STILL LIFE WITH METHAMPHIBIAN

Going to College in Rivercide CA , seemed like punishment for some past wrong doing. Being “under class” (A.K.A. a poor wretch) made it worse. I didn't have the funding to live in one of the nicer apartments near the school and I sure as fuck wasn't going to live with some mouth breathing, water-head selected randomly at the will of the campus overseers. So, I chose to live in the gussied up barrio of downtown. Living in the barrio is hard enough. Not knowing if your next half baked stumble down to the corner market to garner enough malt liquor to deaden the boredom will end in a fist fight with some bum off his meds or a deranged hooker pissed at your turndown of her crack-headed come on. Learning where not to step in your ancient maze of a rat hole because the floor is giving way on account of the heartless, money-grubbing slumlord being too cheap to bag and gas the house to get rid of the massive termite infestation. Being startled awake in the middle of the night by a huge booming thud to find that all the two inch thick, 70 year old plaster from the hallway ceiling had come crashing down, and realizing it would have killed or maimed you had you been under it. They don't make them they like they used too. Not to mention the usual gunfire, sirens, helicopters, screaming kids, family BBQ parties turned into gangland riots, lowered mini-trucks with 10,000 watt sound systems driving by at all hours of the night and the usual madness associated with renting in the hood. All of this is expected when living in Rivercide on a budget. But, what a man needs is a place to come home to that feels like a fortress of solitude, a barrier against the barrio, four walls and roof to keep out the insanity just outside the property line and get some homework done. This delusion is shot to hell when your two house mates are relentless, meth-addled tweekers who are twenty tim es more fucked up then any combination of your neighbors.

Fond of not paying high rent, I looked for a house and a couple of “friends” I could share it with. I found two local gentlemen, who shall remain nameless, that were in the want adds for campus housing. One had been living with his parents while going to school. He was on some huge SS I grant and very open about his fight with addiction He pleaded his case to me. and being a bit of softy, I bought it. The other, his “ex- meth partner”, had just finished up a year in some Anti-drug, up with Jesus, Christian Concentration Camp in the mountains, gave me a similar story. They both assured me that they had overcome their dependence on German marching powder and that our co- habitation would be one of bliss and mutual respect. I had my doubts as I've been around other people that were spun like nuclear gyroscopes, but the house was cheap and I was three weeks away from being “structurally challenged.” I sucked it up and we moved in.

Much to their credit, they fought the demons off for several months. I was waiting for the relapse, and figured it would come, be a temporary glitch, we could handle it, overcome it and hold hands and sing hymns to Jesus or some other such nonsense on the road to recovery. I found out that neither of these two bastards did anything half-assed. Like myself, they were obsessive/compulsive to the bone and once that crank machine got a kick-start it was on.

Everyone handles drugs differently. Take something as innocuous as Marijuana. Some people smoke pot and are able to relax; others turn into paranoid freaks that hide under their beds. Methamphetamine is no different. On those rare occasions that I've done speed I did it to get some work done, the job got done at a lightening pace and I dealt with the come down, vowing never to do that shit unless absolutely necessary; usually when finals came around. I'm your classic clean the house kind of tweeker and to this day I'm mystified by people that can use this DRUG OF WAR for recreational purposes; only in America. My housemates unfortunately were not of this variety.   They were both part of the brotherhood of the bindle that uses crank as an octane boost to their sex-drive.

