I understand that my worldview is not what one would call normal... maybe like Jonathon Richman and his Modern Lovers once stated, i still love the old world... but what the fuck does that mean... in a way after dropping out of grad school i was nothing more than the Americanfuckingdream, a startup before the term startup had entered the lexicon of the cable business news network, i had a business plan and a sketchy way to finance it (credit card) and hence i took a calculated risk to see if i could get my business up and running, a business built solely on word of mouth and the ability to keep product on the shelf (loosely speaking), a business that was filled with competitors and had a known track record for failure, many a dumb and daring entrepreneur had taken this plunge and many had failed... but here i was, confident in my ability to make it and i had to be, when the whole thing started there was no safety net for me to fall into, no home to return to, i was happy to have a place to live where i could split the rent and bills and try to make my vision a reality... yeah there are those out there who would say i could have used this business acumen and (dare i call it) intelligence differently but that would be anathema to my sensibilities... my views on this culture, the disdain that kept growing in the wake of lived experience, the myths and fables i was fed as a kid had developed in the midst of watching my father be crushed by a corporate world that was fucking bullshit and a familial world that was fragile and most likely built on a lie... i loved my dad more than anything and seeing what he did and what it did to him had changed the way i looked at things dramatically... in my twentysomething mind there was only the mantra... fuck the system...
Looking around now and hearing the kids all piss and moan, the Millennials and Gen Z crowd, i get it, their Gen X parents were the first jaded generation to stare down the prospect of shit like climate collapse, an economy built by the rich for the rich who had now actively taken to gutting and destroying things like unions, had devised the strategy to ship jobs overseas for cheap labor, had began to squeeze people like my father, the middle management of the world who actually made things run, out of jobs so they could replace them with younger, cheaper workers all the while practically guaranteeing that those older workers now out of a job would be fucked, destined to never make the salary or wages they once did and left to scramble, i had a fucking front row seat and so yes i looked at things and thought how do i survive without playing the game? how do i subvert the system? and of course my answer was get outside of it all while using the tools that were in it... and after five years of hustling, of moving countless bags of grass, i had done nothing but luck into a great connection (though some would say my hard work and business acumen created that luck)... but no matter what anyone says, luck counts too...
The real job started the day i walked out of that plumbing and hvac supply warehouse, drove home, signed up for unemployment benefits and laughed at the folly of it all... two middle fingers flying high at the capitalist fucking pig dogs... though really what was i? i was really nothing more than one of them, the same principles, the same goals, bank as much as possible, pay as little into the system as possible all the while using that system for my own benefit... don't get me wrong my unemployment checks were fucking laughable, i'd have been selling plasma and sperm had i not had a second gig, a lucrative and tax free cash only business where those little checks went straight into my account and stayed there, everything else was paid in cash... it was easy back in the early aughts... and so i sat back and began to bask in the glow of what would be six months of no actual legitimate job... this as one may recall was my first taste of what one might call total freedom...
And for the next six months my life was like a well oiled machine... it was the beauty of being the beast... i'd wake up, usually anywhere from slightly hungover to flat out crippled hungover, on most days make my way to the other side of town where i had instructed Red to leave her door open so i could stroll in, i'd walk up the stairs to her bedroom, take off my clothes and climb into bed with her where we'd proceed to our morning workout, then i'd leave and drive back, shower, eat something, nap, and then get ready for business, the weight crew at my place, the nickel dimers at the bar, with my arrival usually somewhere between 7-8pm, i'd work and drink and then head to the strip club for a bit or sometimes another bar, roaming the East End like i owned it... every Tuesday morning i'd head to Stiv's to reup the supply, on busy weeks i'd head back Friday or Saturday to replenish the stock, clockwork, done in the morning when the world didn't think criminals were working, the squares all thought this shit happened at night, as a a matter of fact it didn't, it happened in broad daylight over cup of coffee... in fact looking back it was funny that there wasn't much drama or worry other than my paranoid mind and the occasional blip on the radar... the Disco Dave fiasco was in the past, the hurt of the whole Veronica situation assuaged by Red and her never-ending efforts to please me... it was the life of the Perfect Barbarian, all i had to worry about was getting popped and looking at a long stretch... which of course i tried not to think about... and yes i know much of this was previously covered but sometimes even i get lost and need to go back and see where i was...
As my brother Gulfboot used to say... these were the halcyon days of The King of North Oakland... and as i had stated previously, i had become what i despised (a businessman) while simultaneously becoming what i had set out to become, an excellent seller of cannabis (and at times mushrooms and for a very brief two month stint in order to finance a trip to Europe a certain white powder - of which i'm not proud of but once again did what any capitalist pig dog would do by exploiting a market that was readily available to me) and after five and a half years had landed here, collecting unemployment while making more money than i could have ever dreamed up back when i was starting out, back then i was hoping to make an extra $300 a week and now i was making 15 times that amount on average, sometimes even more... all while driving a $400 car... so what took place over the next six months? really nothing, it was the carefree life of a professional hood, yes i had broken my own rule of holding down a "normal" job but like every would be savant i had the utmost confidence in my ability and decisions...
It was Labor Day weekend, the first weekend of September 2001... i was looking at a few more weeks of unemployment before i'd have to find another job, i knew the Waitress wasn't exactly thrilled with my lack of even attempting to seek employment but there wasn't much she could say or do... i had money to burn, could pay the rent for the next year up front if i felt like it off one week of slinging and the truth was i wasn't much interested in finding a real job... work is for suckers... and so as i hung in the local swanky boozer that i occasionally worked out of slinging to my clientele, most of the staff and the stray rich kid, i was enjoying the last of what i thought was Total Freedom... there was a jazz/hip-hop improv band playing that night and as i stood to the side talking to a friend of mine i had uttered the phrase "six glorious fucking months" in relation to my stint on the dole... my friend laughing at my escapades as i relayed how i engineered my layoff in order to go full-time hood...
As we stood there drinking our beers i was talking to a few more people, let's just say i was pretty well known if you were in the know, when my friend came back up to me and said listen to what the singer is saying... and so i stopped my conversation and turned my ear towards the band... the singer was pacing back and forth over a staccato drum beat, a squonking sax and a bassline holding it all loosely together, the lyrics repeated over and over? "six glorious fucking months"... i started laughing... during a break i ended up next to the singer at the bar and told him jokingly he stole my line, he smiled and said, that was you? i said uh-huh, he laughed and told me when he heard the phrase he loved it and decided to immediately throw it into the song, i said i thought it was great and dug what they were doing and then explained what it related to and how it came about, he smiled again and said, so you're the man i been hearing about, you got good shit, then he winked and headed back to the stage...
The night would go as most would back then... i closed the place and rolled home, there was only about three weeks left in my unemployment bennies before i'd be officially breaking all the rules i'd set but seeing as i viewed the unemployment stint as still having a job in the eyes of the hegemony i, at least in my own mind, was abiding by my ground rules... granted these days i bent those rules in my mind to justify my actions... i was not the most decent of humans one could say... and so i was staring down a decision, not that it was really all that difficult of one, the main obstacle would be the Waitress and i felt confident i could handle that situation... and so the days came and went... and then one sunny and clear Tuesday morning in my fair city, my 31st birthday to be exact, i awoke to go for my usual Tuesday morning drive to reup the supply, i called Stiv to make sure all was ready, he said it was and then asked, have you turned on your television?
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