Fuck City Blues
Mar. 19th, 2015 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonWhat I should have told you about yesterday was a brief encounter with Bicycle Po-Po at the Vampire Country Chevron. It began when I was walking out of Criminal on my way to the gas station to grab a fresh pack of Apache Chief's. I had my headphones piping Closer to give my visit to L5P a retro soundtrack. Decades. I karaoke along crossing Euclid. "Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders/ Here are the young men, well where have they been?"
Those lyrics must've hit the air like an invocation. I'm at the gas pumps of the Chevron lot when from the corner of eyes cloaked in sunglasses I catch a frantic blur waving at me. I pop off my soundtrack and decloak my shades. It's some gutter-punk camped out by the wall of the Chevron. He's shouting at me as I approach closer.
"Hey you look like you're having a good day." His voice is young, confident, there's a natural salesman just waiting in there for the right opportunity to knock. "Think you can help me with a dollar to get something to eat?"
"All I got is plastic." I shout back not breaking my stride, "But tell you what. I'll buy you a hot-dog."
"No relish." The Kid shouts back with hands cupped around mouth. It's as if he's stuck on a deserted island bellowing at passing ships not for rescue but for whatever scraps they can throw overboard.
I snap my fingers into a pistol and shoot him a confirmation of his request. Then I snap back on the soundtrack and walk into the store. "Where have they been?/Where have they been?"
When I step back out of the Chevron, I walk over with a hot-dog - no relish - and give it to the gutter-punk.
"Aw, shit man." The kid says staring at the hot dog with disbelief and it occurs to me he didn't think I was serious.
He takes the hot dog gently as if I just gave a glass rose and still talking to it mutters. "Thank you, thank you."
A brother in alms of the gutter-punk comes over out of nowhere, his attention hot dog locked as well and the kid tears it in half immediately offering it to his fellow traveler. I get a good look at them now up close. They're all in black denim, tattered and patched in motley punk logos. They have unkempt beards and suntanned faces smudged in dirt as if they had just come out of a fresh tour in some coal mine. Lean of physique with the sum of their prospects jingling in the pockets of passing strangers or growing cold in Styrofoam containers of discarded leftovers. Yet undiminished in their eyes and smiles burns an enthusiasm that betrays their fortunes, this whole spare-change gig of theirs just one part of a strange adventure.
Smiling I turn around and make my way back to the car parked down on Seminole.
Get a total of three, four strides when I see Bicycle Po-Po doing a series of loops on his 21 speed in front of the gas pumps. The decades long militarization of the police have done little to make the bicycle cop a more menacing figure. The athlete build, the mirrored shades, the black uniform and large iron strapped to the hip are robbed of their fascist mystique once accessorized with spandex shorts.
He's looking at me and as I do of late to the world at large I look right on back.
The cop hits his brake, gives me a once over and with a bob of his chin to the gutter-punks behind me says, "You shouldn't feed them."
Just like that. You would've thought I was at the zoo tossing popcorn at a pair of monkeys.
"My apologies sir, I didn't know it was against the law for a Christian to give a hungry American a bite to eat." My words come the way I delivered them in the Navy, disarming and respectful as if talking to a child who somehow found mommy's gun hiding in her purse.
"No." Bicycle Po-Po answers not looking at me but the two gutter-punks most likely scoffing down their shared hot-dog and then at me gives this evil shit-eaten smile. "But panhandling is."
With that he kicks off on his bicycle towards the gutter-punks. I turn around to watch the kids jump up anxiously shoving as much of the remaining hot-dog as they can into their mouths as if the cop was going to make them give me back the rest. Bicycle Po-Po starts to give them the whole strong arm routine. States they've already been warned once about hassling good citizens today. He orders them to vamoose their sorry asses down along 23 and with no argument they pack up their bundles to do just that.
Satisfied Bicycle Po-Po hops back on his mechanical steed and zips right past me. Passing me by, he looks over his shoulder and with that same evil smile plastered on a square jaw tells me, "You be sure to have a good day now, Sir."
This brazen act of authority for authority's stake freezes me up. Helplessness hits in a wave of cold nausea. In that moment, all the petty anger and foulness of mood I've suffered of late, implodes down to a phantom punch to the gut.
It takes the realization that I'm holding up traffic as a sport's van is trying to leave a pump in which I've been blocking and is now pounding their horn furiously. When I step aside the vehicle squeals out zipping by me with inches to spare.
Welcome to Fuck City, as Ari and Kid Hemingway have rechristened Terminus, and I take Decades of pause, singing along with Ian C's ghost. "Weary inside, now our heart's lost forever/ Can't replace the fear, or the thrill of the chase."