By the fourth month of our co-habitation, a speed demon in the form of a young lady dealer came around after her release from the county clink with a freebee for the fellahs. Just out of the pen and she had to get that business cranking. I came home from school to find their bedroom doors closed in the middle of the day, a first, and heard the creaking of box springs. Well, everyone is entitled to throw a jack in the middle of a hot, late spring afternoon. God knows I've spilled my genetic code when it was 90 degrees outside; it's just that I'd get it done quickly and go back to my routine. They had a routine alright, and it had just begun

For the remainder of my stay in this sped-up, Buster Keeton house of horrors, their routine didn't vary. Every day after that bitch came by, those two got more and more greasy and creepy. They were devolving into what I call methamphibians and these two speedsters remained in a masturbatory hermitage for the next year. When they were on, the only tim e they ventured out of their rooms was to hit the head or answer the door as one of their Dominoes delivers style dealers would pop by to re-up their shit. Then when their trust-fund check, loan or grant money was gone, they would come down; which meant that they would still be hiding in their rooms except the beds would stop creaking. Every once and while they would come out, looking like some swamp creature from a B-horror movie, to make a huge mess, cook some food, create a shit load of dishes and continue their sleep.

I'm no neat freak, but the house was a borderline EPA superfund site. I was the only one with an almost full tim e job and actually going to class; I'd be damned if I was going to go to school all day, work half the night and come home to continually clean up after a trust-fund Fundamentalist and a chronic SSI recipient, both of whom have had a charmed existence of having mommy and/or Uncle Sam wipe their asses. I don't understand how someone could be up for a week at a tim e and not find a few minutes to do their dishes or clean up after themselves. If they were prone to cleaning anything other than their own pipes, and kept the dealers away from the house by picking up their own fix, I'd still be living there. I don't have anything against drugs. I'm fairly liberal on this shit and believe in the whole “pursuit of happiness” crap I was peddled in grade school.   I just don't like living in a sty while waiting for the DEA or local narcs to kick my door in because my roommates are the first step to getting at their dealers.

Within a few days of their leap into the silage trough of meth use, the freaks started showing up. To be fair, I hang out with a fairly eclectic bunch of musicians, writers, artists etc. Sure, many of them are sexual deviants and drug heads to boot, but it's only a sideline not a complete lifestyle in its entirety. I've always felt that one of the worst things about being an addict is the people that you're forced to deal with to obtain your drug of choice. These are people that you wouldn't use a pick-ax to put a fire out on their faces and suddenly you're forced by necessity to be in their orbit because they are the only ones stupid enough to handle a product that could get them killed or thrown into the never ending, life threatening drama-trauma of a state penitentiary. I've tried to avoid people like this as much as possible, but unfortunately these escapees from a David Lynch movie set came to my house to do their business with the Jacker twins.

Dealing with weirdoes and thugs is nothing new to me. Since entering college, I've worked at a porno shop and graveyard at a gas station/convenience store. The prime difference being that it was my fucking job and I was paid for it, case closed. None of the twitching idiots that I dealt with came to my house and eyeballed my stereo/TV/musical equipment with price tags spinning in their eye sockets as they waited for my nimrod roommates to stop the self-abuse of their raw, worn out puds long enough to buy some more crystal. If that wasn't bad enough, you not only have to deal with the people, but with whatever parasitic organisms they happen to be carrying. I'm not a real cocksman by most definitions. And, if I was going to get crabs and lice it would feel better knowing that I got these little third world gifts of the great unwashed after a night of carnal pleasure, not from sitting on my own couchafter Speedy Jones came by to do a little illicit business. It's not cheap rent if you spend several hundred dollars and several weeks to delouse your body, home, furniture, clothes, carpet and pets.

Then, things began to disappear. It was nothing major such as a TV, a guitar or stereo components. Some CDs and books took a walk. I was prepared for that, as items like sunglasses, CDs, books, glassware and anything small enough to put in a purse or a pocket always disappear in a communal situation. Next, it was some light bulbs. This was obvious, because as everybody knows, one can make a fine glass-dick for smoking speed out of the good ol' products of GE and Edison.   Then, it seemed out of nowhere, we had no spoons . The next set of items was weird, and I should have caught on quicker than I did. My toiletries began to get plundered, and not razors or aftershave, but lotion, hair conditioner, baby oil and Vaseline. Do you see a common thread? Good, because I didn't. Then a huge double liter package of extra-virgin olive oil was gone without a trace and I didn't catch on until after the next and final repugnant situation came to pass.

