The Life and Death of a Line Cook

 He was awkward and shy, he was a bit overweight and not what one would call the best looking guy... he was a middle child and the universe it seemed helped to never let him forget it, the forgotten kids who grow up not being the oldest and not being the baby... he was quiet and well aware of his weight and so he wouldn't eat in front of people because it made him self conscious... both his parents worked at the restaurant he would start working in as a high school kid, first as a line cook and eventually working his way up to being the manager at what was considered the flagship location of the local place where he was employed... he made good money, excellent money for a single guy, he owned a house and a car and was one of the loneliest people one ever saw... 

He wasn't social but he had a few friends but in all the years he worked no one ever knew him to have a girlfriend, not in high school or after... he was one of those people who go to work and do their job and then go home, it's as if no one had ever taught him how to live or how to enjoy something, anything really, they are forgotten it seems by everyone around them except when they were working or helping out someone in their family... and it appears no one seems to really notice how much pain they are in, how lonely they really are... how day after day, year after year, they get up and go to work and come home to an empty house or apartment, to watch television and make dinner alone, to sit in a room with no conversation or human interaction only to trudge off to bed in order to get up and do it again... and for what? and therein lies the burning question, for what? why do any of us do this shit? i guess we could say to survive, to take care of the people or animals we love, to have some semblance of a family, to not be alone... but what happens when none of that works out? what happens to those of us, in a society that bleats about being more connected than ever, have no one? or at least believe and feel as if they have no one and ultimately that is all that matters, that they believe and feel they have no one... 

And so it was that one non-descript Monday that Jim went to work... there had been signs he had been struggling, signs that he needed help and though his co-workers and friends asked him if he was okay he said yes, he was fine... the saddest thing is his family actually asked his boss about him, was he okay? he seemed to be in a dark place but those around him at work, those that were his friends had talked to him and though he seemed down they believed he'd be alright... and so the Monday workday came and went... when the place closed he sat in the back staring off into space, lost in thought... one of the waitresses asked him if he was okay and he said yes, he was tired, she smiled at him and told him he should go home and get some sleep and that she'd see him tomorrow... and then she left... 

On his own to lock up he went into the office and wrote a letter, a letter to his boss, the woman he looked at as one of his best friends if not the best friend he'd ever had, they had worked together for over twenty years... he tucked the note into a folder and drove home... then he called another cook and told him how great a friend he was and that everything was going to be okay but that he wanted him to know... the other cook said of course it is and stated that he was a his boy, a great friend to him and that he'd see him tomorrow at work... Jim said it again, that he was a great friend and that everything was going to be alright and then hung up... he locked up the restaurant, walked to his car and drove home... 

Once home he began to get things organized as if it was just another Monday, he laid out the information to various accounts and subscriptions on the kitchen table, he double checked to make sure it was all there and then he sat down and wrote his boss an email... it was sent shortly after 5pm, his boss didn't see it until a half an hour later and as she read it she felt a sense of unease come over her, was this a goodbye? it seemed off but it didn't outright say anything in the way of self harm but the tone had her worried, she called a couple people and it was decided to call in a mental health check... about 20 minutes after he sent the email he sent his younger brother a text... it stated he loved him and not to be mad... then he taped a note to his front door, walked back to his favorite chair, put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger... 

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The note that the was taped to front door that the police found stated simply, Call 911 I'm already gone... in a way there was a symmetry to his life and his death, he felt unseen in his life and now wished not to be seen in death... really he was just looking out for his loved ones, didn't want them to see the aftermath of his decision... but what he never realized was that while doing this may have ended his pain that pain didn't disappear, it was just transferred to those who cared about him, those still here left to deal with the aftermath... 

The human race is more connected than ever and yet lonelier than we've ever been... Jim may have been shocked at how many people actually did care but then again did they? we live in a society where we're so wrapped up in our own lives it seems difficult for many of us to step outside of ourselves and look at the people around us, to see if they really are doing alright and yes in the current shit show we all have to take care of our own mental health first before we can look after others but the fact is even when we do look after our own we tend not to look after others, the observations or concerns brushed aside or compartmentalized in phrases like, what can i do? it's not really my problem? hopefully the family looks after them... i've often paraphrased and stolen the line from Jean Genet that families are the cruelest of jokes, and often times they are, the unconditional love people expect or are taught to believe in never materializes... and what then? then it comes down to friends and as Jim wrote in his letter to his boss, one can't choose their family but they can choose their friends and that she chose him to be a friend which was the best thing that happened to him... beautiful and heartbreaking... and absolutely true... 

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I've thought a lot about Jim, we were more acquaintances than friends but the BW was his boss so having heard about him so much over the years in a way i felt i knew him... we'd talk and hangout at certain functions but i didn't work with him day in and day out... but what i did know from everything i'd seen and heard is that he was incredibly lonely and incredibly unhappy... think about going home to and empty house or apartment every day, the only real social life you have is at work and even then you question if it's genuine or if it's the typical "work" friend, granted some of the people where he worked were his friends but when the darkness falls it does not lift lightly or easily, he never once spoke of harming himself and when asked directly he said he'd never do a thing like that... warning signs... the people who say they'd never do it tend to be the ones who do while those who constantly claim they're going to tend to be the ones who don't... that's not a critique or knock or whatever just what seems to be the case... for Jim it was day after day of the same thing, no one ever happy he walked in the door, no one to talk to, just another night in front of the television or online, another dinner eaten alone before trudging off to bed all in order to do it again, the days off while needed even more brutal, a day spent with no one, grocery shopping alone, running errands alone... and while some people (see me) may enjoy doing those things on their own we still need people, we still need human interaction and in a world with billions there are still far too many who have no one...  

