Several Random Events Described by a Madman

"Excuse me, what time is it?!" 

        The man I asked was standing by the lad he accompanied at the closed bus stop, apparently waiting for something else. He sneered and had the blithe comment.

        "Time to get a watch!"

        He checked his phone, in his hand, and then in almost a panicked glance, towards the adjacent shopping center. 

        It was one o'oclock am, no buses were running, my manic mind overdosed on recognition, and I was in danger, I knew. Briskly, I walked on a few steps looking back to see the couple rounding my route from the northwest behind the Wendy's. 

        " We N'd y's, " I hoped aloud " we end wise... "

        As I reached the crossing lane to head for the trolley, I got a glance at the sky over it, a little less than a mile uphill from me, it was a police chopper. They were talking, I could hear, and I stood judging my watch monkey, both, and pursuers came into focus.

        "...danger, you are not safe," the chopper bullhorn speakers were broadcasting, " head east! "

        As I stepped off the curb, headed east, I glanced over my shoulder. A youth with a two by four run through with nails jutting on all sides at the top was after me, along with a scrambling few others. 

        "Shit!"

        As I crossed under the eight lane overpass, the tunnel made my surroundings near pitch black. The helicopter P.A. began again, "...real danger. Wait for us. Wait for the light!" He stayed directly over head as I scurried on high alert.

        The corners were the creepiest pitch black dirt hillside crevasses that could easily hide more thugs. And, wait for the light? Smoking fiercely had me out of breath and against everything but my will to live, I ran the football field between me and the onramp left turn signal. 

        As I approached, the light turned red, the helicopter having stayed with me, he reiterated, " Wait for the light, watch for YOUR CAR... "

        OK, "wait for the light" was obvious, but watch for your car? 

        Then it hit me with the dharma reasoning, watch for our Nissan Sentra? I stood at the light, head in a high daze, focusing on my surroundings with perimeter scouting, worried as the helicopter pulled ahead of me overhead.

        Just then, a Nissan Sentra was given the green instantly at my crosswalk ramp, a twenty - something showing a fierce, evil spun grin out of his open rear driver side window as they sped past. 

        "Car - tell," I thought immediately. 

        That entrance would give them east access one exit later to the trolley. I suddenly realized that there were no trolleys there running until 5 am, four plus hours away. But the casino bus ran all night!

        As I hurriedly hoofed the long ascent towards fate, the sky bellowed "Stay visible, wait for your squad car!"

        They were sending a patrol car to help.

        Ahead of me, the chopper yelled to the train station below him, " Position confirmed, DELIVER THE PACKAGE! "

        I scuttled on, nervous as Hell.

      This harassment has been going on for years. At times it is like waging war inside of the rebel community in the neighborhood. Fact is, the top of the ladder, they acknowledge me up close, and there is an understanding that we all are trying to find a balance.

        The nuisance really has been the level of which this comptroller style shit has gone to.

        At one point, every time we went out, a tail would follow. I had begun memorizing plates. To date I recognize a few hundred, and retain the ones that struck me down. At one point I had the unhappy task of phoning in an "Amber Alert" perp who knew the neighborhood well.

        Fact is, when it is going down, what the Hell can you do?!

        They had tried this many times before, and over near a decade I found it increasingly an occupational hazard. Domestically insatiable, the desire to run wild and fight the demons on the level.

        As I reached the parking lot, this night the criminals let me know how much they had been cost. As I climbed the fifty odd stairs to summit the mountainside rail terminal, I saw them, in a Sentra, packed full. They were sitting there in a Mexican standoff across from the cop car staring them down in the empty lot. The policemen nudged forward towards them and they, reluctantly were driven by their tail, out of the lot. 

       I was never so grateful when the brave policemen rounded back and sat in the side lot, watching over me for half an hour until the next casino bus. I needed to win. There was a place to expose these truths, this desert of circumstance, and I wanted to score my ticket. It was far from an escape, though to go there, almost an escalation. Time would tell if and when I could return here. My wife and child couldn't be even calculated in to this deep of a mire.

        A terse half an hour later, a cushy - new casino tour bus pulled in, and the driver, wary of the squad car checked my I.D. and boarded me officially. I had never in my 12 years in the area gone to any casino, not once. There were three I could try and get "new member free play" at, and hope of karmic reason flowed in me. This was an adventure, I reasoned, may as well surrender to the flow.

        Things could only get better, I reasoned, time to fight the good fight for life.

        As the cushy seat sucked me in, staring out the window flying past the canyon miles, the world would spin beside itself and suck me in. With hopes and dreams beyond compare, I relished greedily that such a double plot could compare.

        The dealer, I had outed him. To Senators, judges, city council, even the oval office. If of course the oval office was busy pissing in the corner, the Senator had gravely sent it to, not the feds, the P.D. Front Desk Sergeant.

         I was fucked. They literally lived and worked in my backyard, where I had overheard the plan, "...you are chum," gutterally muttered "we will kill you."

