I have not slept. This afternoon will reach the forty-eight hour mark. But, let's take a look into the past again, shall we? Let's go back to the time Blue told me to "Try this."
My friend Richie had been cruising up and down a local river in a jon boat with a small car-battery powered motor. He'd been trying to convince Blue and I to go for a ride with him but as we felt we had better things to do, he eventually gave up.
At first thought, I was skeptical of intentional overdose on anything, let alone, cough medicine. But, I'd swallowed the pills. And, we waited.. After about an hour, curiosity began to surface in my ever skeptical mind as to if I had consumed enough of this drug to feel it's effects. Pondering this thought, I began to notice things around me. Leaves on branches that were swaying in the wind had begun to rock with a depth I could not have perceived just moments ago. I was suddenly very aware of my breathing as well as my eye movements. Unfortunately for me, this was all taking place right as we were about to steal Richie's boat.
Trying to ignore the ruffling feathers of a bird about a block away, I gently stepped into the boat, testing with one foot before climbing fully aboard and immediately feeling as though I'd fall out. Blue pushed off the dock and we lazily drifted away from the bank of the river. It was in this moment that I was able to truly appreciate the drug. I had never been so aware. From the confines of one's mind, the world will be perceived in a way. Enter dissociative. Viewing oneself in the world from afar alters one's perception of the world drastically. I was aware of every leaf shaking in the wind, every drop of sloshing water around my feet. Lilly pads! Had they always been so vividly green? The world was astounding to me. The term 'surreal' couldn't even hold it's weight. I was admiring the water rushing around my ankles when I realized that there was water rushing around my ankles. "Oh shit," Blue says all too calmly, seeming to be a million miles from here. He couldn't be in this boat. This boat was sinking! Only inches above the surface of the water, I decided to lay on my stomach and stretch my arms towards the riverbank. I grabbed onto the nearest lilly pad and using it as an anchor, pulled myself closer to the shore. Alternating hands and throwing uprooted pads behind me I reached a fallen tree that was hanging out onto the water. With a deep baritone bubbling, the boat sank beneath the surface. "Close call." Blue... From the tree above me. After meandering through the dark woods, falling into every sinkhole along the way, I suddenly stumbled onto someone's front yard. I stopped right there and dumped the mud from my formerly new FILA. From here, the night just kinda faded away into nothing. I awoke in my bed the next morning.
Eventual research informed me of a plug that's to be placed in such a boat as that one. Ahh, well... It'll never sink on anyone again.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Cont.
As I rolled the the second tire away from the blazer, I noticed a dog trotting towards me. This happened less than five seconds before I noticed the dog's owner doing much the same thing. Attempting to be inconspicuous, I dropped the tire and turned onto the street. "Hey, come here," the man was saying to me. Blue was gone. Vanished. Not being as stupid as he probably hoped I was, I replied with, "I don't got nothing to say to you, man." "Yeah, I saw you trying to steal those tires.. Why don't you come talk to me?" "I don't know what you're talking about, man. I'm just going home." "No, where you're going is jail. Are you stupid? Do you know who you're fuckin' with? Come here, man. Tupac's voice rose in my head, "I'd rather die before they capture me." I wasn't waiting around to see what this guy wanted to talk to me about. So, I continued walking away from him and he continued walking following. I realized that yeah, I did know who I was fuckin' with. This is a small town and I'd had interactions with this man before. Never under circumstances anything like this, but, that was probably for the better. I knew that he didn't recognize me.
"You don't wanna get involved, danny," I tried to convince him. This shook his conviction. I could see it in his eyes. "How do you know my name?""Oh, I know a lot more than that. Why don't you just go home?" "No, you need to come over here and talk to me. You know you're going to jail, right?" I decided that despite his drunken stupor, he had thought to call the cops before apprehending me. "Look, man" I warned, "You come much closer to me, you and I are going to have some real problems.. And, if I go to jail tonight, you're family is going to have problems." "What do you know about my family?""More than you want me to, dude. I know who you are. I know where you live, your dog's name, where you work, and where your little nieces live. Just go the fuck home and there won't be any problems." Danny had decided to take me a little more seriously. As if I'd physically lashed out at him, he staggered back a few steps. I raised the distance between us. He decided he should get back to flag down the police when they arrived and whistled for the dog he had been telling to watch me. With an air of indifference, I reached down and ruffled the dog's fur as he passed.