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In the last few years i've now known four people directly and one indirectly who have taken their own lives (four men in there 40s and 50s and one woman in her 40s)... yet we live in a place where mental healthcare, for all the ads and campaigns designed to help us recognize the signs in ourselves or others, is still hard to come by, both expensive and difficult to obtain in a system run by greed which buys and pays the legislators who understand that money deposited in their campaign coffers was an investment, an investment at keeping the status quo, vacuum up the money while doing as little as possible in returning the services which the system supposedly provides, it's a Ponzi scheme and one which the C-suite crowd and the shareholders want cemented into place... it ain't got fuck all to do with health, mental or otherwise... which means we have to look after each other, we need to pick up the phone, we need to take the time out of our lives to get a cup of coffee or a fucking omelet with people and listen, especially those that seem lonely, isolated, struggling, we need to find our humanity again in a culture that's increasingly predicated on me me me a culture that seems to revel in cruelty... one need to look at none other than certain elected officials, the entertainment industrial complex, the social media shit show that teaches kids that "likes" are the only thing that counts and that disparaging comments matter when in fact they mean fuck all... the ridiculous fact that our culture is all about documenting how fabulous our lives our when the truth is the best lives our lived out of the glare of the social media cesspool... social media is the culmination of what Warhol predicted decades ago... everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes... maybe less... but that's a whole different diatribe and all i'm trying to really say is can we at least try to look after each other? cuz we need to, it's called being human... 

Gen X Anthems #2

 For someone who could be classified as a bit of an Anglophile when it comes to music, not in the strictest sense but definitely when it comes to those post-punk years and beyond, it's surprising that i missed this record when it was first released... and maybe this post should be retitled Gen X Anthems International Edition because while this song definitely does have a foothold here in Merica it is damn near ingrained into the fabric of modern Britannia... the year was 1997 and Cheryl, the African American woman who had lived upstairs, the one who used to come down and borrow rolling papers off us and seemed to have quite the social life when entertaining gentleman callers, had moved out... at the time i was a bit concerned cuz the budding contraband salesman was in full swing and the last thing i needed was the headache of a new neighbor, granted in the tenement i lived, owned by Sophia the Greek slumlord and her coke loving son, it was not as if i should have been worried, this was a place for students and/or the down and out who needed a place to live, there was a lovely hole in our kitchen ceiling (a common theme in the tenements in which i'd lived) which let one see practically straight  through to the bathroom above and when said upstairs resident would take a shower there was a nice, slow drip... in three years it never got fixed... 

As fate would have it... or more correctly dumb luck, a young woman moved in, a student at one of the local universities, a lovely girl who was a dating a certain Englishman, a man who would become one of the best friends i've ever had and who was a mad bastard just like the weed slinging chap who lived a floor below and if there was one thing the two had in common it was a love of music and one could say that the Limey aka Gulfboot, was actually a bit impressed by our hero's love of certain bands... The Smiths, The Fall, The Stone Roses, Jesus and Mary Chain, Happy Mondays etc, good old Gulfboot was a bit surprised by the Septics depth of knowledge of Inglaterra tunes, yes some bands like The Smiths weren't exactly unheard of here in the States but back before the internet gave us access to everything all the time to find some of these bands meant one had to work at it, seek them out... it helped i had a radio show for three years (and for a short lived time, two radio shows) but it went back further than that with my teenage self combing through magazines in the hip record stores of Cleveland looking for the "cool" shit... 

And then one day Gulfboot brought down a CD, it was by this band called Pulp and while it was a name i heard and read about in passing it wasn't one that i'd actually listened to... the record was a Different Class and as we all know now it's a classic of it's age, dare i say of any age as one could pull it out now and it doesn't sound dated or anything (unless one counts a song title like Disco 2000) but in fact captures some timeless topics in timeless fashion... in fact just last week i sent the I-mac the song Sorted for E's and Whizz before he went to some EDM show cuz i couldn't stop giggling at the fact not much shit has changed in the last thirty-some odd years... but the song that drew me in, the one that piqued my interest in this band and it's rather very English frontman was what one would definitely call an anthem, and that of course was Common People... 

To once again go all grad school, the lyrics or text as the profs would say, are fucking brilliant... though i don't think the prof would be quite so colorful in their description... a rather scathing cultural critique really of what one might call class tourism, when the rich kids have their own version of Rumspringa and spend a year or two seeing how the lumpen proles live, renting dive apartments and wearing thrift store clothes or better yet the expensive fashionable thrift store style of clothes acquired through glossy catalogs and purchased by a doting mother... and before this all gets a little too Outsiders and devolves into class warfare that is not the intention... or maybe it is... the album as a whole is an interesting examination of what one might term "young adulthood", as we fumbled our way to, well? i don't really fucking know? old adulthood? but it was Common People, the anthem of what the class tourists will never really understand about actually being down and out in (insert city here) or in my case Podunk, Pittsburgh, Ocean City... when really one was always turning their attention to acquiring or scheming for the next drink or drug or meal and we basically entertained ourselves by fucking about, by singing and dancing along to the songs (to steal from Mozza) that saved our lives or as Jarvis put it, to dance and drink and screw/ because there's nothing else to do... 

The moment this song was introduced it was like a lightening bolt because everyone in the 759 could relate... and of course there was the irony of Gulfboot and his girl, she was from a very well to do family and at that time her father was none to fond of Gulf, granted over the the years that would change and the relationship would be solid if not entirely warm and fuzzy but due to the old man's dislike Ms. Gulf, one of the loveliest people i've ever met, was working while going to school cuz dad had sorta cut off the funds believing that Gulf was only after his daughter for money...  a fact that was far from the truth as Gulf loved that woman until the day he passed... but as for the denizens of my apartment, we were all products of broken homes, living on our own and with no real safety net, granted i probably was the only one with none at all to return to though i have no doubt Pops would have helped me but it wasn't as if he was in the best place at the time having recently come out of a divorce... the truth was this song basically hit the bullseye of our existence... we were line cooks and warehouse grunts, we were retail workers and wait staff, who were scratching out an existence... the fact that the most successful among us was the guy who sold weed was basically all anyone needed to know... and  while that guy might have had a little more dosh in his pocket he wasn't getting rich and all the while ran the risk of spending a few years or more in a small room with iron bars... 

