The basterd slouched in his seat, arms stretched into his lap. Sweat beads forming off his chin, the whiskers slightly graying at the tips. “I got busted for a tin can. A little resin and you get yanked. You can’t even get off on stupid shit nowadays. His voice was sounding off against his beach ball looking beer belly.” They made me pay all these petty fines and shit, for a stupid fucking can. Some bitch left that shit in my car.” He said taking a drag off his ash-covered cigarette. “I was driving home from this bar and I get pulled for a tail light that I knew was out. He takes my license and registration, says I’m acting suspicious and says he’s going to search my car. I said shit go ahead because I’m thinking nothings there. The bastard finds and old coke can made into a steamroller and busts my ass. I spent two days sitting there till my mom could bail me out. I think it was that little bitch Mindy that hangs out with Tricia. They were smoking out a couple days earlier at Mark’s party. I can’t say shit or act pissed because Tricia and she are girls and I’ll catch shit in the end.”

            He got up and went to the fridge through a little archway that passed into the kitchen. “You want another one he yelled holding up a can of cheap beer. “ Ya” I said leaning into the folds of the coach.

            My friend was wearing his faded football shorts with bright yellow LHS running down the side, a sign of better days.

            “Yep so after I got over that can bullshit, I still had to take piss tests at work because my P.O called and got every one all riled up.” He walked into the living room carrying two cans of beer and one frosty plastic cup. He handed me the beer and poured his into the cup. “But, that shits all over.” He said as he slouched in his seat and hung his arms out onto his lap.

            “What have you been up to? How was college? Bang any hot bitches?”

            Well I hadn’t been up to very much, I thought. “Nothing really, just pissing around. I’ve got the job and I’m going back to school next semester.” I lied, a big juicy fat lie. “There’s not much else, just taking care of mine.” My friend handed me a bowl. “ True, true ” he said. I patted my jeans down for a lighter. “Here” my friend said handing me a pink lighter with barely any fluid. I tried it three times till it finally lit. I took a long pull and handed both of them back to him.

            “How’s Curb, I heard he got his girl pregnant?”

            “ He sure fucking did” my friend said taking a long pull off his frosty beer. “ He’s applying to the post office. If his piss is clean. Those tests suck”

            “Hey, what you got planned for tonight” he said as he passed me the bowl. “ I’m going down to this private bar my friends a member of, drinks are cheap as shit, no bitches, just old dudes. But we can get trashed an ditch out.” He patted his jeans and I handed him back his lighter. “It will be cool though.”

            He pushed hands onto his knees and pulled him self up. “I’m gonna jump in the shower and get ready, if you want another beer there in the fridge and there’s some on the porch, the clickers right here” he said as he handed it to me. I took a long pull of my beer and thought about the lie I told earlier. That I had the job and was going back to school, moving out of my parents house, and finally doing something worth while. What a big juicy lie. The truth I had to face I was twenty-two, lived a t home, had a shity little job making six fifty and hour. The worst thing of all, I had no ambition anymore. I had lost it somewhere. I’ve become melancholy. My mom didn’t care she let me float around bring home random girls. she was cool. But I still felt empty, like I had a huge hole to fill.

            I’d have relationships with these girls for some months at a time but they were there basically to fuck. I got jealous, oh I got jealous all right, all the time. But to be truthful, I could give two shits. I’m just weird. I want to possess something, but only when it’s near me, if it’s away from me and I can’t hold it or touch it, I could give two shits about it. I’m definitely not fine, far, far from it. I wanted something but I didn’t know what it was. I guess all people feel this way. We all just hide it.

            There was a big snake on TV eating a rabbit, rat or something, Its mouth latching across the animals body, the snake slowly inching forward devouring the small mammal, Definitely not what I wanted to see right now. Too much like my current paranoia engulfing me, like I was the rat. I flipped the station. Maybe I was the snake? On the next station there was a monster truck rally. I flipped again. On the next a jewelry-selling network with half price imitation gold and silver, I switched back to the animal show. An ape was using a twig to get ants out of a mound, high art and very entertaining.

The phone rang. I let it ring four or five times before a booming voice over streaming water said “ pick up the fucking phone.” I scrabbled across the floor and got the phone off its cradle. “ Hello can I help you” I always pride myself on my impeccable phone skills, Its one of my true talents. A raspy female voice sounded over the receiver. “ Is Tricia there?” She sounded snotty and annoyed to have to deal with me. “ No, its just me an…” she interrupted me with a loud snort and then a mocking laugh. “ Whatever if you can handle it, leave a message to call Mindy.” She hung up the phone. What a bitch. I went back to the coach and lit a cigarette. Well that’s Mindy, what a bitch.

 I took a drag off my cigarette and reached for my beer, empty. I went through the little archway and opened the fridge. There were two twelve packs of cheap beer and a twelve of imported beer. I took a good one, an flicked my ash into the sink.

“Who was on the phone?” My friend said almost catching me. He was dripping wet looking like a shaggy dog, a wife-beater on and a pair of baggy jeans. He was walking towards the fridge when I said Mindy. “ Ya, That Bitch, Great…” He was pulling on a pair of fancy looking basketball shoes. They looked like astronaut boots. “We’ve got to leave a message for Tricia, if we can handle it.” He rolled his eyes. Trisha’s out at her mom’s house she’s “baby sitting” her brother got suspended for fighting, Sounds like us.”

“Speak for yourself, my friend. Hey lets smoke another bowl,” I said downing the rest of my beer. “Good idea, my boy. Grab too new beers will slam them then hit the road; we gotta stop by my boy’s house”

 “ Whose that ” I said, because I didn’t want to hang out with some psycho.

 “ Its Sonny, you know him. He’s got the really good bud?” I grabbed two good beers and came back to the table.” Not that shit, Its Tricia’s, she’ll bust my balls.” I rolled my eyes this time. I grabbed two cans of cheap, fuck me beers. He handed me the bowl, I handed him a beer. We, flicked or opened, hit or pulled. I grabbed my beer he took the bowl from me. We should go, I said. I was becoming dazed.

He made us slam our beers and smoke the rest of the bowl then we were allowed to leave.

