In recovery, I'm a failed disease! - "Artificial Red," Mad Season
Disclaimer: poetic license and freedom of speech give me the right to post these things and let you know that they are alleged and may possibly be fiction, thus discrediting them in a court of law or as nonfiction, per se. That being said, lighten up and stop trying to lock a brother down, pigs.. :)
My girlfriend got me sick today, and so I am not about to walk around and do stuff, because I got sick in the first place by loving on her and doing everything she asked, so now I am going to make HER life Hell in return.
Ha ha, being a parasite is good times.
So have any of you ever tried Life cereal with milk and pancake syrup? If you have, you know exactly why I need some. If you haven't .. well, some life YOU live. I first discovered this amazing concoction at a house in Everett, Washington, where I was too busy being domestic and trying to be a better boyfriend to smoke enough meth to stop me from being a stoner chef (a stage I find myself in from time to time when I rediscover eating, in which I invent new and delicious things like bagel sandwiches and eat corn and raviolis straight from the can).
The people I stayed with at the time were fairly decent people, parents of thirteen (no fucking joke, dude) recently engaged in a downward spiral thanks to none other than crystal meth, which is usually the cause of life failure in the early stages of addiction. Even so, they weren't a bad lot; Taylor (the father of this economy sized family) and Feather (the mother) were cool enough to invite my girlfriend and I into their home, though they knew nothing about us other than that we were very good friends ("street family") to.. are you ready for this mouthful? .. Taylor's baby's mom's boyfriend, Asher, who we all affectionately referred to as A.J. My "brother," in all of his smoked out and sleepless glory, is one of the best people I have ever known in my life, and I guess his vouching for us must have earned us a fairly esteemed position in their eyes (a well-deserved one, for I don't get faulty with people until they do it to me first, in ninety-five percent of all typical cases).
In this case, I was very respectful of the collective household in all situations, and even a helpful and functional member of the family for a time. I felt accepted, for a while; a feeling of safety and security surrounded my life there, and I never told a single soul that might compromise mine or my friends' livelihoods where the house was or that I stayed there. While I lived there, I never had to worry about the weather and my place in it throughout the night; too, I never had to worry about being caught and charged with shoplifting in order to feed my girl friend and I, as Feather was the recipient of a substantial amount of food stamps.
It was perfect.
As with all things in my life, there was a bit of a catch.
Though I am no model of function, as I have said in previous entries, even I believe that there is cause for alarm when the children in a home are exposed to felonious situations on a daily basis. In Taylor and Feather's case, the children were not only exposed, but were participants in the family business of burglarizing stores in the dead of night.
Taylor had been doing this for years, and was exceedingly methodical (I say this with both admiration and reproach, as you will soon understand) in his execution of the aforementioned burglaries. He and my brother Asher often did them together, with the assistance of Taylor's brother-in-law Parker as their means of transportation. I was impressed, as I typically am with such "outlandish" and unexpected demonstrations of criminal activity, and considered making something of a job out of accompanying them on their very illegal jaunts, which I soon found to be a mistake. You see, Taylor was very thorough and efficient at what he did, but the longer I knew him the more I came to realize just how new he was at smoking shards and just how affected by drugs his brain really was.
Taylor was recklessly flailed out of his God damned mind, and it was all too evident to me that though I was an accomplished drug addict who could hang tough and pull off a great deal of dirt* (and prided myself on my cool in well-executed jobs), I was not about to follow Taylor down on his obviously smoked out and fucking NUTSO path to destruction, a well-justified opinion when you read the story I am about to tell you, which may never have actually happened, and consider the fate that he met shortly after I came to this conclusion, thank GOD my brains aren't entirely swallowed by chemicals and I still have some common sense left in me.
It all started one night when I did not strictly feel like death, and I was not a resident of South Carolina with a fever of about five hundred and two point six, peering at a possibly stolen Kindle Fire all day long for entertainment...
The Stupidest Heist Ever
also known as..
Dutch Likes his Freedom, but Not Enough to Not Post Incriminating Stories About His Life, Because They Are Hilarious to Him
(excuse me while I drink a half a bottle of Nyquil before we begin)
Anyway..
Taylor, Asher and I stood behind a dumpster down the road from Parker's car (he didn't smoke shards, so we respectfully kept it away from him); we must have looked funny together, three grown men of progressive sizes (Taylor was the oldest and smallest, an early forty-something with a lightly receding hairline, standing five foot nine on a good day and weighing a buck fifty soaking wet; I was/still am about six feet tall at twenty-three, probably weighing two hundred pounds; Asher was the giant of the group, a cornfed manimal of thirtyish that stood six foot two or three and weighed in at maybe two sixty), smoking meth together as they prepared for a night on the town, ripping things off and spitting in the eye of the working man.
"Feather, we are just going out to work!" Taylor barked into Asher's phone, the eldritch light of the smart phone's display casting his face into eerie, writhing shadow as he hit the pipe and the phone's sensor slipped into an awkward enough position that it didn't quite know it was still being listened to. I could hear Feather's misgivings from my point of our triangle, and smiled at Asher, who also had a neurotic girlfriend that seemed to find something wrong with his every move, and was busily pretending not to notice the conversation happening on his telephone less than two feet away.