The real beauty of it came from the fact that those of us who weren't tourists in this time were a bit like the characters of Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, we looked after each other, even though we were all fuck-ups in our own way we tried, not always successfully but we tried... we didn't discriminate when the class tourists showed up and in my position as weed dealer i saw a whole fucking lot of them waltz through my door... slumming it for fun on their way to some nice, slightly more than entry level position at the firm or business courtesy of mom or dad... 

But the song nailed it... what these class tourists didn't understand was the actual life we were living... yes they may have thought they were exactly like us but then they'd talk of some posh three week vacation in Europe or traveling the US or skiing at Jackson Hole to which they would then bleat on about how great it was and how i (or we if my roommates were around) should really check it out, they didn't understand that to us vacation meant a fucking day off and the ability to get drunk or stoned or gobble a tab of acid and wander about the apartment or streets for a few hours without worrying about shit... though we still had to worry about shit... they didn't get that we were dancing and drinking and screwing cuz that's really all we had... that they never had to worry about failing as their parents would prop them up, never watch their life slide out of view due to being broke or getting busted or a fucking fired or twisting an ankle they couldn't afford to get looked at let alone miss work where they stood on their feet all day... it was different worlds entirely and here was Jarvis putting it all so succinctly into a song, it was glorious and for those of us living it there was a reason we sang it as if our life depended on it, cuz it fucking did, it was four minutes of respite from the bullshit and we sang along and hugged our friends and spilled beer and danced like fools... pure living... 

And of course these days i can't hear that song without thinking of my brother, gone too soon, the 24yr old kid who first played it for me and watched as the grin spread across my face, how we'd get drunk and play it at full volume in the wee hours, cops and neighbors be damned... yes these  days i still sing along but with a mist in my eyes as i miss my friend... and those words hit home even more, they remind me, in the midst of all this middle class comfort i'm sitting in not to forget where i came from and who i am... and maybe to remind me that i miss those days, the days of living hand to mouth and buying a beer for your brother even though that means sacrificing food for yourself cuz what's more important? having a drink and talking with your friend or a fucking sandwich? now pull out the record and set the needle on the wax and sing along with the Common People, sing along and it might just get you through... and then dance and drink and screw, because there's nothing else to do... 

Gen X Anthems #1

 Maybe this shit should be called, hey you damn kids! get off my fucking lawn!! or maybe it stems from my love of music and riding around in cars humping groceries for the bourgeoisie... driving around gives me time to think and remember and every so often shit pops into my head and think, damn? and of course sometimes i think, damn i'm old and so if i'm gonna call this new little thing here Gen X Anthems i might as well start with what popular culture would consider the anthem of disaffected youth circa 1991... and yeah kids, if you guessed it was Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit you would be correct... surprised some aging hipster dickhead like me would pick what might be the obvious choice? well yeah, i was even surprised myself until driving some tree-lined suburban street in some new development, in a new suburb recently built by decimating some woodland area in order to put in more McMansions so while i rolled down said streets replete with yellow signs telling me to slow down while silhouettes of white kids frolicked happily in my optic nerve i found myself thinking back to my tenement years, right around the time the suburban home i grew up in came crumbling down... 

This story begins in the fall of 1991, i was living in the ghetto of Podunk U. known as College Park, paper thin walls of plywood and vinyl floors, drafty windows that kept it roasting in hot weather and freezing in cold, barely functional appliances, the kind of shit today's university student would scoff at as unacceptable living conditions... needless to say i spent most of my time out of that apartment as i had one roommate who was about as weird as they come and one who thought he was a rockstar and insisted on his own room as he would be bagging the most babes (to steal a line from Farmer Ted), to call him an arrogant shithead would be close to a compliment as that's actually bordering on polite when it came to my ex roomie... 

I used to hang out and party at the good Doctor's house way back when, an abode dubbed The House of Gay Love by none other than Cowboy Dan, he of weed dealer and somewhat mentor fame, granted the guys who had lived there which had prompted Cowboy Dan to bestow this name had moved out and now it was more a bunch of skaters and such who i was friends with... and it was here, that one early September Thursday night party, one of them pulled out a CD single, remember those? it was three songs? if i remember correctly but the single was to the forthcoming album Nevermind... it wasn't that any of us had never heard of this band as one of the guys used to play the first record, Bleach, though the response was nowhere near what would happen when this new song was played... in those early weeks of the semester on those Thursday nights when suddenly as the guitar strummed and the drums kicked in the living room would suddenly become a pit with bodies slamming into each other as if suddenly there was some cathartic release from the shit and grind of everyday living... or what music is known to do especially to the youth... because some scrawny blonde haired guy from a shit town in Washington was articulating the anger and frustration that a whole lot of us were feeling... and this was before it became the mega-hit, before the album was out... like a primal release from a cage that we didn't build but were shoved into, the so-called first generation to do worse than their parents (though i believe that can got kicked down the road to the next one) but here we were... shit economy, on the brink of another war, the end of 12 years of the Reagan/Bush regime and now here came Slick Willie promising us all what? same shit different wrapping... 

