Some Guns' Mothers Are Bigger Than Others Guns' Mothers
I told you I was going to visit a shooting range and I did. I murdered a two-dimensional man made of paper today.
The Bluegrass Indoor Range is situated in what might be the starkest industrial node of Louisville, in a cul-de-sac next to a warehouse equipment hauling company, next to several auto parts wholesalers, on the wrong side of the tracks, in the center of 9,000 acres of treeless concrete. I feel for the people who work in the one-level strip-mall office building across the street. Every day, five o’clock Joes exit those office doors, get an eyeful of… absolutely nothing of interest… get in their cars, and probably want to shoot something.
The inside of the shooting range is as cheerless as a GM factory in Flint, Michigan, circa 2006. But the graying dude behind the counter was warm and helpful. He handed across a .22 revolver and a Ziploc bag of bullets. He showed me the usual safety procedures, explained some things, had me sign two documents. He did not ask me if I had been drinking today, or what kind of substances I’d consumed in the past eight hours. He did ask me what brought me here. I told him I’m 34, and this is decades overdue.
When the Saudi pilots who commandeered Flights 11 and 175 came to an instructor to learn how to fly a commercial jetliner without knowing how to land, similar inquiries were not put forth. Or so it is presumed. Jet planes and loaded weapons all the same, I am no Middle Easterner, nor even just a black man dressed in the wrong way. …I was at no risk of being profiled today, because I was a white guy wearing a blue fleece jacket, with dark whiskers turning silver.
The guy presented options for a target. There was the typical AK-47-toting Afghan-variety terrorist wearing a gingham burka. Beside him, an expressionless Rasputin-evoking image of Bin Laden with penetrating eyes that creep you out and make you want to put a bullet hole between them. I would say “Charles Manson-evoking image” except that Charles didn’t scare three-hundred million people shitless at one time. Plus, Manson’s face is not stoic and expressionless in his freakish iconography. He looks crazier than an escapee scrambling for a fix. Bin Laden merely reminds me of Rasputin. Bin Laden appears to be at peace with himself—just not at peace with you. His detachment is only amplified in this target depiction by holding a reputably sketchy Russian semi-automatic assault rifle. So, Grigori Rasputin, your name and your face no longer invokes the willies. Most of the world—the world that matters anyway—doesn’t even know your name anymore. Bin Laden serves just fine as the face of Evildoing the world round.
To balance things out, though, the target shooting manufacturers supplied an image of a burly, bearded backwoods creep in common redneck flannel, with oversized belt buckle, cheap sunglasses, and a pistol in your face. The hunter becomes the hunted… What I wanted was a cardboard cutout of Glenn Beck.
In the absence of that, I chose the most stereotypical of all villains, a ski-masked bad guy, up to no good, slinking through shrubberies to steal your bike and kick your dog. This bad guy is not a rapist. The typical rapist profile doesn’t include ski masks. That was no matter, though, because his targeting area is cut off at the waist, so I couldn’t blast him in the nuts if I wanted to. His ski mask indeed made him the prototypical perp, except that in addition to his balaclava and 1988 Polo windbreaker, he was wearing a scarf, suggesting he was confused and misunderstood when the photo was snapped. Maybe he was a tourist at Whistler who found a Walther P-99 in his room and was carting it to the lodge to turn it in.
The first thing that strikes you on entering a shooting range, after shutting the two firewall doors behind you, is the percussion of your malleus striking your incus. Look it up. This happens in spite of the heavy-duty ear guards you put on before entering. You feel your innards quake at each blast. Before I settled into my spot, I made the mistake of adjusting my ear covers when someone else unloaded a cartridge in the next lane. For only a fragment of a second did I expose my ear canal to the air and the reverberations were so exaggerated, they sounded synthetic, they stung with the crazy drawn-out echo of a nitrous oxide huff. Like my eardrum had grabbed a tuning fork and banged it on pavement. My brain was forced to process what the hell that sound was a full second after it happened, and there was nothing synthetic about it. It was pure physics dancing around the room it was given.