We walked off his front porch towards a big purple machine. His front yard was littered with tools, car parts, broken toys, milk crates, and other discarded debris. All thrown hastily thrown away and left to sit for months until a scavenger happened upon them. These things, this trash was scattered about like dice on a wall.

Unlike The yard, the car was immaculate a big purple fancy thing. It looked like dirt was repelled from it. His surroundings were a disgrace, but his car, his fucking car was ethereal in its perfection.  It could have been in any fancy-pants car-show, which was privy to some high-end European automobile magazine.

“Hey should we grab the beer or pick some up on the way?” I said half way getting out and half way getting in. ‘ No, fuck it will get some on the way, I need to get smokes any way, I’m hungry.” He said as we were getting into his car. It was a clean on the inside as out. The only dirty part was his ashtray covered in Newport’s sticking out like a ring toss at a carnival. Everything neatly in its place, all his change stacked nicely. The floorboards free of dirt and shoe goo.

I flicked my cigarette out the window and we pulled out of the little shed he had built to keep his cars all shiny and bright. I looked back at the shed but all I saw was his back seat, which happened to be one big speaker box, two big woofers pounding sound and pulsating waves of angry young voices.

His radio was a glowing technological marvel. It looked like it needed a nuclear reactor to run it. He flipped his visor down exposing a dozen c.ds; he ran his fingers over a few and pulled one out. He looked at me like a guy showing something I should have seen on my own. He slid the c.d into the nuclear reactor radio. It buzzed to life; I heard the familiar hum of power surging through the speakers. An then the cd skipped on the first track. My friend hit the front of the reactor and I flinched expecting an explosion. A slow beat started and then a drum. The rhythm kept growing stronger and stronger, until a loud thunderclap. Then a steady rhythm again, a soft voice and then the flow of words erupted pulsating and poetic. The music pounded on the back of my chest, crawling up my back like a snake.

 “ Damn, that’s loud” I screamed, my hearing was wailing in pain. “ What “ he mouthed. I couldn’t hear him over the rhythmic voice. He mouthed “what” again, I mimed turning the radio down. He leaned over switched the radio off, “what!!!” he yelled. I said to him annoyed “Damn That’s loud.” I spoke a little to loudly because now I basically tone deaf. “ Ya, man I got two fifteens and eight twitters, its dope. My boy hooked me up.” He opened a can beer hidden somewhere. “ You know Chucky, little chubby guy with blond hair. I went to school with him. You’ve fucking met him.”

I didn’t know who the fuck he was talking about and all I wanted was a fucking beer. “No, but I’m real shitty about names, if I saw him, maybe?” 

We pulled into a Quickie Mart. “ you want to get the beers or me?” I said. “I’ll get the bar tab later if you, get them now holms.” As I slid out of the passenger seat he handed me two fives “and get mea pack of smokes” he said hanging out the side of the window. I spotted two people on telephones to my right. One of them was a girl about sixteen with oily hair and daisy dukes. She twirled her hair as she talked into the bright blue phone. The second person was a short Latin guy with a handle bar mustache, and dark blue tattoo’s. They turned to look at us when my friend shouted “ get as much beer as possible, I don’t want to be stopping all night.” They turned back to their conversations looking disgusted that we disturbed their precious lives.

Convenience stores are supposed to be cold and sterile like a hospital. This place was like an alleyway, all dark and gloomy. The shelves were lined with products expired and dusty. As I walked towards the beer cooler I noticed the thick film of dirt on the stores floors. The grime was in actuality a path, a dust trail of sludge from the constant pounding of feet. The beer cooler was well stocked. There were five fridges full of beer and spirits and two full of soda, juice, and milk products. That makes seven in all, an almost eighty percent ratio to other products, this definitely wasn’t a commercial convenience store. I grabbed a twelve pack of canned beer and stuck two quarts in my baggy pants. I flopped around the store for a little while, then went to the register and bought a pack of dollar, twenty-nine cigarettes (and a neat little cigar, I’m always treating myself to treats) which the guy behind the register smirked at. He looked wasted and dull, like a maniac-depressive on lithium or better yet a zombie going through its programmed movements. He rang me up not bothering to charge me for the little cigar. He muttered something under his breath but I didn’t catch it and I really didn’t care.

I lit the little cigar as I walked to the car. I opened the passenger door and handed him his smokes. “And my change” he said before I had time to adjust myself to the contours of the seat. I handed him three bucks of my own money so he didn’t bitch and one of the quarts of beer. “ Good job soon” he chuckled at me as he started his engine. As we pulled away I caught the zombie clerk eyeing me from the store window, peering at me like he knew the end to my own story.

Friend of a Friend

            Sonny lived in a sub division of a mobile home community or a trailer park if you want to be an asshole. The “ homes” were divided into lots and the folks stuck power cables into hook ups and were good to go. You could either rent or own but I never asked Sonny what he did.

            Sonny was a tall lanky guy with bad skin that passed into his adulthood. He wore jeans to small and an old eighty’s hair-band shirt that was faded. “How’s it going” Sonny uttered out between chapped lips, “waz up dawg” my friend said slapping his palm. “ This is my boy, he’s coming with us to Trey’s place.” 

            “ You guys are not going to like that shit hole,” Trey laughed. “ Only a bunch of old guys, no bitches. Except for maybe some worn out sluts. Hey can I get one of them,” he said pointing at the nasty twelve-pack. I handed him one, “I like you already” he said as he watched me wrestle with the cardboard box. I was having a hell of a time getting it open. “ Hey you smoke bud, right?” Sonny was watching me intently for my reaction to his question. “ Hell Ya” I said in a masculine tone. “ I got some killer bud, shit with red hairs, take a look at this.” He led me to the living room.

            We went into his living room, which consisted of a huge entertainment system. Now when I say entertainment system I really mean a big fucking entertainment theater, a huge screen T.V. and big stereo with speakers as big as me. He also had this oversized beanbag chair. That made you feel like a huge Norwegian when you sunk into it.

            My friend was sitting on the coach with his legs on the coffee table. “ You see his T.V.” My friend said. “ Ya, its pretty dope,” I said as I pretended not to inspect it. “ I got it from my mom and step-dad, they were getting a new one so I got it for like three bills.” He flipped through the channels. “ No cable, just the basic, but its got great resolution” he dragged the words out like it was a classification for the chart of elements.