And so we let loose... we'd learn the words and realize this was our music... at least until it resonated with more than just our island of misfit toys and suddenly the world wanted a piece... something that would drive poor old Kurt to the brink... or more correctly past it... we had come out of the first summer of Lollapalooza, the danger of Jane's Addiction (a band i was far more into than Nirvana) and in a way us weird kids were finding a place in the world... and then of course the rest of the world found out about it and crashed the party ruining it for all the weirdos and the guy who wrote the song... capitalism loves to cash in on a good story and this was no different and of course there were suddenly expose`s on the nightly news about this new phenomenon, which was hardly knew at all but just another in a cycle of music and culture and disaffected youth colliding... and it must be fucking dangerous and it must promote drug use and it must encourage sex... as if every time something like this occurred the same warnings weren't direly issued to and by parents, politicians and preachers alike that this would be the downfall of civilization... 

If one is so inclined, go and have a look at the lyrics, but don't forget this was pre-social media and Kurt here had tapped into something, something not laid out explicitly in the text (to get all grad school) but for those of us who lived it we knew what it was about, Gen X kids were a bit like a lost generation, we were left on our own, alot... we didn't have computers in our pockets to keep us from interacting with others so we were forced to interact with others, to fumble our way through sex and drugs and rock and roll, we couldn't look shit up on the internet or think that sex was akin to a porn video, hell back then we had to go to the porno store and hit the little booths if one wanted what is readily available today with the click of a mouse and hell i can't say it wasn't a laugh to check out the vids while stopping in to load up on whippets and balloons when we were going highbrow fucked up instead of just buying cans of whipped cream from the grocery store, but i digress, what i mean is we had no guides or instructions and had to figure shit out on our own which lead to some rather interesting and albeit embarrassing situations... add in the fact there was no anti-bullying campaigns and being made fun of or insulted or sometimes running home in order to not get one's ass kicked was just another day in school...  so what the song summed up in feeling/emotion more than words was what is sort of felt like to grow up and be alive in that time... and while i still find it fascinating that i see kids wearing Nirvana t-shirts these days i often wonder what the music and that song means to them... 

Of course then MTV got the video and the masses caught on that this was "cool" and hence began the downward spiral of poor old Kurt, when the popular kids all pushed their way to the front at his shows instead of the kids wearing thrift store clothes, in fact some of those thrift store kids decided this shit was overblown and moved on the next and by the time In Utero appeared (which in itself was a great record) it was only a matter of time... i was working in the bagel store the day the news came down that Kurt had checked out, i remember the one baker being distraught, a guy i sold weed too (who in the world is a small place would bring his girlfriend along, a girl named Jen but who went by Diva, shit maybe she was ahead of her time with her stage name drama, she was social media before social media, and once Diva had dropped The Baker she took up with Sneaky Pete who would tell Gulfboot to talk to the guy in the apartment below)... i was working in the Land of Oaks near the university and there were a lot of upset teens and twentysomethings milling about as i walked home... for the record i was far more distraught the day one Henry Charles Bukowski died roughly a month earlier... 

By the time the song really blew up i myself would be one of those kids from a broken home though i was really just past 21 so technically not a kid but still living at home when not away at school, something that would change at the start of 1992... by the time both Kurt and Hank checked out in spring of 94 i was applying to grad school while slinging weed out of my third floor tenement walkup... i also had a little scam at work where i'd pocket the dollar in the three bagels for a buck coupon found in the local free weekly, usually netting me from between 5-20 bucks a day while also raiding the cooler for lunchmeat and cheese to put on the deformed bagels we got for free cuz they couldn't sell them... hand to mouth was a way of life back then and a skill i think has been lost on this current generation... or at least the ones i'm exposed to out here in the lily white suburbs... before the Year of our Grunge 1994 was out i'd be writing a paper for Dr. Rockstar on the commodification of punk rock thus practically laying out the future business model of fucking Hot Topic... and of course having 8-10 weeks to write it i did it in roughly three days... 

It's easy to become jaded as the years have rolled by, this song today means something totally different than it did back when it was released... or does it? years of debating its merits, arguments in dive bars, the fact this band became "popular" with more than just the pre-hipster hipsters has warped what it was to those of us old enough to be drafted at the time and wondering if Operation Desert Storm was the ending or the beginning (obviously it was just the beginning) but hearing it pop up and thinking back to those early days it reminded me to clear the mind so to speak, to remember what it meant originally to me and countless others even though the years have morphed and changed the meaning into something else... which is beautiful really, each generation has the right to interpret things as they see fit, the fact the kids are still wearing the shirts and hopefully listening to the music is what matters, a bridge between generations that the geezers need to remember that we were them once, way back when, wearing thrift store flannel, wearing Dickies work pants, angry at the world with both middle fingers aimed squarely at the hegemony... then again, the more things change the more they stay the same... and even though this grunge kid became the world's hairiest (former) soccer mom his attitude ain't all that far off from that kid bouncing around and sweating in some run down house all those years ago... strange what one thinks about driving around alone... 

The Wilderness Years - Welcome to the Occupation

 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? 

standing in a bar alone and thinking

 It can't all be kittens and sunshine can it? and to be brutally honest some days it's a struggle to see the good things, they are there but at times i have to remind myself and at times i realize that the shit things seem to outweigh the good, granted that balance, that yin-yang that tilts the scales slightly one way or the other is always drifting back and forth and like Leonard Cohen said, the cracks are where the light gets in... but like Jeff Tweedy once sang, how do you fight loneliness? you smile all the time... a smile that hides that loneliness and feeling of isolation... granted i've always been very comfortable being alone but there are times when some human companionship would be a swell thing... i mean the beings i converse with most have four legs and speak a different language but we still manage to have great conversations... or steal one more line, if you want a friend feed any animal... 