With frustration ebbing into endurance, I make my way back to the car to make my way home where I'll hide from an ugly future that has come to soon in new comic books and old songs.
<img src="https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8704/16244292334_76976472c0_o.jpg></center>
Those lyrics must've hit the air like an invocation. I'm at the gas pumps of the Chevron lot when from the corner of eyes cloaked in sunglasses I catch a frantic blur waving at me. I pop off my soundtrack and decloak my shades. It's some gutter-punk camped out by the wall of the Chevron. He's shouting at me as I approach closer.
"Hey you look like you're having a good day." His voice is young, confident, there's a natural salesman just waiting in there for the right opportunity to knock. "Think you can help me with a dollar to get something to eat?"
"All I got is plastic." I shout back not breaking my stride, "But tell you what. I'll buy you a hot-dog."
"No relish." The Kid shouts back with hands cupped around mouth. It's as if he's stuck on a deserted island bellowing at passing ships not for rescue but for whatever scraps they can throw overboard.
I snap my fingers into a pistol and shoot him a confirmation of his request. Then I snap back on the soundtrack and walk into the store. "Where have they been?/Where have they been?"
When I step back out of the Chevron, I walk over with a hot-dog - no relish - and give it to the gutter-punk.
"Aw, shit man." The kid says staring at the hot dog with disbelief and it occurs to me he didn't think I was serious.
He takes the hot dog gently as if I just gave a glass rose and still talking to it mutters. "Thank you, thank you."
A brother in alms of the gutter-punk comes over out of nowhere, his attention hot dog locked as well and the kid tears it in half immediately offering it to his fellow traveler. I get a good look at them now up close. They're all in black denim, tattered and patched in motley punk logos. They have unkempt beards and suntanned faces smudged in dirt as if they had just come out of a fresh tour in some coal mine. Lean of physique with the sum of their prospects jingling in the pockets of passing strangers or growing cold in Styrofoam containers of discarded leftovers. Yet undiminished in their eyes and smiles burns an enthusiasm that betrays their fortunes, this whole spare-change gig of theirs just one part of a strange adventure.
Smiling I turn around and make my way back to the car parked down on Seminole.
Get a total of three, four strides when I see Bicycle Po-Po doing a series of loops on his 21 speed in front of the gas pumps. The decades long militarization of the police have done little to make the bicycle cop a more menacing figure. The athlete build, the mirrored shades, the black uniform and large iron strapped to the hip are robbed of their fascist mystique once accessorized with spandex shorts.
He's looking at me and as I do of late to the world at large I look right on back.
The cop hits his brake, gives me a once over and with a bob of his chin to the gutter-punks behind me says, "You shouldn't feed them."
Just like that. You would've thought I was at the zoo tossing popcorn at a pair of monkeys.
"My apologies sir, I didn't know it was against the law for a Christian to give a hungry American a bite to eat." My words come the way I delivered them in the Navy, disarming and respectful as if talking to a child who somehow found mommy's gun hiding in her purse.
"No." Bicycle Po-Po answers not looking at me but the two gutter-punks most likely scoffing down their shared hot-dog and then at me gives this evil shit-eaten smile. "But panhandling is."
With that he kicks off on his bicycle towards the gutter-punks. I turn around to watch the kids jump up anxiously shoving as much of the remaining hot-dog as they can into their mouths as if the cop was going to make them give me back the rest. Bicycle Po-Po starts to give them the whole strong arm routine. States they've already been warned once about hassling good citizens today. He orders them to vamoose their sorry asses down along 23 and with no argument they pack up their bundles to do just that.
Satisfied Bicycle Po-Po hops back on his mechanical steed and zips right past me. Passing me by, he looks over his shoulder and with that same evil smile plastered on a square jaw tells me, "You be sure to have a good day now, Sir."
This brazen act of authority for authority's stake freezes me up. Helplessness hits in a wave of cold nausea. In that moment, all the petty anger and foulness of mood I've suffered of late, implodes down to a phantom punch to the gut.
It takes the realization that I'm holding up traffic as a sport's van is trying to leave a pump in which I've been blocking and is now pounding their horn furiously. When I step aside the vehicle squeals out zipping by me with inches to spare.
Welcome to Fuck City, as Ari and Kid Hemingway have rechristened Terminus, and I take Decades of pause, singing along with Ian C's ghost. "Weary inside, now our heart's lost forever/ Can't replace the fear, or the thrill of the chase."
With frustration ebbing into endurance, I make my way back to the car to make my way home where I'll hide from an ugly future that has come to soon in new comic books and old songs.