Around my firing lane were the artifacts of piss-poor shooting, or weapon malfunction, or both. At an alarming five feet from where I stood, just overhead, holes and streaks riddled the wood from misfires. Far too close for stray-bullet comfort. There was even a bullet scar in the cinderblock two feet to my right. Down the lane, many feet above the target line, the pressboard flashing was splintered like thatch hanging off a roof. I was reminded of the holes in the drywall surrounding a dartboard, except these holes were the diameter of pencil erasers and marbles. Even the target carriage itself was nicked and marred. What is the physical behavior of ricochet? How often does it happen here?
Other things that run through your mind when you load a gun for the first time:
1) I signed that disclaimer. Will 2/11/10 be the last date on which I sign a document? ...Ridiculous.
2) With one cruel twist, the little grey cap on the end of this brass casing could take a bad bounce and puncture just the wrong spot, some arterial conduit in your thigh, and there you are bleeding to death on a high-polish concrete floor.
3) Stop being a pussy, man, and fire the goddamn piece.
You take aim, but another thing goes through your mind: I’m in a room full of people holding lethal weapons. It is also true that anytime someone is having a steak at Ruth’s Chris, or buzzsawing up firewood, they’re wielding lethal weapons. So it’s not so much the lethality of the instrument as it is the ineptitude of the wielder. Owed to user error, that fucking thing could kill me from across the room. And although the vast infinitude of people you’ll encounter in your life are not sociopaths, not criminally insane, and not snarled in a PCP-fueled psychotic episode, the only thing that may prevent such a creature from opening fire on you is the fact that you yourself are armed. …I gained sudden appreciation and new respect for any man walking the streets of a place like Tombstone, Arizona just 120 years ago.
I ran the target out to 21 feet, the legal minimum at which you must prove proficiency in order to carry a concealed weapon in Kentucky. I was aiming to peel his cap, put a nice Victor Maitland-style bloody tilak on his forehead. It was easy. I aimed at nothing but his bean, just above the eyes. I reeled in the target. It proved… not-so-easy. I’d missed his whole head by a foot five out of nine times, and buried two in his neck, right in the scarf. One hit him in the left nipple and the other must have missed the whole target entirely. This display of prodigal marksmanship was from just 7 yards.
I moved the target out to the next few markers—50 feet and eventually 75 feet—and I drew some conclusions: 1) I am not a good shot; 2) this gun sucks. It’s like a toy. The recoil of a .22 is enough to make your hands jump, but I wanted more. I did not feel the exhilaration I’d hoped for. No cause for coming back tomorrow. There will be a next time in coming days, except it will include a Glock 17, then a .45, then maybe a bazooka.
While I paid the guy $24 at the counter after turning in my killing machine, I studied the gunpowder on my fingers—the grey metallic cast with the metallic smoke scent and didn’t question the fascination. It occurred to me, though, that this was no different than going bowling—perhaps a bit more like playing Jarts—but nothing so far has changed my philosophy regarding handguns or guns of any kind. This is a controlled environment where people can lay down a buck a minute and cause harm to no other living thing. And, yes, we should be permitted to take it outdoors. The Great Outdoors has space, it allows for lined-up beer cans or tossed-in-the-air soda bottles, or bulls-eyes on hay bales, or rocketing clay pigeons. The problem is, for human beings, things without heartbeats are not enough.
This won’t change for me. But my yen for launching bullets might. We’ll see next time.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Headline from the Kentucky Post today: Man Sentenced For Giving Shrooms To Friend
The 135-word transmission is skimpy enough to just paste in below. I will not credit the reporter by citing her name, mainly because she failed to use serial commas before certain grammatical conjunctions, and that annoys me.
PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) — A western Kentucky man has been sentenced to 2½ years in prison for supplying hallucinogenic mushrooms that led to the death of a Paducah teenager as he tried to enter the wrong house.
McCracken Circuit Judge Craig Clymer sentenced 20-year-old Taylor Thompson on Wednesday, saying the prison time was necessary to send a message that drinking and using drugs have serious consequences.
Thompson pleaded guilty in December to trafficking in a controlled substance, marijuana possession and having drug paraphernalia.