I'm a little less than a month out from the start of the back half of my fifth decade... i read a lot, from my self curated curriculum encompassing cultural and political theory, philosophy, fiction, to articles on shit like mental health, relationships, the importance of friends... as one gets older it becomes a little more difficult to make new friends especially when one if as fucking weird as yours truly... there are not many fiftysomethings who have a predilection for psychedelics and cannabis as i tend to skew, though the latter is more common these days... but then add in my love of music, most of it off the beaten path, my love of reading, again most of which books that one would not regularly find in the average bookstore, i'm also devoid of any career type thing which i find tends to be the topic of conversation most eager to be discussed among my age group and even more so in my current zip code... i actually really love the city i live in but can honestly say not the suburb i currently reside in so much, i dig my house and what has now amounted to the two rooms i sort of live out of, the real problem is when i have to leave it (the house or my room)... 

In the past decade or so all of my close friends have moved away... shit happens... but that has now left me on the Jack Jones permanently so to speak, (hell some of my closest friends aren't even alive anymore) so when i do go out it's usually alone, especially if it's a spur of the moment thing and to be fair i don't really have a problem with that... and so as i dealt with a sore back, mainly due to the fact sometimes around here if i want shit done (in a somewhat timely manner) i gotta do it myself (see mowing the lawn)... i debated whether to drive over to the old hood, to an old haunt, and check out three local bands... and after a Friday that was less than stellar i said fuck it, i gotta get outta here... 

I'll just put on record here that my little Rust Belt city is currently producing some really good local bands, bands that i would go out to see more than once, shelling out a minimal cover, $5-10 or so bucks to see what the kids are doing these days is one of the joys of my current situation, supporting people making art and doing it their own way, fuck yeah i'm gonna support them and the three bands i saw the other night definitely deserved support... as i told the one guy from the opening band as i bummed a smoke (every now and then kids you gotta have one... or as Mr. Tweedy also said, when you're back in your old neighborhood/ cigarettes taste so good... ) i quoted, more paraphrased, the great Kurt Vonnegut about creating just to create, to make something, no matter how "bad or good" people think it is but just the act of doing it and the meaning and purpose and satisfaction it brings us... the guy sorta looked at me  with the realization that the crazy old man bumming cigs and praising psychedelics might have had a modicum of sense... 

And it was a great night, three excellent bands... it's not lost on me though that i was most likely the oldest person at this gig, granted some of us aging Gen X kids are going out on our feet and i do my best not to come off as the weird old guy but then again i sorta am a weird old guy, maybe creepy old guy is what i try to avoid is more apt and sometimes when i'm talking to people (i've always been able to talk to just about anyone most likely cuz when you go 2000 miles away from home for the first year of college one has to learn how to make friends or whatever they call it) especially the younger generations at these shows that sometimes i talk about things that happened before they were born... case in point talking to the guy above about the first three Lollapaloozas... he wasn't even born yet... and while i get that some of the kids are indulging the geezer others are actually genuinely interested to hear the tales of hipsters past... but let's just say sometimes it would be pleasant to actually have someone to hang with (and granted there are one or two people i can call to hang with but on this night it was so last minute and i just needed to bolt before i went bananas..) so yeah sometimes i can feel very alone in a crowded room... probably more often than i care to admit... 

But the real crux of this whole word salad of rambling nonsense woe is me bullshit is what i observed while watching these bands... the band who put the show together was having a video release party ahead of the record release gig next month... what hit home or more correctly, what i was reminded of, was the situation i currently occupy... watching the significant others of the various band members, of the director of the video, and how they supported their partners in their artistic endeavors once again drove home the point of isolation that is my existence at times... i've never gotten really any support from the BW when its come to writing or any other artistic interest i may have, in fact the last time she read anything i've written was now over three decades ago... obviously there is shit that would land me in serious trouble if someone did read it but the fact is the parameters were established long ago... in fact on the rare occasions where she has heard me discussing what i write about with people the usual response is "i don't know why anyone would want to read stuff like that... yes an abundance of love and support but then again i'm used to it, dare i say conditioned and for the most part don't really give a fuck what she thinks about what i do because as Kurt said above, i do it for me and no one else, (except maybe the boyos so they can someday read a bunch of shit their crazy old man wrote)... 

But it hit home... there was a lot of talent on display this night but as we know doesn't mean any of them will ever make a living or a career out of their music, it's not a knock on any of them as they have good songs and when it comes to the main band (TV's Norm, find them on bandcamp) dare i say great songs in my humble opinion but yet here were their wives and girlfriends and boyfriends when it came to one of the bands, all here supporting their partners, having a good time, singing and dancing and not acting as if they'd been dragged along and had to suffer through another show, no in fact it was quite the opposite and it was a beautiful thing to see... i understand what i do, whatever the fuck that is, and bands playing gigs are two different things but i also understand bands have practice, may try to tour, all sorts of things that take support from the person you're permanently or currently committed to... in fact just watching couples in general having a good time, holding hands, with arms around waists or shoulders, laughing, reminded me of just how shit things have become in my current situation...

As i stood towards the back when the final song ended i hit the steps, in a way i needed to get out of there, yes it was a good time but the old stoner's mind was running now and so i hit the street, i had parked a block away which was by design, i wanted to tread the pavement of my old hood, the streets once run by a man called the King of North Oakland, in fact across the street from the bar was the first apartment i ever looked at (but didn't rent) in the city, way back in 1993... and as i walked towards my car i took it all in, i thought about all the days spent in these neighborhoods, i thought about what i'd just seen, i was glad these people had support but a sadness had crept in as i realized how fucking broken things are back in the burbs... broken in a way that probably can't be fixed, for various reasons, but i'll do what i can and i'll keep doing what i do regardless of what happens around here... 