After all of this shit, the back breaking straw fell when I came home to find someone had been in my room. Big fucking mistake. The disappearing lubricants aside, I'm a fairly observant person and instantly notice if something has been moved. It doesn't even have to be something major. A reshuffling of papers on a jumbled desk is enough to catch my eye. But, even the most oblivious person would notice if his/her entire porno collection had been removed from its semi-hiding place.

That was it. I practically kicked the trust-fundamentalist's door off its hinges, figuring since I knew him the least that he would be the one. I was correct. Sitting next to an empty fifth of olive oil was a life tim e's collection of pornography. It wasn't all the porn I had ever possessed, only the ones I wanted to keep, some of which because of their potential as collector's items. (The Hustler with the pictures of Hugh Heffner banging one of his many centerfold trollops was a personal favorite.) They were all in tatters, covered in yellow-green stains that I instantly recognized as olive oil due to the fact that many of my cook books had similar stains. The wretched fucker . I had caught him on a come down and he was barely able to comprehend what I was saying to him. When he finally came to, the crying began. It was the typical, Jesus-freak, I can't control myself horse-shit. I told him to can it, and he might as well keep the porn, because I wasn't going to touch it ever again, or continue to live in that house.

I was out of there in about a week. I've moved four tim es in the last 14 months due to even weirder situations that I won't get into and because of the speculative boom, the house I'm in right now has just sold. Hence, once more I'll be on the house hunt and transient but I'll take a couple more years of living in my truck while finishing up school if it means I never have to live with tweekers ever again.

From the University of California , Rivercide in the Meth Capitol of the World.

Patrick Strong.

First published in the Budget Press Review #1 in 1997, this short story is about a bar that is no longer with us. In Rivercide that could be an extremely long list, as this town loves to shut them down, or smile gleefully as they fall apart on their own accord and move the liquor license out of town. They'd hate for anyone to do anything in this berg short of watching TV and sleeping for a couple of hours before they have to continue their six hour commute to work. It's a bedroom community, literally.

The bar in question used to sit next to where an all you can eat sushi bar now makes its home. Ironically, the site is also right next to the only adult bookstore in town. Raw fish and porn conveniently sandwiched together. If that isn't Rivercide, I don't know what is.

There was no irony when the Exile was open for business, neither in location nor in its patrons. It was a crusty, rusty hole of a beer bar that served its Bud in mason jars. If you just got out of Graceland (the Presley Detention Center ) and still had your jail tag on your wrist, the first one was on the house.

If you needed to score, be it drugs or hookers so scary that even the downest pimp on the planet wouldn't stable them, this was the place. Surely more meth' deals went down in the rear parking lot than anywhere short of a Hemet/Yucaipa trailer park. If schadenfreude was your kick, and you needed to feel superior, this was also the place to be. That's not my bag, I'm fully secure with my insecurities, but I was called a Yuppie one time while pissing through my meager funds at that bar. Calling me a Yuppie is like calling G.W. a true Texas cowboy. At the exile, anyone with all of their teeth and the prospect of not dying on the street in a cardboard box surrounded by a halo of vomit, their own or otherwise, was a Yuppie.

The Exile had no red velvet rope out in front of it or red carpet in the doorway. The only red was from the dried blood on the walls and floor. Pool cues, cheep beer and speed can be a volatile mix, the ANFO of night time pub crawling. I never witnessed anything more than a yelling match, which devolved into a hugging, sobbing, “I love you, brother” several minutes later, but I heard the stories, and seen the stains.

All things considered, I'd take the Exile over any brew-pub or uppity, true-Yuppie, booze boutique any day. I wasn't a regular at the Exile, but I don't drink at bars much; downing a bottle of whiskey, while staring at the digital clock, is more my speed. Though, I still miss the place. Because, sometimes, when the bottle's empty, it was nice to have the option to stumble over to a bar that made the recently defunct Sandy 's look like the Hard Rock Café in Vegas during a porn convention.