I had to find Blue. But, not before changing my appearance. At home, I switched the light blue jeans for a pair of black ones and the dark gray hooded sweatshirt for a faded green army jacket before jumping onto a bicycle and heading out the gate. Looking first south and then, north I saw two cops. One was the tactical unit's SUV, about to turn onto my street. The other was a typical squad a few blocks away on the main road. Doubts about who they were looking for never rose in my mind. Right as I started to pedal down my road, Blue came jogging out from between two houses. "Where the fuck were you?!" Obviously, I was a little concerned. I felt as if he'd let me get caught. He wasn't watching? Did he even stick around long enough to see if I was captured?
Ever tenacious, he began to ask me how we were going to get paid tonight without the jack. I was dumbfounded. I just wanted to go lay in bed and drink beer, feigning that I was not sick for the poison. After a heated debate about what we should be doing, I convinced him to call it a night. For two weeks afterward, twice as many as usual cops were patrolling the area on the midnight shift. Looks like we'd fucked up this time.
This is just one night of my life. Dozens more to come. Stick around. You may learn something or you may just grow to despise me. I wouldn't blame you...
"You don't wanna get involved, danny," I tried to convince him. This shook his conviction. I could see it in his eyes. "How do you know my name?""Oh, I know a lot more than that. Why don't you just go home?" "No, you need to come over here and talk to me. You know you're going to jail, right?" I decided that despite his drunken stupor, he had thought to call the cops before apprehending me. "Look, man" I warned, "You come much closer to me, you and I are going to have some real problems.. And, if I go to jail tonight, you're family is going to have problems." "What do you know about my family?""More than you want me to, dude. I know who you are. I know where you live, your dog's name, where you work, and where your little nieces live. Just go the fuck home and there won't be any problems." Danny had decided to take me a little more seriously. As if I'd physically lashed out at him, he staggered back a few steps. I raised the distance between us. He decided he should get back to flag down the police when they arrived and whistled for the dog he had been telling to watch me. With an air of indifference, I reached down and ruffled the dog's fur as he passed.
I had to find Blue. But, not before changing my appearance. At home, I switched the light blue jeans for a pair of black ones and the dark gray hooded sweatshirt for a faded green army jacket before jumping onto a bicycle and heading out the gate. Looking first south and then, north I saw two cops. One was the tactical unit's SUV, about to turn onto my street. The other was a typical squad a few blocks away on the main road. Doubts about who they were looking for never rose in my mind. Right as I started to pedal down my road, Blue came jogging out from between two houses. "Where the fuck were you?!" Obviously, I was a little concerned. I felt as if he'd let me get caught. He wasn't watching? Did he even stick around long enough to see if I was captured?
Ever tenacious, he began to ask me how we were going to get paid tonight without the jack. I was dumbfounded. I just wanted to go lay in bed and drink beer, feigning that I was not sick for the poison. After a heated debate about what we should be doing, I convinced him to call it a night. For two weeks afterward, twice as many as usual cops were patrolling the area on the midnight shift. Looks like we'd fucked up this time.
This is just one night of my life. Dozens more to come. Stick around. You may learn something or you may just grow to despise me. I wouldn't blame you...
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Take a peek into my world....
It was around three a.m. on a cold February night. Lying on my back, as the melting snow seeped through the fabric of my jeans, numbing my backside, I watched intently as the flame warmed my face. There were sparks flying as I shielded my eyes against the combination of rust and dirt that was raining down on my face. The torch went out again with a quiet pop and a sharp hissing. "It's not doing a fuckin' thing," my partner told me. As he begin to slide out from under the car, I firmly grasped the converter with both hands, bracing my legs against the undercarriage. I jerked with all the strength of my body to no avail.. I slid out and stood up, dusting my body off, and reached for the door handle. Unlocked. I jumped in, closed the door, and had my hands over the dome light in less than two seconds. Once the light had faded off, I looked around at my surroundings, discovering the vehicle was littered with beer cans. "Let me in," he said pulling the door open, giving me no warning and once again flooding the area with light. As he climbed into the back, I searched around and to my pleasant surprise, found several six packs of Miller High Life, each with a can or two missing from the plastic rings. Wasting no time, I got out and organized the beer into one bag just in time to realize that my collaborator was now hauling what looked to be a case for some type of power tool out of the back seat. He opened the case revealing it to be a heavy weight floor jack, which was phenomenal considering we had just two days before, lost our own in a catastrophic turn of events not too different from what was soon to be taking place tonight. But, this was currently unknown to me and as a possibility, was not even on my mind.