Taylor told police he brought mushrooms to a party in July 2009, ate some himself and gave some to other people.
One of those was 18-year-old Caleb Barnett, who later broke into a neighbor's home, thinking it was his own. The homeowner fatally shot him. Barnett died in surgery at Baptist West Hospital on July 30.
You read about that fateful night and get the sense this is the case of another Puritanical backwoods judge sticking it to kids who play with consciousness-expanding, non-addictive, non-synthetic substances. Judge Clymer wanted to “send a message” by shoving a 20-year-old kid into the correctional meat grinder, costing god-knows-what in tax dollars to process and house the guy in a state jail system that is already woefully overpopulated and underfunded (Foster et al., 2005; 2007).
Judge Clymer raises his gavel like a scolding mother—some termagant bitch who hasn’t been laid since her son was conceived, and who has always trembled with repressed wonder at the thought of doing something devilish, like smoking a doobie, but never let herself give it a try. “Now you go to your room young man, and you think about what you’ve done!” Down comes the hammer. Two-and-a-half years? The report says Taylor Thompson gave Caleb Barnett the shrooms. Someone had taught him to share his treats, Your Honor. And Jesus, isn’t it enough that Thompson’s friend was murdered at the hands of a stranger?
The judge’s sentence alone is enough to get my dander up. But it’s that penultimate sentence in the little article that evokes that familiar cinematic scratch of a record stylus across vinyl in my mind. “The homeowner fatally shot him.”
At this, I can’t help but think that Judge Clymer’s punishment is fully representative of a festering social sickness. This is not just ignorance and—pun intended—poor judgment on the part of an elected official. It’s inexcusable myopia and idiocy. Does it occur to anyone else that the gifting and the consumption of psilocybin mushrooms did not cause the death of an 18-year old partygoer that night? A goddamn bullet did. Maybe two or more bullets.
I am a person who has every intention of becoming a big fan of shooting firearms at things. I’m going to go spray some lead at a paper target as soon as they’ll allow me, in fact. (Which will be as soon as I walk into a firing range and slap $9 on the counter.) But the situation described above, and all its busted implications, is no less than fucking stupid.
I’d love to poll 100 people in Paducah, Kentucky who knew about this case and this trial, and run the results up against my hypothesis that less than 3% of them would even consider that the greater issue here is gun control, gun ownership, and the turned cheek to accepted, unprovoked violence based on some frontier mentality that we have failed to outgrow in what we call our great, progressive America.
I’m tired and there’s little more to say about this. Other than this news snippet practically closes with a punch line to a joke that is in no way funny. The joke is sitting on a judicial bench in McCracken County, and in the sensibilities of innumerable hearts and minds in the heartland. …Shit.
References
Foster, J. P., Garrett, B., Higgins, G. E., Jepsen, C., Rickettes, M., Troske, K., White, K., & Young, L. (2007). Kentucky jail management strategies: Final report. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation: Louisville, KY.
Foster, J. P., Young, L., Kennedy, S., Goodman, C., & Stutzenberger, A. (December 2005). Jail evaluation study. Kentucky Department of Corrections: Frankfort, KY.
PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) — A western Kentucky man has been sentenced to 2½ years in prison for supplying hallucinogenic mushrooms that led to the death of a Paducah teenager as he tried to enter the wrong house.
McCracken Circuit Judge Craig Clymer sentenced 20-year-old Taylor Thompson on Wednesday, saying the prison time was necessary to send a message that drinking and using drugs have serious consequences.
Thompson pleaded guilty in December to trafficking in a controlled substance, marijuana possession and having drug paraphernalia.
Taylor told police he brought mushrooms to a party in July 2009, ate some himself and gave some to other people.
One of those was 18-year-old Caleb Barnett, who later broke into a neighbor's home, thinking it was his own. The homeowner fatally shot him. Barnett died in surgery at Baptist West Hospital on July 30.