            “Doesn’t matter if you have cable or not, there still isn’t shit on” my friend said.    “That’s for sure,” Sonny muttered. He settled on a sitcom about two guys who lived in this apartment with two girls, some stupid show.

            He put the clicker down. “ You guys want to some bud.”

            My friend smirked and made a duh face “ hell, ya dawg.” He took a long pull off his beer and pulled away quick, his eyes all red and puffy.

            “Buuuuurrrpppp” he cleared his belly. “ Too much, must have gone down the wrong pipe.”

            “ No, your just a little bitch” Sonny said mocking my friend. He looked at me and chuckled. My friend quickly changed the conversation, to something about speakers.

            Sonny grabbed a brown box with some papers and about two-dozen roaches (marijuana cigarette butts) lying on top.  He opened it scattering everything and took out a tray with some neon green bud with purplish furry hairs covering it.

            “ Damn, son let me smell that shit!!!!!” my friend shouted in a high-pitched voice as Sonny handed him a tiny bud to whiff on. “ That shit smells strong, I can smell it from here” he said holding it away from his face. He handed it back to Sonny and he started breaking it up.

            “ Hey you still got those dogs,” my friend said to him. Sonny was already shaking his head “yes” before the question was finished. “I’ve got them out back, in this cage my pop’s got me.” He was getting really excited. “Hey you want one? I got some pup’s, mean little bastards.” He licked the joint he was rolling and handed it to me. I patted my pants looking for a lighter and slapped my friends thigh, he handed me back my lighter.

            “ Well, what do you think?” Sonny said looking at my friend. “ Do you want a pup?” Sonny took a swig off his beer, my friend took a swig off his beer, and I took a swig off my beer. “ What about you?” Sonny questioned me with his eyes. “ No I’m cool, I’ve got enough dogs.”

            “ Hey I want to check them out” my friend spurted from the end of a beer. “ I might get me one” Sonny looked a little concerned or annoyed, I couldn’t tell anymore, I was getting a little unfocused. “ Oh great idea, dawg with all those kids running around.”

            “ No, I’d keep him outside in a pen, like you” my friend said defensively. “ What the fuck is the point of a attack dog being in a pen, so you can hear him bark?” Sonny said puffing his chest out, like he was professing his manhood or making a profound statement. “ Hey I’m getting a new place anyway, so let me check them out.”

            Now it was my time for me to pipe in. “ Your never going to leave Trisha’s mom’s house, she won’t let you” I had to laugh.

Sonny smiled and said, “That’s right your whipped brother, testify.” Sonny laughed slapping his hand on the coffee table and taking a long pull off his beer while he ashes the joint.

 “ Ya, right I’ll be out of that house and then some day I’ll get myself some dope ass dirt-bike, and a mean jump-pit to rip on.” I had to laugh at that, was that the epitome of all his dreams “a fucking dirt bike and a mud trail?”

            He slammed his beer and threw it down “ an busting off mad jumps!!!!!!” he said half way through the can hitting the ground. “Chill the fuck out and hit this,” I said handing him the joint and backing away before he could make any strange movements.

            Sonny was laying into the coach with his right hand nestled against his cigarette. He said into his muffled hand “ you’ll get out of Trisha’s when her mom’s kicks your ass out.” My friend handed me the joint “ they’ll never throw the asshole out, he pays to much shit.” I uttered, leaning back and feeling more comfortable. “Your whipped, say your whipped, come on say it” Sonny fucked with him. “ Shit, she’ll never throw my ass out” my friend said smiling. Not saying much, wasn’t his style, he was frazzled. “ Let me hit that fucking joint,” my friend said befuddled.

Sonny handed me a huge glass bong. I took a long pull and hit the carb; smoke flooded into my lungs, rolling like a sandstorm. I thought I was going to throw up. I blew out as hard as I could and gagged for air. “ Watch yourself son, hits hard” Sonny said as I pushed the monster bong across the table to him. It really was good bud or a really hard pull because I could feel my head becoming light and fuzzy. I took a gulp of beer to clear my windpipe. “ Lets check out those fucking dogs” I said in a moment of supremacy.

His backyard was an eight-foot wooden fence around the edge of his property. He had a rusty swing set. I guess all trailers came with them. The “big cage” was a fenced off piece of land, with an old metal drum being used as a water dish. There was a smaller cage with in the big one with little pups barking as we approached. “ Ya, Ya shut the fuck up,” Sonny said to the pups as he unlocked the first cage. “ You guys should stay over there he said pointing” moms still a little jumpy.” The spot he pointed at held a mangy dog with a depressed look on its face. “ What kind of dogs are these?” I asked. Sonny looked at me like I had asked the stupidest question in the world. “ Their red nose pits” I really didn’t know what he meant. Sonny went to the corner of the cage and picked up a big thick rope. He began shaking it at the pups and they went crazy with excitement.

I was watching the dogs jump for the rope when I started smelling bud everywhere. I must have blown it all over my clothes.

Sonny’s dogs rushed him and started snapping at the rope. One puppy stood back and barked pointers and encouragement to the others. “ These dogs could bite your fucking head clean off. I train them and fight them, these pups won’t be fighters, stupid kids playing with them too much.” Sonny spoke with a disgusted lisp on his consternates. “ How much you make on the dogs” my friend said. “Depends on how much you bet, I usually come home with three to four hundred bucks.” He let go of the rope and slapped a couple puppies on the face playfully. He was rubbing the sad looking mommy dog when my friend stepped forward, the dog growled and bared his canines. “ You’re an idiot,” Sonny laughed at my friend.

Another whiff of pot, I could smell it everywhere, like I was in a field.

Another pup ran up for some playtime but Sonny was already bored. It jumped around trying to get some attention but all the dog managed was a quick head pat.

“ Hey does anyone want another beer?” my friend said walking to the screen door. My friend started talking about Sonny’s home theater and I was forced to get the beers.” There in the fridge “sonny7 said but I was the one that put them there, check one for his memory. As I walked in the kitchen, glancing up from the decorative tile I noticed a girl about seventeen. She barely glanced at me and walked straight into the living room.

