When I was younger I worked for a brief time as a mover. I moved all kinds of things in all types of trucks. Actually it was all by accident.
When I was 23 years old I decided to leave New York City and head to California. I had become sick by all the snobism and poverty of living in Brooklyn. I felt like I was giving everything I had to New York, and it was giving nothing back to me.
So one morning, without paying my last month's rent, I bailed. I took that money as an investment for the future and drove West.
I wasn't too worried about the rent. In my mind it was all fair. They were ripping me off this whole time, I thought, and I'll rip them off.
Along the way I bought a small tent, and slept in the open under the stars when it was too hot to sleep in the car. I lived off small portions of Vienna Sausages, cans of Del Monte corn, oatmeal, and whiskey.
Sometimes after driving for some fifteen hours, I'd start thinking about my life. What am I doing with myself? Why the hell am I going to California? What makes me think that I'll find whatever it is that I'm looking for there that I didn't find here?
Doubt and sadness have a way of becoming lonesome companions on such journeys. It's at these times that a man makes his most impulsive decisions. And it's at such times that man becomes engrossed by them, and sometimes succumbs to them.
It was on the border of Arizona and Neveda that my pockets ran dry. I only had $100 left, and I knew that I wasn't going to make it to California. There was nobody back home that I could borrow money from. And in general, if I could, I wouldn't have. I was always like that, I wanted to do it all on my own.
The town was called Bullhead City, some 100 miles from Las Vegas, and right across Loughlin, Nevada.
There was not much too it. You're typical hot, steamy, dusty and nothing-to-do type of place. Small office buildings, plazas, palm trees, water treatment facilities, animal hospitals. The people were usual -- old men in cowboy hats, young man in crutches from Iraq, young women, dressed in hot steamy cloths beneath the desperate sun with hairstyles reminiscent of the 1980s.
I did notice a few things that stood out. The Colorado River flowed beautifully between the two states, and beyond it I could see the mountains in Laughlin. The skies were filled with white clouds, and the stench and the heat invaded me.
I parked the car at a gas station, lit a cigarette, and started walking down the streets. I did this type of thing often. This was the way I'd get to know a town. You could tell a lot about a town by the things you see and the way people view you.
At midday the town seemed abandoned. As if everyone who lives and works had left for the day, and a strange kind of sensation came over. The kind you see in Western movies, where the tumbleweed blows through the dusty roads, and sooner or later a grizzly sherriff is going to kick your ass out of town.
I passed a few roads and headed towards the far hills across the water. I thought that I go nearer to the river I'd surely find some form of life.
As I walked a clear gust of wind blew through my hair, and I noticed how a group of young girls walked from a strip mall toward's their car. They all got into a small blue Geo Metro and sped off. I wished to be sixteen again.
By the time the cigarette was done I was walking along Long Ave, past 6th Street, when I noticed a bar.
At at a time like this the first thing you do is go to bar. You have to have a drink to cool off, to think things through. Only a man who travels alone can understand such things.
The bar was called St. George's Pub. A divy hole with a pubbish feel. It was almost empty. Two barfly's played pool, and the old bartender eyed me as I sat down.
"Let's see you're Id." He said whiping a glass.
"Here ya go, Sir."
New York City Id's look like fake Id's. They're made out of what looks like cheap cardboard, fake lamenation, and printed with ink that seems to have been runnning way low.
"What are you having?"
"Give me a shot of your cheapest whiskey and your cheapest beer."
After two more shots I was begining to feel it kicking in. That strange and wonderful glazed feeling, when your heart begins to warm to the sounds of the world around you, and the mind becomes naive and vain, and it starts to say to itself, "don't worry, you're not a hopeless romantic whose not going anywhere, this will all make sense somehow, this will be allright."
I took out a small pad and began drawing. I was trying to retrace the steps from here to the car, so in the darkness I would find it, just in case I ended up blowing everything at this bar.
At times I'd put the pen down and look outside through the small window, smoking cigarettes. Sometimes I'd check my phone to see if any of my friends had called or texted me, to see how I was. But there was nothing.
I ordered another shot from the bartender.
"So you're a New Yorker?"
"Not really," I said sipping down the Pabst, "I'm originally from Cleveland."
"Oh, I thought you was with them video crew in Loughlin."
"No, what video crew?"
"There's a video crew, filming some mad junkie out in the desert."
"Really? What junkie?"
"Oh some fool, some damn fool has been livin out there in the desert for some 25 god damn years now."
"What's he doing out there?"
"Prayin to God or some sort of shit like that. They say he's some wise man. But I think he's just a damn fool."
"Why's that?"
"He lives out there all by his-self. No runnin water, no lectricity, no nothin. He don't even have a house, just sleeps out in the middle of nothin, wearin nothin but a towel."
And that was all the bartender told me.
It was seven o'clock and some people began walking in. I check my phone, it was nine o'clock already.
Stepping outside the whole landscape had changed from when I had seen it earlier. It looked completely different. There was darkness, and the city of lights of Laughlin reflected in the river, and the stars shined brighter then I had ever seen them on my voyage.