You read about that fateful night and get the sense this is the case of another Puritanical backwoods judge sticking it to kids who play with consciousness-expanding, non-addictive, non-synthetic substances. Judge Clymer wanted to “send a message” by shoving a 20-year-old kid into the correctional meat grinder, costing god-knows-what in tax dollars to process and house the guy in a state jail system that is already woefully overpopulated and underfunded (Foster et al., 2005; 2007).
Judge Clymer raises his gavel like a scolding mother—some termagant bitch who hasn’t been laid since her son was conceived, and who has always trembled with repressed wonder at the thought of doing something devilish, like smoking a doobie, but never let herself give it a try. “Now you go to your room young man, and you think about what you’ve done!” Down comes the hammer. Two-and-a-half years? The report says Taylor Thompson gave Caleb Barnett the shrooms. Someone had taught him to share his treats, Your Honor. And Jesus, isn’t it enough that Thompson’s friend was murdered at the hands of a stranger?
The judge’s sentence alone is enough to get my dander up. But it’s that penultimate sentence in the little article that evokes that familiar cinematic scratch of a record stylus across vinyl in my mind. “The homeowner fatally shot him.”
At this, I can’t help but think that Judge Clymer’s punishment is fully representative of a festering social sickness. This is not just ignorance and—pun intended—poor judgment on the part of an elected official. It’s inexcusable myopia and idiocy. Does it occur to anyone else that the gifting and the consumption of psilocybin mushrooms did not cause the death of an 18-year old partygoer that night? A goddamn bullet did. Maybe two or more bullets.
I am a person who has every intention of becoming a big fan of shooting firearms at things. I’m going to go spray some lead at a paper target as soon as they’ll allow me, in fact. (Which will be as soon as I walk into a firing range and slap $9 on the counter.) But the situation described above, and all its busted implications, is no less than fucking stupid.
I’d love to poll 100 people in Paducah, Kentucky who knew about this case and this trial, and run the results up against my hypothesis that less than 3% of them would even consider that the greater issue here is gun control, gun ownership, and the turned cheek to accepted, unprovoked violence based on some frontier mentality that we have failed to outgrow in what we call our great, progressive America.
I’m tired and there’s little more to say about this. Other than this news snippet practically closes with a punch line to a joke that is in no way funny. The joke is sitting on a judicial bench in McCracken County, and in the sensibilities of innumerable hearts and minds in the heartland. …Shit.
References
Foster, J. P., Garrett, B., Higgins, G. E., Jepsen, C., Rickettes, M., Troske, K., White, K., & Young, L. (2007). Kentucky jail management strategies: Final report. Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation: Louisville, KY.
Foster, J. P., Young, L., Kennedy, S., Goodman, C., & Stutzenberger, A. (December 2005). Jail evaluation study. Kentucky Department of Corrections: Frankfort, KY.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Con-Artist SCRABBLE
Would-Be Cell Phone Thief Foiled By Biblio-Gap
Romano is a black man whiter than me; the kind of black man who plays squash. And this Sunday night, wrapping up a weekend of ceaseless bourbons on the rocks, he was playing Scrabble with me at Carly Rae’s when a fellow slid in looking markedly out of place, even among we of the Unshaven and Drunk.
The interloper wore a Pacers jersey that draped well below his crotch, above overly-long jean shorts, and he approached Romano and me at the table without hesitation.
“Man, you gotta cell phone?” he asked me. His bottom lip was twice the size of his top one, but I couldn’t tell whether he’d been busted in the chops or he’d gone around his whole life looking that way.
“Yeah, I’ve got one,” I told him. There was a time not many years before when I would have continued to hand it over to him under the friendly assumption he needed to use it in a bad way, but this time I continued with a battery of questions instead. “Why do you ask?”
“Can I make a call to this number?” he sputtered, pulling out a crinkled Post-It note with a series of characters scrawled on it in pencil. The paper was so emaciated it reminded me of many times in elementary school when I’d have a woefully runny nose and instead of skeeching every last of the teacher’s Kleenex from her desk, I’d crumple lined paper repeatedly into a makeshift tissue, worn thin enough to fold over my nose and blow—but resilient enough to actually catch snot and not embarrass myself. That process took some patience and a measure of rhinocranial discipline in light of that crazy nasal drip that can stream forever when you’re a snot-nosed punk with bad allergies. I recalled all this looking at this vagabond’s Post-It note in his chalky hand. …The writing on it looked more like a bank account number than seven digits and a prefix, and it looked like it had resided in his pocket for months.
