It was late and dark and I just left my house to walk with my dog. As I passed the side of the Chinese restaurant at the end of my block where I often see workers sitting and having a smoke and looking for rats to kill for the “A Little Bit Of Everything Soup,” a loud shrill scream came out of one of the gentlemen sitting there. When I use the term “gentlemen,” what I am referring to is a complete jackass.
Unlike my dog, while I didn’t find the hyenic cackle to be something to put me on alert, I did find it annoying. I turned around and approached the three sitting on the stoop. In the middle was Carlos, the jackass responsible for the outburst. To his left was another guy, “Hector,” who seemed equally Mexican and almost equally blitzed. And to his right was a girl, “Maria,” not Hispanic but more white trash but it makes for a better Midtown Westside Story if I keep them all under the border. All three seemed to be either two brain cells short of a minyon or drunk or both.
I said to Carlos, “What is it you have to say?” He started to babble something mostly incoherent. His compadre Hector, said, “He wasn’t talking to you.” I said, “Most people who shout have something they want to say. I’m asking him what he has to say.” At this point Carlos piped in about how he was maced the other day by someone and he thought it may have been me who did the macing, not knowing that I have a strict policy not to waste mace on Spics. At this point they were all still sitting.
I decided to do the only logical thing: antagonize a drunk. “If I had maced you the other day, what would shouting at me like a little bitch accomplish?” Carlos was pretty out of it. Soon Carlos was standing and the girl Maria had her hands on his chest trying to prevent him from approaching me saying, “No Carlos. Don’t Carlos. Sit Carlos. Stay Carlos. Good dog.”
I could easily assess that Carlos was not posing a threat to me, nor had he wanted to imply he could pose a threat to me and said, “Let him go.” Even Hector at this point was like, “Let him go,” probably because the whole ordeal was disturbing his third siesta of the day and exhausted from washes dishes and batting down a piñata he needed some Z’s. I was like, “Hector, either add something original or shut the fuck up!” I wouldn’t degrade myself by taking assistance from a wetback.
A flash of my father’s voice came into my head. It said, “If I kill your mother, would you help me dump the body?” I said, “Uh Dad, I’m a little busy right now. Probably not the best time for me to agree to being an accomplice to a murder but you have my blessing in whatever you decide to do.” He then went on to nag me about “What good can you hope to accomplish by this confrontation?” but at this point I pretty much tuned that prick out, I mean, after his first question what’s next—me taking advice from Tony Soprano on how to conduct an ethical business? That would be insane, as we all know Tony Soprano is a fictional character and if I were to ask him a question it would probably be, “How does a fat bastard like you get all those hot women?”
I stood strong, made my point, which had something to do with noise pollution and a strong opposition to the Security and Prosperity Partnership preamble to a North American Union, and went off with my dog, who said to me, “I would have bit him but I didn’t want to get any hot sauce on me.” I told her that was racist and if she didn’t have anything positive to say that she should shut her black ass up.
Tonight I was walking back home with my dog after being out and about for awhile and as I rounded the corner to my block a shout echoed out from the phone booth and as I turned I thought, “Who still uses pay phones in this day and age where every five year old has a phone with the blessing of his parents and the telecom companies that have suppressed the “Radiation Pressed Against A Developing Brain Is Dangerous” data.” I turned and, lo and behold, it was Carlos the Jackass. And sitting on the Chinky stoop was the Chong to his Cheech.
I was in a bit of a mood and so I antagonistically projected, “Why are you shouting at me?” His hands went up as if to surrender and say, “No hablo Ingles,” seeming to have had his fill of discussion with the likes of me. Since I lack the resources and the desire to feed or house prisoners, I went for the jugular. “I asked you why you shouted at me!” Hector started addressing me over the incomprehendable Carlos, and had an expression on his face that seemed to indicate anger. I ignored him.
Carlos said, “I’m talking to my girlfriend,” as he indicated a space to his side that must have meant that he believed himself dating a ghost. I was thinking of saying, “If you’re talking to your hand, you don’t need to shout at it,” but thought that in his current state of dementia the masturbation reference would have been lost on him and there’s nothing I hate more than a lost masturbation reference.
When I lost interest in deciphering the auditory hieroglyphs coming from Carlos’ mouth, I turned to Hector, who was still talking, and said, “How is it helpful you yelling at me while I’m talking to Carlos?” They were both drunk, again, and I had made my point, of which I am not certain, and left.
I was particularly annoyed tonight because I had started reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X the other day and it’s heartbreaking to me that when someone actually works to raise up himself and his community, he will either be killed by the government (JFK, RFK, MLK Jr., Osho) or by the egotists who feel threatened that they are losing control of their sheep, forgetting that they originally went into the leadership game to free people from the farm and not to herd them into a new one with better grass.
I was also angry that it seemed that besides the few who rise above mediocrity, most others don’t want to be anything other than sheep, happily feeding upon whatever field they are placed, not caring to venture beyond the confines of imposed-upon limitations. And looking at Carlos and Hector it was hard for me to feel compassion for these two losers whose sole mission in life seems to be how to be in a state so as not to be able to experience it.
It’s only a matter of time before I walk my block again and Carlos The Jackass, like a drunken Turrets Syndrome sailor, shouts out at me. Who knows what I’ll do…perhaps I’ll throw his drunken ass on the ground and take a piss on him…perhaps I’ll throw him a beer (as who doesn’t have at least a six-pack on him at all times), supporting his quest for self-induced liver failure. Perhaps I’ll kick Hector in the face and tell him that whenever I hear Carlos shout that I would respond by kicking him in the face, similar to the beat-the-constantly-messing-up-fat-fuck-with-a-bar-of-soap-in-your-sock Army justice from “Full Metal Jacket” or the beat-the-constantly-messing-up-fat-fuck-with-a-bar-of-soap-on-your-cock Army justice from the gay porno “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, And Especially Don’t Bend Over In The Shower” (which I thought was robbed at the AVN Awards this year!)
As I walked the final half a block home, my dog Abandon looked up at me and said, “You get mad at me whenever I stop to sniff another dog’s dirty ass and yet every time we pass that dirty Jackass you stop and give him a sniff. What’s up with that?” I looked at her sharply and she said, “What? I didn’t say ‘wet back’!”
REFLECTION:
What impression do you want to leave on this world? Forget the global-warming alarmists who think the environmental impression made from leaving a nightlight by your child who is terrified of the dark’s bed is worthy of you killing yourself. How much time to you spend unconscious, whether sitting with your own Three Mexican Stooges using a glass of wine or a keg of beer to numb yourself from fully feeling or busy doing “important” things that stir your insides about as well as one of those gay little red coffee stirrers that looks like a twin-barreled shotgun in straw form but seriously lacks the bang? Do you want to be a sheep on the farm or the one that wanders out and risks living dangerously? Or is your concern with “grass” and if it can keep you high enough to avoid fulfilling what you came here to do?
MEDITATION
Imagine yourself blindfolded and swinging your stick at a piñata. If you bust that fucker in one or two swings, please contact my father as he has some, uh, “contractual work” for you. If you’re swinging your stick madly and still can’t seem to bust open that little thing and gain the lesson that, “When you destroy things, Jimmy, great amounts of candy shower down on you,” then open your eyes and cry yourself to sleep, as you’re too much of a pussy to have even a minor breakthrough in your imagination. If by “swinging your stick” you imagined smashing that dangling paper animal with your dick, then contact Para-Mount Me Studios immediately as they are holding auditions this week for “Rambone,” the sequel to their Special Forces box office smash, “First Blood: Because I Forgot Lubricant.”