epilogue - on this night it just so happened that it was Disaster's first day of work at his first job... he's washing dishes at a restaurant in a mall not far from our house (which is great cuz it's quick and easy to get to), a place where a friend of his already works, Disaster is a trip and actually wanted to be a dishwasher and why not? he just turned 17 and i explained to him he'll learn a lot about humanity in that position, his old man knows cuz he's done it... on more than one occasion... i made him some dinner and then walked him to the door as we talked, told him he'd be home before me but i'd talk to him when i got home about his first day... well i got home and he wasn't home yet... i thought maybe he went back out until the BW said he was still working... first day and he had to work two hours past his scheduled shift... when he came in the door it was almost 12:30am and i wondered what his reaction was gonna be... he was tired but smiling, he was stoked cuz he was tallying up how much he'd made his first day, i'll just say that had this been his older brother he'd have walked in complaining and stating he was gonna quit and find a new job, the injustice of the whole situation, bullshit really but somewhat par for the course... Disaster on the other hand said he thought it was cool, he liked it, granted it's still new but the next morning as we talked he stated his plans for his paychecks... he was going to invest some, save some and then have his spending money, he cited a finance course he took, his old man was grinning, the boy has a head on his shoulders, i've talked to both of my sons about using this shit system to generate money in order to live and that if you start young they'd be surprised at how much compounding interest generates (as long as the whole system doesn't go up in flames) but the marked difference between the way the boyos think is staggering... the I-mac can't seem to keep a dime in his pocket while spending a quarter while Disaster will talk about not wanting to spend money on dumb shit... but just like this whole thing started, that old yin-yang, cuz sometimes the old universe still gives you a reason to smile... even when you feel like crying... 

Virus w/Shoes

 The phrase "we're a virus with shoes" was coined by the great Bill Hicks and if one is unfamiliar with William i highly suggest you find his old specials or comedy albums and check him out, another in the vein of Philosopher Comics who was really more of philosopher than comic... like George Carlin and Dave Chappelle, they're gonna make you uncomfortable which is a good thing, challenge the accepted norms, point out the bullshit that is being fed to you by both the government and more importantly the oligarchs, those captains of industry who so love to talk of bootstraps while holding out their hand and gleefully pocketing free money (see tax dollars) while lecturing we lumpen-proles on the reasons for our lack of success, wealth, plastic surgery disaster partner who is a few decades younger... all while hopefully keeping us distracted and working to exhaustion in order for the proletariat to not notice just how fucked over we are was and is... but i digress... 

Humanity, for all it's various scientific and technological advances is really nothing more than a raging shit show and more like a raging shit show doused in gasoline and lit on fire... and what does one do when we see something like this? well obviously we pull out our phones and record it dammit! we can create content and get clicks and if enough people view whatever slop we put up on the clock app or Zucky's playland or worse Twatzee (the one Elonia Hairplugz owns)... about the only bright spot when it comes to the mini computer tracking device eternal distraction in our pockets is the fact we can pull it out and record when the orange shirts or magats or fuzz are doing their best to trample rights and abuse the citizens or worse... it's about the one useful thing seeing how certain cameras always seem to be suspiciously "not working" when shit happens... 

Which brings me to something i was shown the other day by the eldest boyo... to the consternation of his old man he joined a frat at his university and has spent the better part of the last two years hanging out with a bunch of fucking muppets... he knows his padre is not a fan of these organizations as they are nothing more, for the most part, a way to buy friends and have a perpetual place to party while doing absolutely zero else... somehow the boyo has managed to be punched in the face twice, have his computer destroyed, and various other fucking idiocy and every time it involves this pack of morons... the last episode resulting in an ER visit to get stitches after his tooth drove through his cheek when sucker-punched by one of his "frat brothers"... needless to say his old man is from the street and about drove up to said house and went to town on these fucking clowns... of course the boyo is not exempt from responsibility here but of course he will try to claim said exemption... he is not... and he's now been told that any monetary needs for said organization will come from him and the parental cash machine will shell out no more... 

Of course one might asked, what happened to the guy(s) who punched him? well the story is the boyo reacted (somehow) hence why his parents couldn't look to get reimbursed for the now thousands of dollars of hospital bills, computer (luckily we had insurance on it so it only cost $300) etc... let's just say i'm not pleased...  

The so called resident bad ass of the frat is some rich kid clown who apparently has done "some time" in county for assault, said clown is the one who started shit which ended up resulting in the boyo's computer being destroyed and when i heard about it and him i was fucking livid... in the old adage "you can take the man off the street but you can't take the street outta the man" i informed the boyo that he should advise tough guy to stay the fuck away from me if for some reason i ever happen to be within arms reach... of course now i probably wont have to worry about that due to the short clip i was shown... 

In the annual Conclave of the Imbeciles, yes these muppets actually call their national meeting a conclave (hell the Gathering of the Juggalos seems a more intellectually stimulating event than this nonsense) the dues paying reps of the chapters all met up in one of my favorite places N'awlins, as the locals say... and it just so happens that while there resident tough guy got into a bit of a pickle... the story was he was accosted by this couple but knowing what i know of tough guy i get the distinct feeling that the drunk asshole probably said something smart and the rich kid found out he wasn't in suburban/rural Pennslytucky anymore... and here comes the fucked-up part... 

An altercation ensued between the couple, who were reportedly addicts and hung around this corner quite a bit, and the resident tough guy... the couple were both wielding bricks while tough guy stood there trying to reason with them... what ensued was a lesson in what not to do by every fucking person involved... but mostly by tough guy, the easiest solution would be to hand them your money and a fucking credit card and say, here you go have a nice night and then immediately walk to a phone, cancel the card and find a cop... it's Bourbon Street for fuck sake they're around... if after giving them the cash they persisted? well then you gotta keep your head (though i think they'd have sprinted away if they'd have gotten cash)... instead tough guy stood there pleading with them (i still feel he had mouthed off) and then proceeded to royally fuck up cuz apparently he only is able to punch down... 