“You need to use my phone to call that number?”
“Yeah.”
“Who are you calling? I’ll need to know first.”
“My boss.”
“Cool! Where do you work?”
“I cut hair. Professionally,” he claimed.
“But where is it located, the place where you cut hair professionally?”
“At the—I need to call my boss so he can take me to his car—my boss’s car is right over on Brook.”
I kept grinning at him. “I’m unclear… You need to get your boss to pick you up in his car, to take you to get his own car?”
“He got a truck, also.”
“But Brook Street is a block away. Can’t you just walk there? It’s a beautiful night out.” I paused and, noting the glint of sweat on his forehead—or was that just grease?—I added, “Okay a bit warm maybe, but still nice for September.”
He pressed on, gripping the note now with both hands in front of him, his thumbs on top. “I just need to call my boss so I can cut his hair tonight.”
“I see,” I said shaking my head. “I understand the urgent need for haircuts at 10pm on a Sunday.” I really did. …I looked at Romano and then back at the guy. Romano threw in, “Can’t you use the restaurant’s phone? They probably have a phone here you can use.”
He repeated, “Man, I just need to call my boss so I can get his car and cut his hair.”
“What’s wrong with your boss’s car? The one on Brook?”
“It’s out of gas.”
“Dude,” I said excitedly. “I’ve got just what you need! I’ve got two gallons of gas in my car. In a plastic gas can—I keep it for just such occasions in my trunk, and you can have it!”
His face sagged.
“Seriously!” I nudged him on the arm. “My car’s just outside. I’ll take you to go get it right now. Come on!”
This was all true, because I did have two gallons of gas for such occasions, and by all appearances what he really needed was some gasoline to pour into his boss’s fuel hatch. In fact, this was the second can of gas I kept stored in my trunk in a year. Just months before this night, I’d given a ride to an entreating black woman and her venerable, cane-toting, sweet-old harmless and clueless grandfather several blocks to their supposed rendezvous point with [Someone?], and when she asked for a couple of dollars to get gas for her [Someone’s?] car parked across the street, I told her, then just as excitedly as now, that I could do her one better. I dug in my trunk and extracted a new plastic gas can with two gallons of unleaded in it, handed it to her, and drove off wishing them well. In my rearview, I could see the woman turn to her hapless grandpa and ask, “What the hell I gonna do with this thang?” Petrol is, after all, what she’d asked for.
…Our flailing con-artist this time persisted: “Yeah, but I need to call my boss first!”
His story by now was so overtly fishy that I expected a seal to sidle up, bark, and clap his rudders. The usual human part of me felt a little bad for giving this guy a hard time, but what really came to the fore of my mind was genuine curiosity.
I continued my grilling. “You’re going to collect his car and then go to his business to cut his hair?”
“Yeah.”
I smiled. “What business does he own? I mean where is it?”
“Aw,” he slid back his red baseball cap (on backward) and scratched the top of his cornrows. “Uh, the Rudyard Kipling. Over on Oak.”
“Sweet! A barber who owns a bar, too? He owns the Rud?”
The Rud was an historic bulwark for local performing artists, a tavern that served unique dishes and an eccentric scene for bands, poets and authors, filmmakers. I’d had many good nights there, and our interloper sensed it. With a kind of affected pride, he boasted, “I dug the foundation for that place, man.”
Romano and I traded glances. Romano pushed up his glasses, folded his hands, and said, “That must have been like 70 or 80 years ago.”
“Wait,” I said, cocking one brow toward the poor bastard. “You’re older than you actually look, right?”
He smiled timidly, “Awm, how old do you think I am?” His bottom lip glistened like a bloated pink slug.
