Ben is not I-like-to-meet-new-people guy. He’s I’m-reading-my-frea king-newspaper-and-flirting-with-the-waitress-so-leave-me-the-fuck-alo ne guy.
So he said, “Bro, no offense, but I’m kind of into what I’m reading.”
Like, there are five empty tables, why don’t you sit down at one of them?
The guy said, “I’ll only take a minute of your time, son.”
“I’m not your son,” Ben said. “Unless my mother has been deceiving me all these years.”
“Shut your smartass mouth and listen,” the guy said quietly. “We didn’t mind when you were selling a little custom shit to your friends. But when it starts showing up in Albertsons, it’s a problem.”
“It’s a free market,” Ben answered, thinking he sounded like a Republican all of a sudden. Seeing as how Ben is generally to the left of Trotsky, this came as an unpleasant epiphany.
“There is no such thing as a ‘free market,’” Old Guys Rule said. “The market costs-there are expenses. You want to sell up in L.A., compete with our little brown and black brothers, be our guest. Orange County, San Diego, Riverside-you pay a licensing fee. Are you paying attention?”
“I’m riveted.”
“Are you clowning me?”
“No.”
“Because I wouldn’t like that.”
“And I wouldn’t blame you,” Ben said. “So, for the sake of discussion, what happens if I don’t pay this licensing fee?”
“You don’t want to find out.”
“Okay, but just for the sake of discussion.”
Old Guys Rule looked at him like he was wondering if this kid was fucking with him, and then said, “We put you out of business.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Ben asked. He saw the look on the guy’s face and said, “I know-I don’t want to find out. And if I do pay this fee?”
OGR held out his hands and said, “Welcome to the market.”
“Got it.”
“So we have an understanding.”
“We do,” Ben said.
OGR smiled.
Satisfied.
Until Ben added, “We have an understanding you’re an asshole.”
Because it’s also Ben’s understanding that no one controls the marijuana market.
Cocaine-yes. That would be the Mexican cartels.
Heroin-ditto.
Meth-the biker gangs, more recently the Mexicans.
Prescription pills-the pharmaceutical industry.
But the 420?
Free market.
Which is excellent, because it runs by market rules-price point, quality, distribution.
The customer is king.
So Ben pretty much dismissed this guy as some whack-job trying to jerk his chain. Still, it’s a little troubling, Ben thought-how does the guy know who I am?
And who is this guy?
Whoever he is, he gave Ben one of those old-school stares until Ben actually had to laugh.
OGR stood up and said, “You motherfuckers think you’re the kings of cool, right? You know everything, no one can tell you anything? Well, let me tell you something-you don’t know shit.”
OGR gave Ben one more Bobby Badass look and then walked out.
The kings of cool, Ben thought.
He kind of liked it.
Now he turns his attention back to the game.
5
“I’m pretty sure that’s illegal,” Ben says, lacing his fingers behind his head and tilting his face to the sun.
“To have sex with a deer, or with a cartoon character?” Chon asks.
“Both,” Ben says. “And may I point out that Bambi is an underage animated ungulate? Not to mention a male?”
“Bambi is a boy?” O asks.
“Again, Bambi is a deer, ” Ben clarifies, “but, yes, he’s a boy deer.”
“Then why are so many girls in Playboy named Bambi?” O asks.
She likes Playboy and is grateful that Stepfather Number Four keeps them in his “home office” desk drawer so Paqu Paqu is what O calls her mother, the
Passive Aggressive Queen of the Universe — doesn’t see them and get pissy because she is an older version of the centerfolds who is constantly attempting to airbrush herself via expensive cosmetics and more expensive cosmetic surgery.
O is pretty sure that the National Geographic Channel is going to do an archaeological dig on her mother in a futile quest to find a single original body part, a private joke that explains why O gave Four a pith helmet for his last birthday.
(“Why, thank you, Ophelia,” a puzzled Four said.
“You’re welcome.”
“What’s it for?” Paqu asked, icily.
“To keep the sun off your vagina,” O answered.)
“Girls are named Bambi,” Ben says now, “because we are culturally ignorant, of even pop culture, and because we crave the archetype of childlike innocence combined with adult sexuality.”
His parents are both psychotherapists.
Ben, oh Ben, O thinks.
Hard body, soft heart.
Long brown hair, warm brown eyes.
“But that’s me, ” O tells him. “Childlike innocence combined with adult sexuality.”
Short blonde hair, thin hips, no rack to speak of, tiny butt on her petite frame. And yes, big eyes-albeit blue, not brown.
“No,” Ben says. “You’re more adult innocence combined with childlike sexuality.”
He has a point, O thinks. She does view sex mostly as play-a fun thing-not a job to be performed to prove one’s love. This is why, she has opined, they’re called sex “toys” instead of sex “tools.”
“ Bambi is a proto-fascist piece of work,” Chon snarls. “It might as well have been shot by Leni Riefenstahl.”
Chon reads books-Chon reads the dictionary — and also hits the Foreign Films/Classics section of Netflix. He could explain 8 ^1 / 2 to you, except he won’t.
“Speaking of gender ambiguity,” O says, “I told Paqu that I’m thinking of becoming bisexual.”
“What did she say?” Ben asks.
“She said, ‘What?’” O answers. “Then I wussed out and said, ‘I think I want a bicycle.’”
“To pedal to your girlfriend’s house?” Ben asks.
“To pedal to your girlfriend’s house,” O counters.
She could play for either or both teams and would be heavily recruited because, at nineteen, she’s drop-dead gorgeous.
But she doesn’t know that yet.
O describes herself as “poly-sexual.”
“Like Pollyanna, only way happier,” she explains.
She would consider going LTG Lesbian Till Graduation — except she isn’t in school, a fact that Paqu points out to her on a near daily basis. She tried junior college for a semester (okay, the first three weeks of a semester), but it was, well… junior college.
Right now she’s just glad to have her guys here. As for ODB, they can have any women they want, as long as one of them is her.
Check that, she thinks They can have any woman they want as long as I’m the one they love.
The pain of it is
The pain of it is
Chon flies out tonight
This is his last day on the beach.
6
Specifically, Laguna Beach, California.
The brightest pearl in the SoCal necklace of coastal towns that stretches down that lovely neck from Newport Beach to Mexico.
Going along the strand (pun intended) — Newport Beach, Corona del Mar, Laguna Beach, Capistrano Beach, San Clemente (interrupt for Camp Pendleton), Oceanside, Carlsbad, Leucadia, Encinitas, Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Solana Beach, Del Mar, Torrey Pines, La Jolla Shores, La Jolla, Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, Coronado, Silver Strand, Imperial Beach.
All beautiful, all fine, but the best one is Lagoona — which was the name officially given to the town by the State of California until someone explained that there was no actual “lagoon,” but that the name derived from “ canada de las lagunas, ” which in Spanish means “canyon of the lakes.” There are two lakes, up in the hills above said canyon, but Laguna isn’t known for its lakes, it’s known for its beaches and its beauty.