“ Where the fuck you been girl.” Sonny bellowed from the other room. I grabbed three beers and reached for a fourth but thought, I better not. I walked into the living room, I noticed more than her child like face; she must be older than seventeen? She was weathered by living I guessed. “ I’ve been with Debby over at Rogers, he’s working on his truck, so we dropped the baby off with his mom” she slurred as she spoke and her body wavered back and fourth like the village drunkard. My friend paid no attention to her “ and you ran the cord threw the wall” he gestured towards a jumble of cords, tangled like snakes. Sonny pretended not to notice her drunkenness’ and went back to explaining how elaborate his set up was. She huffed and picked up a yellowish glass clinking inside it. She flipped her hair and walked back into the trailer somewhere.

I listed to the boys talk for a little bit, took a long pull off my beer and reached for the bowl. I took a hit and my mind started to wander. I took another sip of my beer. And drifted away.

I was thinking about this girl I met in middle school, a small pudgy girl with shoulder-length brown hair. A goody-two-shoes in my book, she always raised her hand and wiped the teachers ass. I wondered where she was, what she became. I wondered where all the over-achievers were.

The kids in middle school didn’t seem real to me, just specimens of society. Filling a space, filing a number. But, she, the shorthaired pudgy girl always stood out to me. Her pudgy smile and dimple face, I may have been in love with her, a spiritual love, nothing erotic or defiling. She wasn’t cute or pretty but lively, always so full of spirit and confidence. I thought her goal was to annoy me, every single time she raised he hand or looked at me. Her downcast eyes full of contempt and pity for me. She filled me with a loathing of her, a hate that built and was confused with my interest in her. She probably went too some Ivy League college, with a promising future. She got drunk some night and went wild. Woke up in the morning and felt such guilt and shame for her behavior that she sunk into a funk and became bitter towards the roles we must conform to. I knew it wasn’t so, but it was a good dream.

Sonny and my friend got up off the carpet and pushed the TV back against the wood paneled wall.

“ An there all hooked up to that one remote.” He counted off his fingers “ DVD, TV, Stereo, and CD player.” The both of them wandered to the coach. Sonny flipped on the TV and started messing with functions, explaining the menus in great detail to my friend. We were all getting a little tipsy. The conversation dyed down and my friend packed a bowl.   

“This is some pretty good bud,” he said to Sonny. “ That’s not the same bud you got, that’s not my reg’s.” My friend hit it again  “ Oh, this is the shit you grow.” Sonny tilted his head “ announce it to the fucking world, I don’t think the fucking…. DEA heard you, we our in fucking Florida, dumbass.” Sonny was annoyed now. “Oh I guess you didn’t see my plants? Well lets all go check them out,” he said sarcastically, half joking.

We followed him, not knowing what to expect, we went out the screen door and back out into the yard.

The dogs were still in the pen. Sonny pointed just beyond the cage, a little ways to the right of the dog’s cage, six or seven pot plants, sat. They were about four feet high, with some little buds on them. “ That’s the pot that your smoking’ Sonny said to my friend, “damn good, huh?”

 We scanned over the minor field of ganja. “ The trick is to use nitrogen.” He said proudly, like we’d be impressed. “ All you do is put a little sugar into the soil and crop the plant at its stem when it buds, so it crystallizes. Its like kid’s science.” He was so proud like he found the cure for cancer. “ I also got this special fertilizer, its like eight cents a gram. I found it in this magazine.”

“ Ya, this dope, is real dope,” my friend said, sounding like a corny-drunken-idiot.  “ Shut the fuck up, it free and it smokes good, that’s all I care about.”

Sonny started walking back to the trailer and the dogs were carrying on like cannibalistic maniacs. He pretended not to notice a useful technique around this house.

As we walked into the trailer, the young looking girl sauced bye, with a phone in one hand and a yellow drink in the other. “ Stephanie you on the goddamn phone again?  Your on that fucking phone every ten minutes.”

She barely glanced at him. With a gulp off her glass, she walked into the kitchen. Sonny didn’t say shit. He slammed his beer and took a seat on the coach. “Baby, grab me another from the fridge” I heard a “huff” from the kitchen and imagined a beer, foamy and warm being thrown at his head, any second now. But nothing came, only a sweet, innocent, and somewhat sarcastic face, which treaded into the room and handed him a beer then disappeared into the fringes of the trailer.

I took the behemoth beanbag chair, sonny sat quietly drinking his beer, and my friend jabbered on about some paint-job he did.

“ I get like, three jobs done before these old guys get one. I’m fast; I move from one car to another, I’m taping off one, when another’s drying. These old guys figure there spending the time, so there getting paid, but they don’t realize that it’s the hours, not the work that counts. The fucking insurance companies are paying for the hours you work not the job. I want to make money, so I can make like a Hundred and Twenty hour’s a week for the work I put into six or seven cars, because that’s the projected amount and I still get paid.”

I was barely listening to him at this point. “ That’s good money” I heard Sonny say. “ Hell ya, its good money, I’m paid” he high-fived him, like a frat boy.

“There old guys, so they take their fucking time, I want to make money. So I get a lot more out of an hour’s worth than those fucking old dudes, and then they get pissed about it. I get about a hundred hours a week sometimes.”

“ That’s good money” Sonny said. “ Hell ya, its good money, I’m paid.” My friend bragged. I was barely listening.

Sonny was flipping stations and I was finishing my beer. “ Any of you guys want another one, “ I said, shaking my empty can at them. They both nodded in response. I walked back into the kitchen; at least I was getting a work out. I reached into the fridge and got three beers, Stephanie was on the phone jabbering on. “ Huh, Ya, I heard he got out…… No she’s real pissed at him.”

I was starting to walk back to the living room when I caught Stephanie smiling at me, it could have been the conversation though. Sonny was still flipping through channels, I handed him his beer and he didn’t look up at me. “ Thanks” he said.

“ So your going to hang out with Trey” Sonny laughed. “ Ya, I guess I don’t know the guy” my friend interrupted me. “ Her doesn’t fucking know Trey.”

“ Your in for some shit, man. Trey’s fucking crazy. Hey remember when he tried to run that guy over.” Sonny spoke to my friend.  “ That was some crazy shit” he turned to me.

“ Trey and a friend of ours.” My friend looked confused “Who the hell was it, Sonny?  Or was it mike?” “ I think it was Mike” Sonny said.