And how do i know all this? well you see a bunch of bystanders and one in particular sat there filming the whole fucking thing... instead of doing something useful like say, hmmm, calling the cops, they stood there filming because this is Dumbfuckistan and the only way to make a living these days is by shit-posting the shit show that is post-capitalist Merica dig... and so said not so concerned citizen sat filming and providing a commentary, pertinent observations like "you should run dude" and while that was sound advice perhaps our would be Kubrick could have, i don't know, actually done something to remedy the situation, even a brief distraction would have given resident tough guy a chance to bolt... not to say he was smart enough to do that but... 

What happens next is fucking mad... remember someone is filming this and giggling along like it's a game show... the "conversation" between Sid and Nancy continues with resident tough guy pleading to be cool... and this is where i understood he'd never been in an actual scrap... he's talking to the guy while the woman (carrying a brick) circles around behind him and then clocks him in the head with the brick!! he then takes off stumbling down the street while the would be Kubrick filming the whole thing keeps the play by play going by guffawing and saying things like "holy shit, get outta there man, run"... what in the actual fuck? you just saw a guy get clocked with a brick in the back of the head, something that could have killed him and yet you record and giggle and yell advice? but lucky for tough guy said concerned citizen would run home and post it to social media which would enable tough guy to track them down and use the footage in his police report... and while i'm quite sure resident tough guy talked shit to the wrong couple the fact is even he didn't deserve to get clocked with brick which i do believe constitutes assault with a deadly weapon... he came to in an alley, shirtless and devoid of phone and wallet... 

But welcome to the decline of western civilization... give a person a phone and in a situation like this where they should have been calling the cops, who in the time the whole episode took place probably would have been there and better yet tell the brick wielding muppets the cops have been called and everyone would have bolted their separate ways... granted resident tough guy got a lesson in street life and failed miserably... there are parts of my wasted youth that i'm not exactly proud of but one thing i did learn early on was how to not get my ass beat or worse... of course this was after getting my ass beat at 15 resulting in 16 stitches in my lip but let's just say it was a valuable lesson... Pops also gave me some advice, like don't lead with my face (which was a joke) but in this case resident tough guy committed the cardinal sin of letting one of his attackers get behind him... always keep them where you can see them and always keep your head, granted i'm sure he was smashed but the truth is that's no excuse... though it's often the excuse when this shit happens... 

Luckily the I-mac was safe at home and has managed to make almost zero money working this summer as he had stated he was thinking about going to the Conclave of the Imbeciles but knew he didn't have the dosh and knew the cash machine known as "mom & dad" weren't about to let him sashay off to N'awlins... he hasn't proven to be even remotely close to responsible enough for a trip like that and there is no doubt he would have been right there with resident tough guy because he always has to be the last one at the party... but there is something about karma that keeps popping into my mind... as i said before the gut tells me resident tough guy always punches down... did he deserve to be clocked with a brick? absolutely not but let's hope he learned something from this little life lesson... and as i told the I-mac, he won't be so tough anymore as a hit like that will most likely make future concussions come much easier... that said i explained to I-mac all the mistakes i saw and once again he gave me that look, the "i wonder what the fuck my dad was into when he was young?"... and as i tell him, reading books and writing bad poetry... but still, it's hard to believe i live in a country where "creating content" seems more important than helping someone about to be assaulted, yeah i know sometimes those phones are the most important tool we have, like when it comes to the frozen water boys and the boys who "work forces and burn crosses" but in this instance? it's fucking sad... 

 

The Wilderness Years - my philosophy

 (It's been close to 14 months since the last installment of the old Wilderness Years so it's about time we fucking finish the thing especially as the days of rewrites and revisions and first drafts is upon us... whatever that means... so for the stray reader who still peruses this page i'll help, the last post was from May 9th, 2025... a recap of things up until that point titled The Perfect Barbarian and how our (anti-) hero here had managed to get himself laid off in order to fully enjoy the fruits of his labor... now back to the program...) 

These days with so much shit "legal" in a very fuzzy sense, with the fact that my favorite plant has been for all intents decriminalized in many places, it's interesting to see the changes that have taken place in the old world of slinging... the fact the kids don't have to apprentice anymore, they don't learn from established dealers as the easiest way to learn about dealing was studying the local weed dealer one got their gear from... or the Plug as the kids call them these days... in simpler times when the old Bill and the tough on crime crowd (which amounted to pretty much every elected official) were cracking down on the demon weed one could study the guy they bought grass from or at least those who were thinking about getting into that line of work could study them... call it an apprenticeship, one watched and learned, what worked? how did they handle things? what was the protocol?, on the phone and in their place, each one was different and each depended on where and when you met up with them... when seeing Cowboy Dan back at Podunk U. i knew i had to block out a couple hours as his paranoia level was off the charts, probably a good thing for a small town but in his case it may have been a tad overboard but the fact was when he wasn't cracking up due to hard drug use and a crazy girlfriend one couldn't really argue with his methods... it kept him safe... just to get in the door one needed solid references, then you'd have to go with that reference a few times and hope Cowboy wasn't having a meltdown or a bad day cuz if the juju was off you may be exiled for life... or at least the foreseeable future... if one was deemed "cool" with Cowboy Dan he'd one day say to you that you could call whenever and you'd get his number... then you were in... little did he know at the time that this student would one day take his place... 

And i can't forget the uptight frat boy... he was a total comprehensive lesson in what not to do... definitely greedy... uptight and paranoid and in a way, now that he wasn't in college anymore, ill-suited to the game... in one sense that was a good thing because is was good cover, he was the last guy one would think was slinging but at the same time is nervousness came across as someone who was hiding something... i know that the way i looked had something to do with his sense of unease, a tall dreadlocked white dude rolling into his place with a backpack probably reeked of suspicious activity among his white Wonder Bread apartment building... luckily, as we know, he was kicked to the curb ASAP and years later i was laughing as he talked to me about hooking him up and the like... i didn't take much from him other than how not to act which wasn't hard cuz i was nothing like him... meaning a dork... 

