The Wilderness Years- goat's head soup

 And so began the halcyon days (a term tossed about a lot here at the lounge) of the King of North Oakland... i mean what was there not to love about waking up every morning with nothing to do except waiting to go to the bar to make money, interspersed with the occasional member of the weight crew stopping by which meant i'd be clearing a cool $1000 at bare minimum... unless of course said member of the weight crew happened to be the fucking Billy Goat... because the universe can't make things that easy now can it? there always has to be some sort of barb jabbing one in the ass to remind us that we are not invincible and that the world, particularly the world of contraband dealers, is populated by spectacular fuck-ups... granted he was a royal pain in the ass but at the same time i had cash pouring in, women who wanted to sleep with me, an array of other drugs being offered me, i could drink myself silly and not have to worry about getting up to go to work hungover, the bills were paid, the student loans could be nixed with the writing of check, two small lockboxes stuffed with cash... in short i had become what my father and uncle had once dubbed me... the perfect barbarian... 

Of course i was always one to have what might be termed an "addictive personality" and these days my newfound addiction was in the form of a stripper built like the proverbial brick shithouse...  and being the good addict i am i took every opportunity to get my end in, as Henry Miller would say... 

Some days, when not sneaking over to the West End i'd walk up to the swanky street that was the hub of my little neighborhood, by this time i was living in the swanky hood and the Waitress worked on said street so i'd wander up to get myself breakfast and then i'd play a game called Race the Devil on the walk home... for any, what might be called, heavy drinker this is a game that is played on a somewhat regular basis particularly after gobbling down a greasy breakfast of hash browns, bacon, sometimes chorizo, eggs, toast and coffee and to win the game one must get home without shitting their pants, problem is one does not know when the game will start but when it does it's a delicate balance of gritting the teeth and attempting to keep the sphincter clamped shut before the glorious beer shit comes Old Faithful style... i lived roughly four blocks or so from the restaurant and it usually never failed to happen about halfway home... the familiar and foreboding pains and gurgles before the bowels sorta gave the warning that shitting myself was imminent... i can only surmise my fellow boozers driving past would look at this tall man gingerly yet swiftly walking as if trying to hold something in his ass, they'd laugh and think, "that dudes about to shit himself" and continue driving to work... and they would be right, the problem is if i ran i would definitely shit myself and if i walked? well i may or may not get home... and then it was the dash up the steps fumbling with keys, talking to myself the whole time that "you can do it", meaning get home before shit Pompeii erupted and then finally opening the door and racing to the toilet, sweat pouring off the brow, panting and then the relief of making it to the shitter while the body explained in no uncertain terms that the lifestyle i was leading was not the most healthy... 

I settled in to my new routine quickly... really who wouldn't settle into a routine like this... i remember telling the Waitress that one of the benefits of not having a job would be now i would have time to write in the mornings before things got busy... bullshit of course as i didn't write a thing, how could i? i was in the middle of it and didn't know how the story ended but it sounded good... i'd spend the morning fucking about online trying to find books or records before finding a decent porn site to rub one out to before watching some telly and going back to bed for an hour or two... i'd clean up around the place, lounge with the cats, do the books and maybe make some calls, check the inventory, sometimes i'd recount the money i had stashed because it's fun to count bundles of $1000 and see how many were there, then i'd walk to the bank and deposit a bit, never too much usually $80-200 a few times a week, i sold to a lesbian who worked at a bank who tipped me off to what they looked for, by keeping it down to small amounts it looked as if i was nothing more than a waiter or bartender, schemes schemes schemes... 

And then there would be that barb in the ass... Billy Goat would call and come running over, he'd come in and make nice and all the while i knew what was coming, just waiting for it, sometimes i'd sit there staring at him wondering what the fucking lame ass excuse would be this time, i had mental notes of all the previous excuses and i was always keen to hear who he absolutely had to help out this time... see we've had to bail a friend out of the can, pay his girlfriend's and her roommates rent, save the whales and the trees and the puppies and the kittens, free Leonard Peltier, pay some fuckwits electric bill though he's never spoken of the fuckwit before, there was not a cause or bill or wayward stranger that the Billy Goat didn't absolutely have to help out or (insert impending disaster here) would put them in dire straits... it was always at this point that i reminded Billy that it would behoove him to take care of the person who provided the ways and means for him to be such a fucking hero... aka me and the fucking money he owed... 

I began telling him once again that i was getting more than a bit tired of covering his ass when it came time re-up, that in fact it was not really in my job description to cover him but it was in his to get me my fucking money... i dropped in his ear one day about how i had told my partner Stiv about the issues i was dealing with when it came to Billy and that Stiv's response was to cut him off and fucking kneecap him, Billy grinned a bit until i followed that it had actually begun crossing my mind that it might not be a bad idea... Billy Goat didn't understand i had him sorted, that i had eyes and ears all over and that people who knew him and hung out with him actually reported back to me about his activities, about how Billy loved picking up huge tabs at dinner or the bar, bought tickets to go see his favorite jam bands or sporting events, how Billy tossed around money... all very valuable intel, i had aces in my hand, Billy was holding deuces... Billy was in love with the lifestyle and i understood that he never had it so good as he did with the connection i provided... key point, i provided, without access to it he was fucked, nickel diming wasn't gonna pick up the check at some swanky restaurant and he knew as well as i that his buxom little hippie girl would be out the door as soon as he wasn't rolling in it... 

The lounge being the labyrinthine mess it is i may have told this before but here it is again (possibly), it was during one of these meetings when i was lecturing the Billy Goat on prompt payment that he stated that if need be he would give me his car... he had stated i could get like $8-10 thousand for it, an older model Mercedes in relatively good condition, not some classic but a mid 80s style, nice car if one is into that sort of thing but unfortunately for the Billy Goat i was not, though he was a bit taken aback when i told him he could give me the car but i'd only knock $4000 off his tab to which he replied but it's worth eight to ten, to which i replied not to me... i then explained to him that he could sell his fucking car and give me the proceeds, i told Billy that if he "gave" me the car there is still a transfer of title, taxes, it had to look like i bought it and hence would involve much more legal paper trail then i really wanted to be involved in, unemployed ex warehouse worker buys a Mercedes on unemployment bennies? nah man, that shit ain't gonna work, needless to say my rebuttal to his brilliant idea resulted in the Billy Goat sitting there as if i had just taken a giant shit in his mouth... which i somewhat did... all in a days work for the weed kingpin, it was always a delicate line i had to walk but in the end i knew they needed me just as much as i needed them, besides i had the best connection one ask for and if the Billy Goat was booted off the payroll i'm sure another enterprising young derelict would gladly fill the void...