“ Whatever, anyways Trey and mike were at the beach and they ended up getting into fight with some crack heads or speed freaks over some stupid shit. They were so drunk they don’t even know what it was about the next day. Well, anyways they’re beating the shit out of theses guys, but they wouldn’t stay down, trey said. He was pounding on this guy, his face was covered in blood but he kept talking shit. They’d get up flailing. So Trey gets away from this one guy and tries to run him down in his truck. Mikes up and running trying to catch up with Trey but Treys lost it, he’s going fucking crazy. I guess some neighbors called the cops, because they had to get the hell out of there but Treys fucking crazy” my friend said nodding his head at the completion of his little tale.

Sonny was getting excited “Hey remember when we were kids and he wore those baggy Hammer pants. Those bright baggy ones that he use to tight roll at the bottom to steal candy and shit from the Handy Store?”

My friend added in “Ya, he didn’t care if he got caught or not, he just kicked open the emergency exit and dipped out of there.”

“He’s chilled out sense his girl came around, He’ a lot cooler to hang out with. I think the only place he really hangs out is that bar of his.” Sonny explained to me so I wouldn’t worry.

Stephanie walked in to room and sat next to Sonny twirling her hair. She started eyeing me again and it really was making me uncomfortable. “ Who you on the phone with this time” Sonny asked her. “ Oh nobody, just Cheryl she’s feeling blue” she took a sip off her yellow drink. “ She always feeling blue,” Sonny explained to us. “Doctors got her on all kind of pills. Can’t see how she can use the fucking phone probably drools all over it” Sonny pretended to hold the phone and shake.

Stephanie slapped Sonny on the shoulder and she said playfully. “She’s really sick she needs that stuff, so she can deal with all the shit over there, you know how it is.” She slurred her words. “ I’d put my foot in someone’s ass if that shit happened over here.”

My friend was nosy “ What happens over there?” They both said in unison “Nothing.”

Stephnie still looked wasted but she must of hit some plateau because her speech was better but she was still giddy. Her body waved back and forth and she seemed to light up one cigarette after the other burned out. She was still eyeing me.

“ Hey can I borrow the phone? “ My friend said standing up. “ Its in the kitchen” Stephanie pointed. My friend looked at me “ I’m calling trey to see if he’s ready.” I glanced up and gave him an o.k. with my eyes.

The silence was in the air; sonny and Stephanie sat watching some television program about fallen TV and movie stars. Stephanie handed me the bowl and her fingers seemed to linger a little bit to long in my opinion.

“ Hey Sonny, Trey wants to holler at you” my friend said, as he meandered in with a sluggish step. “ What the fuck could he want now” he sighed and smiled as he sat up. “ Probably wants some cash or some shit.”

My friend looked at Stephanie like a pervert drunk “ What you been up to girl.”

“Nothing she said, annoyed at his very presence. “ you still hang out with Mindy and them?”

“Yeah” she said giving him one-word answers. “ She still doesn’t want to talk to you. After all that shit you put her through. “ What happened” I asked.

“Your friend here gets fucking retarded and starts talking shit sometimes” Stephanie said to me with a slur and crocked smile. “ He’ll run his dick-sucker if you let him” I said hitting his leg. “ You know what” she bent over to whisper something in my ear. She faked it. She actually licked the inside of my ear, Her whitish –pink tongue lapping on the outside of my eardrum. The saliva, I guessed was a mixture of tobacco and vodka from the smell of her breath. It burnt the pores of my ears. This all happened under the appearance of a whisper. My friend thought she told me a secret about him, but she really bit her lip and gave a lust filled smile. Sonny walked into the room as she drew back and you could see his eyes burn. “ What the fuck are you two doing? “ he said. Looking back and forth at the both of us.

“ Telling him about all the shit he did to Mindy” she again pointed an accusing finger at my friend. “ Aaaaahhhhh crazy drunk ass mother-fucker “ Sonny laughed at my friend. My friend looked upset, “If one more person, makes up one more fucking lie, about me I’ll fuc…” Stephanie huffed “ lie’s right? Your ass got straight up busted. Mindy walked right in on you, you stupid mother-fucker.” Sonny laughed at my friend as he walked back to coach and sat next to Stephanie. “ You were a dumb ass,” she said to my friend. “ Ya, Ya right, I know what the fuck happened, I was there. She can tell you all, she wants to; half the shit is lie’s anyway “ my friend tried to get us to se his point of view, but it wasn’t working on us. “ Whatever, you still fucked up and made yourself look like a bitch.”

“Whatever” he said in a valley girl impression. “ Doesn’t fucking matter anyway its ancient history, I just wanted to say what’s up.”

“O.k. you said it lets drop it” she said. The room was becoming very uncomfortable. Sonny thought it was hilarious and I couldn’t believe Stephanie stuck her tongue in my ear. She hadn’t looked at me sense.

“What did trey say” my friend said in a anxious manner. “ He said to meet him at his house, he’s got treats” he said winking at me. “ Ya he said something about that” my friend said.

“ You know how to get there?” Sonny questioned my friend.

“ Its right next to Tiger Transmission right?”

“No, you’ve got to go two streets past, its off Fowler St” Sonny said, swirling the last drops of his beer. “ Baby can you get me another beer?” he asked Stephanie. As she walked out of the room, Sonny said in a barely audible mumble “ I’m hooking up with you guys later, after Stephie goes to her mom’s.”

“Where at, Trey’s house?”

“Of course, where the fuck else dumbass.” Just then Stephie walked into the room. “ Over at Treys what?” she said. Sonny pointed at me and said “ I was telling him about Treys race cars.”

My friend said, “he still races” trying to play along.” Sonny got into the story “ Hell Ya he races twice a month, its all he fucking talks about. He almost got busted a couple weeks ago. Cops ran up on all of them and everyone scattered. Only a couple people got busted.”

“ Can’t believe people still do that shit” my friend shaking his head in disbelief. “I thought the cops were all over that”

“Nah, They moved it over to the track on Birch RD. but I guess the po-po caught on because their gonna have to move it again.”

“ I’d like to get in on that shit” My friend said. “ I just need to get a banger car.”