When it came to Hippie Jack and Cocaine Mike that was like advanced studies in the art of slinging... things were different as they both lived in the city, on one of those streets where no one cares, where you can't really open a window cuz a main thoroughfare ran right outside it and during rush hour it was nothing but the smell of exhaust and the rumble of engines, a forgotten and neglected part of town for those who paid rent in cash and who landlords knew might take a flyer in the middle of the night for any number of reasons from not having the (back) rent to legal issues or the ones like Cocaine Mike fell into where it behooved him to get out of town or face the possibility of getting shot... granted in Hippie Jack's heyday aka the beginning of the end, the parking lot next to his place, some uniform company, was usually packed at 3am with those so inclined to watch the sunrise, meaning another gram or eight ball of blow, would be piled into his place reupping the nose candy... it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on but then again the cops didn't much care about what was going on in places like this until they got called... 

Old Jack and Mike were really case studies in what not to do... Cocaine Mike was practically a walking, talking lesson in what not to do and when his deal finally went belly up not one person in the know was shocked, he was almost universally despised by all who knew him and though i found him frightening to say the least i was learning about the world, seeing things in a whole different light, seeing a system that was racist and discriminatory... as for Hippie Jack, everyone like the guy as he was a most loveable fuck-up but by the end even his schtick was wearing thin on those down at old Mitchell's Tavern... but as the student i took it all in... i studied, i honed people skills and bullshit detecting... and once again i learned what not to do... it's where my philosophy on dealing came into focus even if i didn't know it a the time... how having a job helped, how steering clear of certain substances helped (though i can't say i didn't have my dalliances with things at the time), how it was important that any woman one was involved was trustworthy and one had to consider the possibility of what would happen if things fell apart, both in the relationship or businesswise... they also taught me to keep the fucking money straight if one wanted to last because in the end it was their financial fuck-ups that led to them both being exiled... (of course we can't forget that it was a bit of a foregone conclusion that Hippie Jack had let a known criminal, Cocaine Mike, see where he kept his money, which was nothing more than a jacket he never wore in his closet and that when Hippie Jack's place was robbed the only things taken were the money in his jacket pocket and some drugs...which is also why i never let Cocaine Mike know where i lived...)

This was my apprenticeship so to speak, these guys were my teachers, when it came to certain others in the annals of lounge history, people like Max and Ruby and Pizza Joe, they were connections, i didn't learn much of anything from them other than wonder why i didn't have a better connection... Max and Ruby were solid, Max another of the well off suburban kids with a good hook-up although his boy was a fucking nutcase and ultra paranoid but by the time i had come to that connection i knew the type well... it amazed me how so many rich kids dallied in the game, of course in one respect i knew why, it wasn't a way to make a living for them it was a way to be "cool", they did it until they got caught (in which case a wealthy family intervened and said rich kid got out of the game and got off or pleaded down to some slap on the wrist but understood full well from daddy that this was the one and only time this would happen, hence they'd be out of the inheritance... or got threatened by an actual hood or worse, usually a nice little beat down and realized it wasn't the "career" for them...) in my case i was nothing more than a kid/man with nowhere to go so i had to make it... this wasn't a fucking game it was my livelihood and i treated is as such, i've been told that i was a bit of a unicorn back then, a guy with a college degree who knew and understood the streets... book smart and street smart, the combination one needed to get by in this game especially on the street level... hell once i moved up to more like mid-level distributor i could have narrowed it down to a handful of guys but i didn't, didn't even think about it, it wasn't arrogance but confidence in my ability to handle a bustling business and that's what most would be hustlers never understand... it's a business... 

Seeing what passes as dealing to today actually blows my mind... these kids don't understand business, don't know how to cover their tracks, most of them accept fucking venmo or cashapp, a paper trail that no self respecting Gen X dealer would ever fucking do, it was cash and carry, no fucking checks and there is no fucking way, had it been available, that i'd have let someone wire me money, you fucking kidding me? now i hear about Plugs at parties doling out lines for $5-7 bucks and almost exclusively getting the money by app, so there's a 30-40 $5 transfers in a few hours? dumb as dirt... of course they do the same for larger amounts as well and either the Just Say No crowd and their elected officials have thrown in the towel or our society is finally fed up with tossing money at a war that was lost long ago... 

The weed game is for all intents dead... at least the one i knew, when the fucking cartels (a few years back) issue a press release stating that they are out of the weed business due to it not being profitable what else do you need to know? the legal industry had done it's thing but the run-off still makes it to places (see mainly red states) where there is still no legal or medical cannabis, it was like that here until Covid even with the dispensaries but after the pandemic most of the street dealers were done... the new thing was they young bucks getting med cards and then running to the dispensary and selling shit at a markup, problem was the margins are shit, at least to someone who knows what they're looking at but then again the risk/reward has basically bottomed out, the reward is practically nothing and the biggest risk is getting your card revoked and a slap on the wrist... ain't no one moving forty fucking pounds anymore... 

So where does this leave us? back in the spring of 2001, an unemployed derelict running a one man operation out of his second floor apartment, recently laid off due to his enterprising plan to get laid off all so he could drive across town to fuck a stripper in the morning who would then often make him an omelet before he walked out the door in order to go home and take a nap before rising again to do his job of supplying ganja to the masses... who'd then meet with the Weight Crew before heading off to the bar to hook up his nickel dimer clientele and drink and drug to the wee hours before driving his $400 car home, sleeping, and doing it all again the next day... thinking back on it all can bring both a smile and a shiver... i know luck played a part... but man, i don't know how to describe what this really felt like... the most apt words i can apply is, to steal from Johan Cruyff's total football... Total Freedom... i was using a system while living outside that same system... no boss, no chains, no one to answer to except myself... i ain't gonna lie... it was fucking glorious... now on with the show...