In closing, after reading the following piece, you'll see why I avoid the genre of short story writing and stick to rant writing as my vehicle of choice. And, if you think my short stories are atrocious, you don't even want to view the pathetic stabs at poetry I used to make in my teens and early twenties, sweet Jesus!

THE EXILED

“No one ever listens to me.” A distant almost unintelligible voice crackled in my ear. A faint stirring of an echo of an echo, “No one ever listens to me.”

“What?” I said, taking another deep hit off my cold beer in foggy, glass, mason jar. I quickly surveyed the beer scene. The three pitchers the six of us had been frantically filling, emptying, and refilling were almost empty again.

This fidgeting kid, with a smooth, baby face and a slicked back pony-tail, leaned forward and mumbled in my ear over the music and cacophony, “I said, ‘no one ever listens to me'”. He had had the thin table in the middle of the bar to himself when we came in and took it over. He didn't move. He just sat there for a while rocking back and forth; dividing his attention between the three edgy, meth-freak, ex-con types quietly playing pool and the crowd at the bar. My group had been drunkenly babbling for some time. He hadn't said anything up to that point. Or, maybe he had.

“Really,” I said, while I looked towards the bar. I was checking out this strangely attractive girl with multiple, long, pony-tails and glasses. She was a real R. Crumb wet dream. I was trying to figure out where I had seen her before. She was being waited on by what appeared to be a very good natured, female ancestor of Methuselah.

“People just don't listen to me, no matter what I say,” he said as the juke box three feet behind us went silent. I could still barely hear him, as if he was talking through a pair of tin cups strung by a wire. The juke box wound up again and began blaring out the intro bars to Springsteen's “Born in the U.S.A. ”.

“I love the Boss!” said Jessie too Ernie, tilting his head around the fidgeting pony tail between them. Jessie's eyes were more glazed than normal. The beer was beginning to overcome his normal Rastafarian intake of weed.

“Jesus, Jessie!” yelled Nick from across the table after avoiding spitting out his beer. “Fuckin' Springsteen?!”

“Fuuuuuuuck,” said Ernie, as he put his beer to his lips. He took a sip, tipped his head back to see Jessie, and factually noted, “Springsteen blows a fat dick.”

“It amazes me,” said the fidgeting kid as I accidentally made eye contact again. I looked back to the girl and noticed she had huge hearing aids. “No one just seems to know I'm alive,” he said to my profile.

“That blows,” I lied. I polished off my beer and reached between the arguing music critics just in the neck of time to get the nearly empty pitcher.

“The Boss gobbles my ‘nads for Christ's sake,” said Ernie as he blindly reached for the pitcher I was emptying.

“I just seem to be a fixture,” said the edgy kid, his voice trailing off into the distance.

“BORN IN THE USA /I WAS/BORN IN THE USA !” Jessie sang out the chorus of the song as the song went into the verse. The pony-tailed kid began doing some spastic dance moves while he mouthed the lyrics to the song booming out of the juke box. It looked as though he was throwing gang signs at me.

“Fuck, Jessie,” said Nick with his eyes wide open enough in serious disbelief to be seen through the curtain of his dreadlocks. He was most likely wondering what the fuck was wrong with the lead singer of his band. “This shit?!”

“Yeah, baby!” yelled Jessie as he tipped his head back and began singing aloud against the grain of the song again, “BORN IN THE USA . . . NOW!”

The kid was still flailing around and mouthing the words. I looked away from him and looked back at the girl with the glasses, who was looking in my direction. She turned away from my view for a few seconds to pour herself another glass of beer. Bob turned his attention away from the one girl in our group Terry, who was getting into the Springsteen argument, and he said to me, “I fucked that chick over there at the bar.”

“Really,” I said? Mulling over his admission, I looked over at his evil, smirk. He has a face that looks very close to the late Marty Feldman, without the wandering eye. Even with what would seem to be a handicap in the world of sexual congress; his exploits in this small town are impressive, almost legendary. He's proof positive that aggressive confidence is what counts on the battlefield of sport-fucking. That and his allegedly porn star sized cock I'm sure helps out a bit in the war of the sexes.