I gauged he looked about 35 plus 8 years or so of fairly rough street living, so he discernibly looked about 43… in Street Years. But I told him, “You look about 35,” and quickly asked, “So you’re going to the Rudyard Kipling: What’s your boss’s name?”
“Uh, Rudy. Rudy Kipling.”
So now the jig was up, and after Romano and I laughed very hard for a full minute and explained that Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book in the late nineteenth century, the guy excused himself in a polite tone. “Just forget about it,” he said, and floated toward the door. He didn’t have it in him to be nasty, and perhaps he would have been a far better con-thief/cell phone snatcher-pawner if he were. I hoped any sting of embarrassment or failure he felt dissipated as soon as he hit the sidewalk. Shit, if the guy had simply asked for money, I would have slapped cash in his paw and wished him luck. Every panhandler and rustler should know this about me by now; I should wear a sign. But some—homeless or not—feel they need to play games.
“That was fun,” Romano said.
And then I scorched him in Scrabble, all the while begging him to make up words, for his sake, to give him some extra scoring leverage. If they sounded good, they’d be permissible. For instance, WQERTBY would not slide, but GOPEN—why not? It doesn’t violate accepted rules of English morphology. We could call it Crabble™, and he would get bonus points if he could furnish a definition.
go-pen intransitive verb (2008) : imperative compound of go + open : <Gopen the fridge and fetch me a beer, beeotch!>
…Romano refused, insisting to play by the rules and lose with dignity. He bought us another bourbon with a splash of water.
Romano is a black man whiter than me; the kind of black man who plays squash. And this Sunday night, wrapping up a weekend of ceaseless bourbons on the rocks, he was playing Scrabble with me at Carly Rae’s when a fellow slid in looking markedly out of place, even among we of the Unshaven and Drunk.
The interloper wore a Pacers jersey that draped well below his crotch, above overly-long jean shorts, and he approached Romano and me at the table without hesitation.
“Man, you gotta cell phone?” he asked me. His bottom lip was twice the size of his top one, but I couldn’t tell whether he’d been busted in the chops or he’d gone around his whole life looking that way.
“Yeah, I’ve got one,” I told him. There was a time not many years before when I would have continued to hand it over to him under the friendly assumption he needed to use it in a bad way, but this time I continued with a battery of questions instead. “Why do you ask?”
“Can I make a call to this number?” he sputtered, pulling out a crinkled Post-It note with a series of characters scrawled on it in pencil. The paper was so emaciated it reminded me of many times in elementary school when I’d have a woefully runny nose and instead of skeeching every last of the teacher’s Kleenex from her desk, I’d crumple lined paper repeatedly into a makeshift tissue, worn thin enough to fold over my nose and blow—but resilient enough to actually catch snot and not embarrass myself. That process took some patience and a measure of rhinocranial discipline in light of that crazy nasal drip that can stream forever when you’re a snot-nosed punk with bad allergies. I recalled all this looking at this vagabond’s Post-It note in his chalky hand. …The writing on it looked more like a bank account number than seven digits and a prefix, and it looked like it had resided in his pocket for months.
“You need to use my phone to call that number?”
“Yeah.”
“Who are you calling? I’ll need to know first.”
“My boss.”
“Cool! Where do you work?”
“I cut hair. Professionally,” he claimed.
“But where is it located, the place where you cut hair professionally?”
“At the—I need to call my boss so he can take me to his car—my boss’s car is right over on Brook.”
I kept grinning at him. “I’m unclear… You need to get your boss to pick you up in his car, to take you to get his own car?”
“He got a truck, also.”
“But Brook Street is a block away. Can’t you just walk there? It’s a beautiful night out.” I paused and, noting the glint of sweat on his forehead—or was that just grease?—I added, “Okay a bit warm maybe, but still nice for September.”
He pressed on, gripping the note now with both hands in front of him, his thumbs on top. “I just need to call my boss so I can cut his hair tonight.”
“I see,” I said shaking my head. “I understand the urgent need for haircuts at 10pm on a Sunday.” I really did. …I looked at Romano and then back at the guy. Romano threw in, “Can’t you use the restaurant’s phone? They probably have a phone here you can use.”