I pied in “ Ya, you can’t use yours, you’ll get dirt on it”

“ What till I get that thunderbird” he said sarcastically. “ That ZX out there will whop some ass, it’s so light it would be cream racing out on Birch.”

“ How many times have I got to tell you their not racing out there anymore” sonny explained, again. “ You know what I mean it turns corners on a dime, so on all the roads around here, id be top dog.

“ It is a fast car” sonny agreed.

Stephanie was acting disinterested like she’d heard the same conversation a thousand times. She still hadn’t made eye contact with me. Maybe she felt bad? But I doubt she even new what she was doing let alone remembered.

My friend slapped me on the leg: You want to dip Holmes he said looking at me.

“ Yeah its about that time” I said as I stood up. “ Grab those beers” My friend ordered mocking me for my age. “ Hey nice to meet you, Bro “ Sonny said as he got up and he shook my hand. “ Peace” my friend said hugging Sonny. “ Stop by more often mother fucker, no need to make yourself scarce.”

“ I’ve been running around so much, you know the kid and all.”

“ Well bring the little tyke over.”

“ Ya, bring the baby over” Stephie slurred. She had fallen off her plateau. “ I want to see the little boy and me and Jen haven’t chilled in a long time” she said through a rubbery tongue.

“ I’ll tell Jen,” My friend said as I stood at the trailer door. He met me at the door. “Nice to meet you,” I waved to Sonny and Stephie. Stephie just wobbled back and forth. What a fucking lush, I thought.

Sonny and my friend were underneath the hood of the ZX, Picking and poking around at various bits and pieces of the machine. “ Damn timing chain” they mumbled. A couple of words passed, then I heard “Can’t seem to get the clutched right either.”

They passed a few more encoded words and I heard my friend explain, “ There all fuck ups, so who the hell cares.”

Then sonny “ No, he’ll steer you right man, I swear.”

I had gotten in the car and sonny slammed the hood down. I took a sip off my beer as my friend got in the drivers seat. “ I’ll give you guys a call Sonny mimed as my friend gunned the motor. The nuclear radio buzzed to life in unison. Sonny shook his head in silent acknowledgment as my friend revved the motor. He backed away from the purple machine and we pulled out of the dirt driveway. I turned around and saw sonny, kick my friend’s full beer (that sat two feet from where the drivers door previously was) into the hedges as he walked back into his trailer.

The Great Great Journey

“Grab me a beer,” my friend said as we pulled off Sonny’s street and onto Fairfield. I popped open the side of a cardboard box and handed him one. He popped out his CD and flipped his visor down, pursued a slew of other choices before settling on a random one. “ Remember this shit, “ he said as he turned it up to an ungodly level. It was some dumb dance song from four years ago. It boomed out into the neighborhood.

Sonny lived in PineCrest, a city of trailers, one of the great trailer park kingdoms, a world unto itself. A modern ghetto, governed by a way of life all their own, A way of self-perpetrating poverty. People are born and breed PineCrestions. They had their own laws and regulations. Might makes right was the main rule. Always demand respect was the Beta.

They lived within a twelve-mile world.

People wandered up and down dirt paths on the side of asphalt roads. The boys on bikes, the girls barefooted, their feet covered in a muddy paste. The boys rode in packs from one trailer to another, some stealing, some selling, and all hustling.

There were stores and schools within PineCrest. All the people flocked to them, mostly loitering and vandalism. Sometimes someone learned something or bought something, only rarely though.

PineCrest, what a place! The men had mechanic jobs and the woman stayed home breeding and drinking like ex-playboy bunnies.

The trailers were all lined up. With the front yard spilling into the ditch, that the children swam in, if weather permitted. The ditch was filled with beer butts and Styrofoam cups, which the really young kids used as boats.

PineCrest and the people were one and the same. The people corrupted the environment and the environment corrupted the people. They had their own culture, within a greater society. They feared outsiders and were proud of their community and heritage. They had a set value system with a strict adherence to their beliefs. Those of the barroom drunkard, the back alley cut throat, and your common street thug.

They also had a strong sense of family and loyalty, once you were in, you were in for life. If you were their friend, they’d bend over backwards to help you out. They had a sense of faith in the people around them, which transcended any of the faults they found in each other. 

They were all these things and more. You had to admire and pity them at the same time.

My Friend was driving and sipping his beer, he bobbed his head in rhythm to the beat of the music. We had just run a stop sign and passed a Quickie Mart, when my friend spotted some girls.

They looked fifteen and I was both disgusted and amused in my friends’ interest in the flowering pre-pubescent teens. They had dirty daisy duke shorts hiked up to far. Their belly rolls were exposed through braless tank tops. Their flesh rolled out onto the fabric of their clothes. They were Guttersluts, like a pair of goblins in some fantasy story.

My friend honked his horn at them. They looked over and I tried to make myself blend into the gaudy purple upholstery. “ What’s happening ladies?” he screamed out the window. He looked at me like he was the pimp daddy fool, which he was. “Yaaaa” he screamed punching the wheel. “ What” he said over the booming noise. I glared at him coldly.  “They looked fifteen.”

“Whatever, I’m just fucking with them.” He turned down the radio. “I always honk at chicks and weirdo’s, anybody walking down the street.”

“ What the fuck for” I asked.

“ I don’t know? It’s just something stupid to do. My sister use to throw change at hookers. Imagine getting hit by a quarter at fifty miles an hour.”

I took a sip off my beer. A cop car buzzed by and we pretended not to notice.

“ We passed the fucking store” my friend realized as he stomped on his brake and made an impromptu u-turn. “ We need to get a blunt.”

Once again, the same types of people patronize a convenience store. Guys on their bikes, girls using the phones to talk to their boyfriends in jail. While old weathered men buy cheap beer. This store was a little cleaner than most. It had shiny merchandise sparkling in the florescent lights. I went to the beer cooler and grabbed two quarts. We still had beer but we needed more and plus it was malt liquor.

The older ladies at the register looked like purple hairs on a retired person’s bowling team. They looked like chubby orangutans in their old age, all wrinkled and blown up. An older man was in front of me, paying his bag-boy money in scratch off’s.

Legalized gambling, and in every state.

