know Kathy?”
I say, “Yeah, I’ve known her from the Lampost Lounge for years.”
“You know that bitch is crazy, right?”
He doesn’t stop playing video games the whole time he is talking.
“Yeah, she doesn’t seem right,” I say.
“What your boys’ names?”
“I’m Vasily and this is Chang.”
“Vasily and Chang, those are some fucked-up names. What nationalities are you?”
“I’m Russian. Came oven when I was six.”
“I’m Chinese. Came over when I was five.”
“A couple of fucking communists. My dad fought the communists in Vietnam.”
This shit happens to us all the time.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Yeah, he said commies fight like hell. Don’t fuck with them. So I ain’t gonna fuck with you two. You both look kind of nuts to me.”
The fat white guy looks at us and says, “You two do look nuts,” and then he laughs hysterically.