My attention went back to the kid, who had picked up his intensity. He was flailing so hard back and forth that I thought he was going to smash into the video games behind him. He almost seemed like he was going into some Tourette's seizure, except he was still mouthing the lyrics to the song. The rest of my crew seemed oblivious to him. I looked away. It was getting painful to watch. “I think I know her from some place, but I can't place her,” I said to Bob while taking a hit off my refilled glass.

“I know her in the biblical sense,” said Bob, his eyes opening wide as he smiled and put the glass to his lips. “Like most deaf chicks, she's quite the sports fan. Even though she's not completely deaf, she still yelps like a harpooned seal when you're banging her.”

“FUCK THE BOSS!!!” drunkenly yelled Nick as he slammed down his glass. The other five of us in our party along the long middle table turned toward the glaring Nick. The pony-tail was oblivious. He merely kept up his seemingly dead-head, hippy, hand dance.

I looked back to Bob and said, “I kinda' had the impression she was the shy type.”

“Oh no,” Bob laughed. “She fucked the shit out of me, while her dyke lover watched and like . . . pretended to do housework.”

As I was mentally putting together the classic shy and quiet/sex freak archetype, which I knew in theory existed, into the frame work of a living person I had run across, I tried to look over at her again. The kid bent into my line of sight and said triumphantly, “I sign.”

“What?” I said to him as he backed away and continued his interpretive dance. Bob turned to Terry and said something in her ear that made her crack a devious smile.

“I sign,” he said, hand singing the lyrics to the song. “I make twenty-three dollars and hour to interpret for deaf people. That's more than anybody else in this place!” Like Mussolini facing down his last crowd appearance, he turned his head up in some bizarre, unsure pride. He continued signing and mouthing the lyrics to the song as the chorus rang out on the juke box, “BORN IN THE USA /I WAS/BORN IN THE USA.”

The girl at the bar turned our way and smiled at Bob's trance like stare. When she turned back to the bartender, Bob said, “God, I got to get her number so I can throw her a bang again.”

The signing boy looked over to the girl Bob and I were looking at, walked over her way and signed something to her. She shook her head in a certain, almost disgusted, ‘no', sternly signed something back to him, and he walked back to his seat.

“BORN IN THE USA!” sang Jessie with the jukebox for once; his eyes closed, and his hands held in that Neil Diamond one arm up pose. Nick's mouth hung wide open, his beer hovering indecisively between the table and his mouth. His eyes were almost wide with terror as watched Jessie sing. He didn't even realize a couple of his crusty locks had fallen into his beer.

“The Boss lives to stick things in his ass,” said Ernie as a matter of fact as he looked at his empty glass. He got Bob's attention and pointed towards the empty pitchers. It was Bob's turn to buy the next three. Bob grabbed the pitchers and walked toward the bar as the pony-tailed kid gathered up his stuff.

“Well, I gotta' go get to bed early for my job tomorrow,” he said with a dejected smile. “Go and make the big bucks,” his voice once again trailed off into a faint echo as he looked back towards the bar. Bob was talking loudly to the sexy girl with the glasses and the hearing aids as he waited for the pitchers. The girl was smiling back at him, nodding and writing down something on a sheet of paper. The kid turned quickly, walked around the one lone pool table, carefully avoiding the three tweekers playing pool, and nearly leapt out of the cracked glass front door without looking back.

Hatefully yours,
The Right Rev. Richard Tater.

This Rivercide centric story was originally printed in the national ‘zine Temp Slave, issue 12. I received a contributor’s copy and whole twenty-five dollars. I was out of town helping to deforest the great NorthWest when they knocked down the Rivercide General Hospital. If I would have been in town, I would have shed tears of joy to see that place leveled. I’m still here and it’s gone. I win.