He seemed to take a whole hour choosing his game. He was finally finished and it was my turn. I set the beer down and asked for a box of Sir Mitchum cigars. “ You got I.D, Honey,” one of the purple haired maniacs asked me. They loomed down at me from their perch. Their face’s pasty with makeup and the breathe of dry cigarette butts and cheap Chinese food. The shorter ones glasses were falling off her nose; I flipped my wallet out so she could see my I.D, which she barely glanced at.

“They don’t care, they expect you to do it all yourself” the other older lady said as she stacked cigarette cartons behind the counter.

“ Oh sugar, that’s because it always gets done” The register lady said handing me my change, the other lady nodded her head. 

I walked out and I heard her say, “we have to do everything around here.”      Outside of the foul store I saw my friend talking to some guy standing by his ZX. “I just got my fucking truck fixed, after that shit happened,” a man with Oakley’s, ball cap, and a goatee was saying as I walked up. “ I totaled that shit at best,” he said pointing at his Chevrolet. “She came back though, She’s still got some life left in her,” the man said patting the hood of his multi-colored hooptey.

“Yeah my Lincoln just died, you know how much cash I’m going to burn on that?” my friend said aggressively.

 “ Cars are such a bitch when they fuck you over” the random dude said as he spit out his wad of dip.

I got in the car. I wanted away from both of them. My friend stretched his arms, gave the random guy props, and started the engine.

We pulled away and my friend said “ what a fucking skeezer, that guys a dumbass. Me and Kevin use to torture him in high school.”

I cracked open a fresh beer. My friend tried to finish his to catch up, but he splashed the remainder onto his wife-beater as he choked on the warm bitter beer. I handed him a fresh beer as he cleaned up. He turned it away since he was still driving and couldn’t catch his breath. I lit a cigarette handed in to him; he took a puff and it seemed to simmer him down.

“ He’s worked for the same asshole for six years, some dick named Roger” he said looking at me intently through drags of his cigarette. “ Roger owns All-Star Paint, that place I use to work?”

He glanced at me like I remembered a previous conversation or something. “He’s a fuckin coke-head anyway that little-bitch.”

I was trying not to listen as I fingered a CD out of the visor in front of him.

We passed a group of teenage guys on bikes hanging out by a stop sign. They tried to stare us down as we pulled up, but the base music scared them off. It sent them peddling down the sidewalk like terrified kittens.

“How far is it anyway?” I said to my friend as we drove out of PineCrest.

“It’s over the bridge,” he shouted turning up the music. Which to my discontent, meant we had quite a bit to go. “ Its quicker because I take Gladiolus” he said as he gunned the motor to pass a black truck with tinted windows. He tried to stare the driver down but you couldn’t see him to well through the window. My friend was such a dumbass.

“ Is your friend really such a psycho?” I asked lighting a Black and Mild. “ Fuck No, Sonny just likes to talk shit, he was just drunk.”

“ Not like you get, right?” he pretended not to notice my comment. “ He’s cool, Will go to that bar and then downtown or to the beach. We’ll find something to do.”

“ I’m already doing what I want to do,” I said taking a pull off my beer. “ Yeah but its always funnier to get fucked up around people and think of the bitches.”

“ Hey what’s Nat-dawg up to tonight?” I asked wanting a few more options. He’s problem chilling with Dave and tripping or something, you want to stop by there later?”

“ Ya, Whatever, lets see what this place is like first” I said taking a puff off my cigar.

I looked out the window. There were gaudy signs on this side of town. Small flashing things that beeped like a strobe light in the windows of tanning salons, beauty shops, video stores, and even a few fast food restaurants melded into one big laser light show.

My friend was lazily sitting with his arm out the window taking hasty gulps of his beer occasionally. “ What’s up with you and your girl?” I asked sporadically. I don’t know why I did it. I wasn’t really interest in that kind of stuff. It seemed that my friend the jabbering buffoon was being a little quieter tonight and that bothered me.

“ Fine, why the fuck are you interested,” my friend said frowning at me.

If you ask someone a question and you repeat the question back to him or her nine times out of ten you’ll get a different answer.

“ How are you and your girl doing?” I asked again.

He through his hands off the steering wheel and shouted at me “ Fine god damn It.” He exhaled, “why the fuck you so damn interested.” He put his hands back on the steering wheel and my heart slurped back sluggishly into the flesh of my chest.

“ Her mom’s been driving me crazy. She bitches and bitches.” He flicked his cigarette out the window and pulled another from the pack jabbing its filter into his mouth. “ Jen say’s we’ve almost got enough money to buy that trailer ” he exhaled his cigarette proudly.

“ It was a good idea for you guys” I piped in. He nodded no doubt but there’s still the simple mother fucking fact that I’m living with a fucking cunt. Hers mom’s is a bitch ass.”

He was starting to get “All Riled Up.”

“ What about you” He asked slapping the steering wheel. Defuse the situation I thought to myself. Defuse the situation.

            “ You still live with your mom, you ain’t made no great accomplishments. Ya You’s were talking all that shit before you went to school.” He laughed a smug little-asshole laugh. “ And your back in a year” he sat back in his seat as we came to a red light flicking his ash outside his tinted window. “ Your good at that book stuff, you should drop that shit and get with working on cars, with me, that’s where the dough is,” He said rubbing his fingers together with a jester like grin. 

            Yeah the kind to get trailers, I thought.

Trey’s Humble Abode

            Now Sonny said that Trey was a bad ass and he was a very low key badass who lived in a very upscale golf course community. The kind you have to show a license to an armed guard. We stashed the beer as we pulled into the guardhouse.

            An old white guy with a tan sotto cop uniform came twirling a nightstick up to the driver side window. He said to us through chomps of his gum. “ I need your license he said to my friend as he peered suspiciously at me and the rest of the occupying matter in his general scope of vision. My friend handed him his ID out of his baggy, ill-fitting jeans. “ Who are you here to see”? My friend was trying to be a hard up asshole to this rent-a-cop. “ Were here to see Trey-dog the Mack pimp.” The poor old guy rolled his eyes and taped the nightstick across his leg. “ What’s his last name, sir?” he said bitterly through clenched teeth. He leered at my friend for a quick response “Clemmons,” my friend heckled him sarcastically slapping me across the chest and talking a drag off his smoke. The poor guard glanced into look at me again and said, “ I’m calling this in.”