I walked back smiling about something. I was hungry. And there was a strange happiness within me. Here I was, a young man with only $80 to his name, going back to an empty parking lot to pitch a tent near the desert, to chew on a cold can of small Vienna Sausages and sweet corn, to fall asleep under the dying stars. And I was happier then I had ever been.
That night, as I slept beneath a quite glow of the moon and the stars, and the Earth became cold, I wondered about that insane man in the desert. And I felt I understood him completely.
September 19, 2008, Brooklyn, New York.
On the Next Short Story:
. . . Frankie Salo is a psychic. Ever since he was a young man he had the strange power of focusing anger upon people, who would later die a day or two later. Because of this he suffers from massive panic attacks, depression, and is addicted to coke, heroin, and alcohol. He works for the government, who send him on many assassination missions, they pay him well so he keeps on doing it. But when he meets a young woman in India, he has to choose whether to continue his barbaric lifestyle or get over his addiction and be good.
I did notice a few things that stood out. The Colorado River flowed beautifully between the two states, and beyond it I could see the mountains in Laughlin. The skies were filled with white clouds, and the stench and the heat invaded me.
I parked the car at a gas station, lit a cigarette, and started walking down the streets. I did this type of thing often. This was the way I'd get to know a town. You could tell a lot about a town by the things you see and the way people view you.
At midday the town seemed abandoned. As if everyone who lives and works had left for the day, and a strange kind of sensation came over. The kind you see in Western movies, where the tumbleweed blows through the dusty roads, and sooner or later a grizzly sherriff is going to kick your ass out of town.
I passed a few roads and headed towards the far hills across the water. I thought that I go nearer to the river I'd surely find some form of life.
As I walked a clear gust of wind blew through my hair, and I noticed how a group of young girls walked from a strip mall toward's their car. They all got into a small blue Geo Metro and sped off. I wished to be sixteen again.
By the time the cigarette was done I was walking along Long Ave, past 6th Street, when I noticed a bar.
At at a time like this the first thing you do is go to bar. You have to have a drink to cool off, to think things through. Only a man who travels alone can understand such things.
The bar was called St. George's Pub. A divy hole with a pubbish feel. It was almost empty. Two barfly's played pool, and the old bartender eyed me as I sat down.
"Let's see you're Id." He said whiping a glass.
"Here ya go, Sir."
New York City Id's look like fake Id's. They're made out of what looks like cheap cardboard, fake lamenation, and printed with ink that seems to have been runnning way low.
"What are you having?"
"Give me a shot of your cheapest whiskey and your cheapest beer."
After two more shots I was begining to feel it kicking in. That strange and wonderful glazed feeling, when your heart begins to warm to the sounds of the world around you, and the mind becomes naive and vain, and it starts to say to itself, "don't worry, you're not a hopeless romantic whose not going anywhere, this will all make sense somehow, this will be allright."
I took out a small pad and began drawing. I was trying to retrace the steps from here to the car, so in the darkness I would find it, just in case I ended up blowing everything at this bar.
At times I'd put the pen down and look outside through the small window, smoking cigarettes. Sometimes I'd check my phone to see if any of my friends had called or texted me, to see how I was. But there was nothing.
I ordered another shot from the bartender.
"So you're a New Yorker?"
"Not really," I said sipping down the Pabst, "I'm originally from Cleveland."
"Oh, I thought you was with them video crew in Loughlin."
"No, what video crew?"
"There's a video crew, filming some mad junkie out in the desert."
"Really? What junkie?"
"Oh some fool, some damn fool has been livin out there in the desert for some 25 god damn years now."
"What's he doing out there?"
"Prayin to God or some sort of shit like that. They say he's some wise man. But I think he's just a damn fool."
"Why's that?"
"He lives out there all by his-self. No runnin water, no lectricity, no nothin. He don't even have a house, just sleeps out in the middle of nothin, wearin nothin but a towel."
And that was all the bartender told me.
It was seven o'clock and some people began walking in. I check my phone, it was nine o'clock already.
Stepping outside the whole landscape had changed from when I had seen it earlier. It looked completely different. There was darkness, and the city of lights of Laughlin reflected in the river, and the stars shined brighter then I had ever seen them on my voyage.
I walked back smiling about something. I was hungry. And there was a strange happiness within me. Here I was, a young man with only $80 to his name, going back to an empty parking lot to pitch a tent near the desert, to chew on a cold can of small Vienna Sausages and sweet corn, to fall asleep under the dying stars. And I was happier then I had ever been.
That night, as I slept beneath a quite glow of the moon and the stars, and the Earth became cold, I wondered about that insane man in the desert. And I felt I understood him completely.
September 19, 2008, Brooklyn, New York.
On the Next Short Story:
. . . Frankie Salo is a psychic. Ever since he was a young man he had the strange power of focusing anger upon people, who would later die a day or two later. Because of this he suffers from massive panic attacks, depression, and is addicted to coke, heroin, and alcohol. He works for the government, who send him on many assassination missions, they pay him well so he keeps on doing it. But when he meets a young woman in India, he has to choose whether to continue his barbaric lifestyle or get over his addiction and be good.