I was so relieved to have found the beer that not much else was of importance to me. It wouldn't do much for my nausea or the cold sweats but, it would definitely ease the aches that were trembling through my body and would probably help me to get to sleep tonight, despite my body's cravings. "Think you should go get some bricks?" shook me from my distracted thoughts before I replied "No, let's take this loot home." The guy whose name is not so important as his actions seemed a bit distraught before replying, "Well, how about we stash the jack a couple houses down and come right back?" Not one to back out of a situation because of fear, I agreed before we began the short walk towards what we commonly referred to as our base of operations.
About ten minutes later, I was standing back at the same place, watching as the man who used to be called Blue started to work, removing the lugs from the back passenger side tire. I jogged down the alley, crossing the road into the adjoining segment and sprinted, feet sinking five or six inches into the snow with every step. I realized that I was a block away from where I had previously believed I was and took a shortcut between two houses, activating the motion detector on some flood lights as I went. In the next alley, I found what I was looking for. It was a simply constructed housing unit for some civilian's garbage cans that was composed entirely of narrow, half-sized cinder blocks. Grabbing one in each hand, I turned to a brisk walk doing my best, and failing, to not trip over the ruts in the snow created by whatever traffic had traversed this alley in the past couple days. It was probably the second time that I fell face first when I looked inches away from my nose to see the two smaller, lighter, blocks I had ditched two days before as I saw the cop car rolling to a stop. Wondering how the officer had walked right past them without raising alarm, I dropped my load and grabbed the new one.
Turning out into the street and walking right down the center of the road, I was reminded how easily an onlooker could come to a correct conclusion about my intent of criminal activity. But, it's my experience, that more often than not, if one just acts as if there is nothing out of the ordinary about what they're doing, it will be perceived as exactly such.
Walking up the hill with my newly recovered bricks, I saw my shadow stretch out in front of me. I threw the bricks to the side of the road and waited for a car to pass. I hauled the bricks back to the vehicle to find Blue currently engaged in a strength testing battle with the four-way attached to the tire of this Blazer. Little did I know, that as he freed the tire from it's former position, we had gained an audience..
I was so relieved to have found the beer that not much else was of importance to me. It wouldn't do much for my nausea or the cold sweats but, it would definitely ease the aches that were trembling through my body and would probably help me to get to sleep tonight, despite my body's cravings. "Think you should go get some bricks?" shook me from my distracted thoughts before I replied "No, let's take this loot home." The guy whose name is not so important as his actions seemed a bit distraught before replying, "Well, how about we stash the jack a couple houses down and come right back?" Not one to back out of a situation because of fear, I agreed before we began the short walk towards what we commonly referred to as our base of operations.
About ten minutes later, I was standing back at the same place, watching as the man who used to be called Blue started to work, removing the lugs from the back passenger side tire. I jogged down the alley, crossing the road into the adjoining segment and sprinted, feet sinking five or six inches into the snow with every step. I realized that I was a block away from where I had previously believed I was and took a shortcut between two houses, activating the motion detector on some flood lights as I went. In the next alley, I found what I was looking for. It was a simply constructed housing unit for some civilian's garbage cans that was composed entirely of narrow, half-sized cinder blocks. Grabbing one in each hand, I turned to a brisk walk doing my best, and failing, to not trip over the ruts in the snow created by whatever traffic had traversed this alley in the past couple days. It was probably the second time that I fell face first when I looked inches away from my nose to see the two smaller, lighter, blocks I had ditched two days before as I saw the cop car rolling to a stop. Wondering how the officer had walked right past them without raising alarm, I dropped my load and grabbed the new one.
Turning out into the street and walking right down the center of the road, I was reminded how easily an onlooker could come to a correct conclusion about my intent of criminal activity. But, it's my experience, that more often than not, if one just acts as if there is nothing out of the ordinary about what they're doing, it will be perceived as exactly such.
Walking up the hill with my newly recovered bricks, I saw my shadow stretch out in front of me. I threw the bricks to the side of the road and waited for a car to pass. I hauled the bricks back to the vehicle to find Blue currently engaged in a strength testing battle with the four-way attached to the tire of this Blazer. Little did I know, that as he freed the tire from it's former position, we had gained an audience..
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