            “ Oh I’m calling it in” my friend mocked him as the poor guy walked to a little computer screen by the entrance to the guardhouse. He picked up the phone and punched in a few numbers. I heard him a say “ hello Mr. Clemmons I have Mr.…” The guy turned around and his voice became muffled. He said a few more things. My friend snuck a sip off his beer before the guard turned around.

            “ Drive ahead and wait for the green light” He waved us past. I took my full beer from under the seat and too a long pull as we drove over the speed bump.

            “ Where the hell is that little piece of paper in my cigarette pack” he groped around in the darkness under his seat. He found it read a number off it, crumbled it up and through it on the floor.

            “ You know where this place is” I asked him.

            “ I’ve only been here a couple times before, dude.”

We drove through this golf course community. I watched the homes piled on top of each other flash by. This place was a yuppie stronghold, designed for conformity. There was no individuality; every home was the same color and shape as the last. I wondered where Trey parked his racing cars because there weren’t any cars in the driveways of the homes we passed.

We slowed down as we passed a house. “ That was it, we missed it.” We backed up and pulled in a driveway with a fat oil stain. My friend parked his car and leaped out, forgetting his keys, cigarettes, lighter, marbles, and etc. I gathered up as much as I could carry. To the dismay of his now “lost marbles.”

I grabbed the case of beer on my departure.

            The house was like every other on the block, except for a milk crate with a plastic vase and flower on it. This must be the place.

            We knocked on the door, waited a few moments then knocked on it again. “Wait” we heard someone yell from within the home. The door opened reveling a lanky guy with long blond hair and gold chains covering muck splattered wife-beater.

“ What up, player” Trey slapped my friend’s hand and gave me a heads up. “ Come, come in” he ushered us in. We walked into the house passing through the kitchen first that had a sinful of dishes and a counter full of empty beer boxes and two grocery store bottles of vodka. “ What you been up to bro?” Trey asked my friend. “Chillin, chillin taking care of my shit.”

            His living room was a coach and a small flat screen TV In the corner. His coffee table had an ant mound of cigarette butts in the middle. “ You boys ready for a good time? Trey asked. “ Always my brother” my friend slapped Trey’s palm. “ I thought we’d bust a couple lines before we go to O’Connell’s. Hey check this shit out” he said getting up.

We followed him to the kitchen’s freezer where he produced a little brick of coke. “ This shits the bomb-digity-bomb.” Trey took a razor and a small plate from the freezer where the icebox should have been. He grabbed the little block and started scraping the powder onto the plate. “ You guys, didn’t see this shit,” he said jokingly. When he had made a good little pile he put the block back in the freezer and grabbed a beer out of the fridge.

We went back to the living room and found a seat. The walls were covered in family pictures. Photos of children, old married couples, and cheap art from Walmart were all grouped together, cluttering the walls.

Trey was cutting up lines onto a pane of glass he had stashed underneath the coach. It had coke residue and a ten-dollar bill rolled up as a snorter.

My friend had his head back as far as it could go and was attempting to slam his beer.

I was busy trying to get comfortable with my surroundings.

“ Here you go boy’s” Trey pushed six chunky looking lines in front of us.

My friend snorted one line and slid the glass to me. I did two lines one in each nostril, took a gulp off my beer and slide back onto the coach.  

Trey flipped on the TV, a news channel was on talking about the war in Iraq. “You see this shit,” Trey said scraping his finger across a line and rubbing it onto his teeth. “ Those mother fuckers, we should just blow the whole place up.”

 “What about the people you fucking retard,” I didn’t say it but my eyes spoke for me. “ There just a bunch of fucking crazies” my friend said.

Not anymore crazy than the rest of us, I thought. I was surrounded by dumbasses.

“Wait till we find that fucker Saddam, we’re going to cap his ass” Trey spoke confidently.

Yeah, America is the Crips and Iraq is the Bloods.

I leaned forward and did another line.

“ What’s up with your girl and you” Trey asked my friend while he lit a joint. He passed it off to my friend and started cutting some more lines.

“ She’s cool, just hanging out, taking care of Junior. Her mom’s been bugging, trying to get us to move out in a hurray. She keeps bitching, I’ll move out when were fucking ready, take Junior and my wife and she’ll never see us again.

 “ Right, right” Trey said while nodding his head. “Will all see how funny it is when she can’t see the kid everyday.” He passed the joint to me.

            “ Hey that’s my Aunt, dude,” I said as I coughed up half a lung from the cheap dried out Mexican bud.

 “ And you know what’s the shit, so don’t try to act like they’re all cool with me.”

My friend said, becoming defensive.

“ They just want to see you to do what’s right,” I said it, knowing it was a bad, a really bad move. The second the first syllable passed threw my lips I knew I was in for it.

What’s right, what’s fucking right? I am doing what’s right.” His face swelled with ego or anger. I couldn’t tell. 

He did another line that Trey slid in front of him slyly.

“ Those fucking old guys I work with, those fuckers don’t know shit.” He snorted and wiped his nose. Then he took a smoke out of my pack and lit it. “Those guys are so slow. I’ll bust out like two, three cars before those guys can tape one car off. I’ll have all my cars striped and primed and be ready to leave for the day by noon.”

He threw my pack onto the coffee table disturbing the cigarette-slash-ant mound. The spent ashes of past smoke’s flumed off the sides of the ashtray like a swell on artic fisherman’s boat.

“Kens always bitchin and shit, then six fucking seconds later, he’s sucking my dick.”

He took a long, long pull off his beer.

“Yeah that mother fucker loves me, he sucks my dick for hours. I’m moving four to five cars through that bitch every two, three days, I’m the fucking maniac.”

He got real excited and sloshed his beer onto the coach.

“The maniac” he laughed it out.

“Those fumes are getting to your fucking head” Trey said snorting another line.

“Kens still got to pay me for the labor, which is like ahh buck twenty.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” My voice sounded grainy. I grabbed at my beer clumsily, shit I was starting to get sloppy. I pulled the glass pane in front of me; I had to get rid of the drunkenness. I did about two and a half lines.

O.K. check this out,” my friend said turning to me trying to get my attention as I hacked up some lumps of powder down my cottonmouth throat.

“What” I drew the word out as far as the vowels and constants could go.