"Fuck, fine! Then maybe this time I won't come home! What? Fuck you then, you bitch, I'll send Parker home with the car and we'll get a different ride!"
I shifted my weight around from my left to my right foot and back again, peering at our surroundings as I waited for the pipe, or the end of Taylor's argument, which ever came first or was more interesting. We were in a little alley somewhere in the evil back streets of north Everett, and had left the house less than fifteen minutes before. I can't remember what Feather's problem was that night; the poor lady was a pill addicted mother of thirteen, and though Taylor usually brought home their living money from these occasional excursions, she often cried herself to sleep into the mouthpiece of the phone before he ever got a chance to start each time.
"Hey Asher, fuck my life, does that sound familiar or what?" I asked my brother in a low tone as the pipe came to me, and he made a kind of hissing, reproachful sound. Tsssss.
"That's nothing compared to Molly. She likes to tell me that I'm smoking heroin because I nod off when I'm on the phone. The fucking bitch never lets me sleep, and then tells me I'm smoking heroin and slaps me when I fall out. Can you believe it? Bitch bitch bitch when I'm awake, bitch bitch bitch when I'm asleep, and then she fucking hits me when I don't respond," he said, pausing for dramatic effect, "and calls me a woman beater when I wake up swinging."
I laughed into the pipe and gave up, passing it back to a busily bickering Taylor that was growing more heated by the second. It went absent-mindedly around to Asher, and we brothers talked while Taylor argued, until both the bowl and the argument had run their course.
"FUCK man, ain't that about a bitch?" Taylor asked when he finally hung up. "Heads up AJ, she says she's gonna sick Molly on you, too. We gotta let Parker sit this one out, any ideas for a ride?"
The phone rang, and Asher's expression was a portrait of distaste. I couldn't help it; I laughed. They looked at me, and then Asher looked at the phone and smiled. We all laughed then, and Asher held the phone out to me.
"It isn't Molly, it's Christene!"
"Oh what the fuck!" I roared, and we all laughed until we agreed that we had blown up the spot** enough. Molly and Christene took turns leaving fucked up voice mails and texts on Asher's phone as we walked back and, hoping to set a good example and appear focused, I said that they could wait until we had things figured out.
An old friend, Cadillac Mark (who actually drove a pickup by then, but Pickup Mark doesn't seem to have the same ring to it), said that he would provide stand-in wheels for the night, and so Parker dropped us off at his house behind the Casino. We waited, Taylor and I, standing in the country darkness of the Tulalip Indian reservation, while Asher disappeared down Mark's driveway. The minutes ticked by and became a half an hour; Taylor and I made small talk, pacing back and forth in the darkness of the night as we waited, until headlights spilled over us. I looked up at the vehicle, coming from the wrong end of the street, and instantly my heart sank.
"Fucking cops, dude," I said to Taylor, and at that moment Mark and Asher pulled out of the driveway. The tribal cop drove past us slowly as we got in the truck, and I tipped my hand at him through the window as we pulled into the street and were off.
"Hey, what the fuck?" Taylor asked the two in the front.
"My bad," Mark told him. "My dad was talking to AJ for a minute."
"That was almost a three hundred dollar conversation, boys," I said, thinking of the dope in my pocket.
"Well everyone's alright, so what are we doing?" Asher said, and Taylor looked at me.
"Tell him about the place."
An hour later we were walking down the road, away from Mark's truck, bandannas tied around our faces (mine red, of course) and a bag of tools slung over my shoulder. I had suggested a place to Taylor, a little store down the highway from a town we all knew as the meth capital of our state, for its dense woods and sparse neighbors. It was about two in the morning, and the two-story building was dark as we approached it. We crept around the side with the gas pumps, ensuring that it was dark and closed for the night, and Taylor took a pair of snips from his pocket as Asher and I crouched behind some bushes, walking up to a gray metal box on the wall and cutting the wires running out of it.
Asher and I rose and walked with Taylor around the side of the building, Asher boosting Taylor up and onto the roof. I paced the paremeter carefully as Asher hid his bulk behind a dumpster, tossing Taylor up various tools he needed to knock out the cameras and loudspeaker as he called for them.
An engine purred to a halt on the far side of the building, and I dove like double oh seven behind the bushes by the snipped telephone box, digging through my pocket and retrieving the bag of shards inside. Taylor was small enough and the roof expansive enough that he would be able to hide, and Asher had found a nook, but I very much watched the car full of girls as it pulled up to a gas pump. They were yelling drunkenly as the driver side door opened, and the girl that climbed out and swiped her credit card in the pump was laughing and making conversation with her unseen passengers as she pulled the nozzle free and began to pump gas into her vehicle. I relaxed and tried to appear as bush-like as possible, preparing to keister*** my drugs at the slightest sign that things were headed south, no pun intended.
The girls left when they were done, and the air likewise left me in a whufff. I scrambled to my feet and rounded the building, rasping up at Taylor: "Everything good?"
"Yeah, fine, where the Hell have you been? I've needed the bolt cutters for like five minutes."