He repeated, “Man, I just need to call my boss so I can get his car and cut his hair.”
“What’s wrong with your boss’s car? The one on Brook?”
“It’s out of gas.”
“Dude,” I said excitedly. “I’ve got just what you need! I’ve got two gallons of gas in my car. In a plastic gas can—I keep it for just such occasions in my trunk, and you can have it!”
His face sagged.
“Seriously!” I nudged him on the arm. “My car’s just outside. I’ll take you to go get it right now. Come on!”
This was all true, because I did have two gallons of gas for such occasions, and by all appearances what he really needed was some gasoline to pour into his boss’s fuel hatch. In fact, this was the second can of gas I kept stored in my trunk in a year. Just months before this night, I’d given a ride to an entreating black woman and her venerable, cane-toting, sweet-old harmless and clueless grandfather several blocks to their supposed rendezvous point with [Someone?], and when she asked for a couple of dollars to get gas for her [Someone’s?] car parked across the street, I told her, then just as excitedly as now, that I could do her one better. I dug in my trunk and extracted a new plastic gas can with two gallons of unleaded in it, handed it to her, and drove off wishing them well. In my rearview, I could see the woman turn to her hapless grandpa and ask, “What the hell I gonna do with this thang?” Petrol is, after all, what she’d asked for.
…Our flailing con-artist this time persisted: “Yeah, but I need to call my boss first!”
His story by now was so overtly fishy that I expected a seal to sidle up, bark, and clap his rudders. The usual human part of me felt a little bad for giving this guy a hard time, but what really came to the fore of my mind was genuine curiosity.
I continued my grilling. “You’re going to collect his car and then go to his business to cut his hair?”
“Yeah.”
I smiled. “What business does he own? I mean where is it?”
“Aw,” he slid back his red baseball cap (on backward) and scratched the top of his cornrows. “Uh, the Rudyard Kipling. Over on Oak.”
“Sweet! A barber who owns a bar, too? He owns the Rud?”
The Rud was an historic bulwark for local performing artists, a tavern that served unique dishes and an eccentric scene for bands, poets and authors, filmmakers. I’d had many good nights there, and our interloper sensed it. With a kind of affected pride, he boasted, “I dug the foundation for that place, man.”
Romano and I traded glances. Romano pushed up his glasses, folded his hands, and said, “That must have been like 70 or 80 years ago.”
“Wait,” I said, cocking one brow toward the poor bastard. “You’re older than you actually look, right?”
He smiled timidly, “Awm, how old do you think I am?” His bottom lip glistened like a bloated pink slug.
I gauged he looked about 35 plus 8 years or so of fairly rough street living, so he discernibly looked about 43… in Street Years. But I told him, “You look about 35,” and quickly asked, “So you’re going to the Rudyard Kipling: What’s your boss’s name?”
“Uh, Rudy. Rudy Kipling.”
So now the jig was up, and after Romano and I laughed very hard for a full minute and explained that Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book in the late nineteenth century, the guy excused himself in a polite tone. “Just forget about it,” he said, and floated toward the door. He didn’t have it in him to be nasty, and perhaps he would have been a far better con-thief/cell phone snatcher-pawner if he were. I hoped any sting of embarrassment or failure he felt dissipated as soon as he hit the sidewalk. Shit, if the guy had simply asked for money, I would have slapped cash in his paw and wished him luck. Every panhandler and rustler should know this about me by now; I should wear a sign. But some—homeless or not—feel they need to play games.
“That was fun,” Romano said.
And then I scorched him in Scrabble, all the while begging him to make up words, for his sake, to give him some extra scoring leverage. If they sounded good, they’d be permissible. For instance, WQERTBY would not slide, but GOPEN—why not? It doesn’t violate accepted rules of English morphology. We could call it Crabble™, and he would get bonus points if he could furnish a definition.
go-pen intransitive verb (2008) : imperative compound of go + open : <Gopen the fridge and fetch me a beer, beeotch!>
…Romano refused, insisting to play by the rules and lose with dignity. He bought us another bourbon with a splash of water.
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