"What? Dude, I was hiding from those people at the pumps!"
"What?!" I heard Taylor hit the deck with a thump, and shook my head. How had he not noticed?
"Dude, they aren't there anymore."
"Oh," he said, and I glimpsed his face as he leaned out over the edge again and extended a hhand. "Gimme them cutters, then."
I got him the bolt cutters, and waited. And waited. We spent another hour waiting for Taylor to finish up there, and when he had, we all hoisted ourselves up onto the roof. Taylor had found a window on the other side of a loft-like attic, and I helped Asher make his uncertain way across the roof, telling him to follow the nail patterns that indicated a truss.
Taylor pried the window open, and we climbed into the second-story office.
It was a mess, miscellaneous cleaning supplies and file cabinets scattered haphazardly around two desks with a computer and a fax machine.
And there, with a few things stacked up on top, a safe.
"Jackpot, baby!" Taylor said, and we all grinned at each other.
There was just one problem, we found as we searched the room.
There was no way out into the store below, except out a door into the night and down a flight of stairs. The safe was maybe seven hundred pounds, and even with the three of us, we weren't carrying it out of there.
"What the fuck is really going on?"
We puzzled over the problem awhile, and in what seemed like mere moments, it was getting light out.
"Asher, come on," I said after it had been established that we weren't leaving without the safe. "Let's see if there's a dolly downstairs or something."
We searched the premises time and again, and there was nothing. It became clear that we were going to have to push the safe off the second story balcony, so we pushed it out onto the porch on the other side of the door.
All hope of discretion was lost in the early morning light, and my heart beat faster as we rolled the safe across the porch landing. There were cars zooming this way and that on the highway, and I regarded my friends' bandanna-wrapped faces with alarm.
"We gotta be fast," I said to them.
We decided to push the heavy safe through the pickets of the fence surrounding the deck, and used its momentum to smash it through.
Smash!
The safe exploded through the pickets, and fell to the asphalt below. It didn't even bounce; rather it seemed to sink into the pavement, denting the driveway forever where it landed. We scurried downstairs, and Asher and I wrestled the safe back onto its wheels, pushing it back toward the cover of bushes separating the highway from the store.
"Let's go, man," I said, my heart racing in my chest. "Call Mark, let's get this thing out of here!"
My brother indicated the front door of the store with a finger, and I followed his gaze to where Taylor was now trying to get inside.
What. The. Fuck.
I scrambled across the parking lot, coming to a crouch beside Taylor, who was busily using the pry bar to try and wrench the double doors apart."What are you doing, dude?" I growled.
"I sell cigarettes that I get from these places," he explained, and I stared in disbelief.
"It's like six in the morning, dude! We got the safe, let's bounce!" I pleaded with him, all too conscious of the morning commute of cars on the highway now.
"Go if you want," he said.
What?
I noticed the gleam in Taylor's eye for the first time, the crazy gloss and wide pupils. He was flailed. "Dude," I said quietly, "don't get greedy. That's how you get caught."
"Then fucking GO," he hissed.
I wasn't about to leave my friend, so I did the next best thing. I kicked in the glass of the door and scrambled through, and turned the latch. Taylor came inside, and I dashed around the counter, grabbing up every carton I laid eyes on. It wasn't the good stuff--Grand Prix and Wildhorses--but I didn't care. Taylor came around and calmly collected the Marlboros and Basics from under the counter. Then, the alarm went off.
Now I don't care who you are, that shit is scary.
I began to grab useless shit, like key chains, off of the counter, and when I realized what I was doing I threw them at the register and grabbed my bag full of cigarettes, springing for the door. I dove back through the hole I had made in the glass, even though the door was open now, and ran across the parking lot to Asher, where Mark had just shown up.
"Let's get the fuck out of here! Go go go, we gotta get Taylor and bounce!" I hollered, getting behind Asher and attempting to push him toward the truck as the alarm shrieked into the morning.
We never did get the safe that day, although Taylor did get his cigarettes. They dropped me off and returned to the scene, but as I had predicted, it was swarming with police and fucked off by the time they got back there. You just can't get away with a bitching alarm at seven A.M. the way you can at two or three. I never did accompany Taylor on another job, and that's a good thing, because about three weeks later he got booked for questioning about a series of burglaries in King county, and he still hasn't seen the light of day while I survive to tell this tale, sicker than dog shit with fever blisters on my legs, but more or less okay here in South Carolina.
Ahhh, yes, that thought puts a smile on my face.
:)
Til next time, blogdom. It's nap time.. I'll holla back at snack time.
*dirt: illegal activity, usually referring to robbery or burglary, manipulation of funds that don't strictly belong to you, or taking off small and defenseless animals' collars and pretending they belong to you when they really belong to the next-block-over neighbors and not to you at all, and really have a name like Fluffy or Cutieface when you tell all your friends that it's your puppy named Felon
**blown up, blowing up: something that has been made obvious, using little discretion--usually refers to making criminal activity known to police
***keister: how else are you going to avoid taking a drug charge when you get taken in for a commercial burglary with a bag full of dope?
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