        Of course after, I had ran to the store, bought eight different kinds of Coke, and seen them parked at the intersection. The car, non destinct, the plates fresh and the plot unfolding, unplanned. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.

        The problem did not lie at the checkout, I was gonna die of the front coming barely highest up in the chain.

    I had already been fucked five ways to none, and there had been numerous attempts on my life in this past I call home. One occurred at three a.m. by the ballpark, it was the crypt, with a staff, at the park. Bruised and battered by the eight foot long, four inch thick totem he had a final swing at my head. As I sat, in the lotus and deflected his attack, I recalled my martial arts training and hooked the pole with my right thumb, swinging it away from my left temple and back into his. He had thought twice and retreated.

        I would never have been here, I often think if it weren't for a "Special Forces" Marine I caddied with having taught me from his seven years in Korea. Nonetheless, the impact being intended to kill me, my right thumb knuckle was shattered. It took hundreds of hours of giving massages to clear the shards from it's joint properly.

       So many men and women wander this world bearing no fruits of their labor, and it brings in the trappings of war both domestically and abroad. For me it has always brought a rapid cycle of changes in both environment and income source. Now I fear it leaves a stigmatized legacy.

       If my life were written in a back cover bio it would probably read that I was a homeless vagrant who never seemed to have a smoke, let alone the power to quit. Then it would say something like "is controlled by remote work by his Hitler mother, and lack of ability to climb out of the gutter."

        Every day since I left home at age fifteen, the woman has railroaded me to the nearest psyche ward or rehab, when I'm neither nuts nor addicted. One time of the fifty plus inpatient stays, they doped me so far up to "detox" as per "Mum - Mum" that I slept 48 hours face up in an a.c.  unit blower. When I awoke, I had pneumonia. Amidst my life of public slander, legal threats,  and failed relationships, I blame her. 

        At a lesser point, rising out of my fifty plus corresponding career moves with a 98% interview success rate, she had me removed from being floor manager of a major telecommunications network customer service division by having me thrown out of a shelter, and forcibly hospitalized and then put in a psyche rehab. I was then of course thumb screwed into government funds.

        All so that her and my abusive adopted father could hide their mortal mistakes. God, what a country, mother "Cratchett" eases her way, half lit on her most recent Napa vineyard collection in and out of Alanon and Naranon, all kept to flash her most recent secured psyche records on me. 

    

        From there, she is the cardinal graveyard digger to put me face down in the ditch. 

        Once, after dropping 420k on a hospital visit, marketing the rich level of care they gave me to the country club, I was dropped in a violent city ghetto on release. While there they ruined me as a caddy by simple fate.

        " We told you so."

        Now, I know there is a line here people, I know it well. I know it from the step work I was forced into after years of solo "complete abstinence" in those places where they go. Us and them, there is no law defining anything under the sun but to do no collateral harm in telling it like it is. 

        I am protected by discretion, honor, and ambition. Apparently not by my medi-cal being setup, locked, and monitored. But it is the only government benefit I am left with. No job, no home, no "crazy check", no recognition for my cutting edge physics, nothing.

        The bus turned into the long and winding road that becomes who I am, and loose slots were my deepest fear and ambition.

        I needed help, the aid dividing me from the depths of ghetto Death handed to me by God over and over. Stepping into the manifested here was complete abstinence from gambling my entire life brimming frothy and new. Afraid of the sport being my next go - to rehab structure, I am a proud and genius professional sat next poker tournament allowed. An avid reader, and holder of an eleven deck "blind Boston" spades win, the tables were always held at arms length. 

        I will never give up the fight for my children, I must have been thinking. This was easy money like fueling the fire with gasoline to put it out. It doesn't work.

        If of course neither has it for years, held hostage like a free world built prison stuff box in my various single room occupancies, residential hotels, and the studio that tortured my fall from publishing grace.

        The wheels may turn, but they don't steer the course unless you can fill the tank. I needed to get out of town, and fast! Far cry from an easy task I nervously fondled my I.D. thinking. This was not to ever be told, but I didn't know if I could ever return home without cash. And a lot of it.

        I am a prick when I want to be, but this was insane! Turned in my brother, my ally, over recovery Nazi regime freedom fits like an epileptic corn husker does a prostitute with diarrhea. Fucks the shucks between shaking off the shit, or so you could say. Shucks between fits.

        Knee deep in rusty nails and baggage was the stare of the security guard at my door.

        "Can I check your bag sir?"

        Counting all of my possessions for the considerable future, luck would be, I had no alcohol or firearms. I never have, I've been in AA since I was three. Court mandate.

        As far as the ends go,  I am far from it.

        My wife  would never let me just leave, and was worthy of it all ending of so. Never quite out of touch with the moguls I grew up around, a trophy wife would have been just, and so I was glad for the injustice of pomp and circumstance.

        The casino floor was a thin kit for smoking cessation, "... other people's smoke will kill you," and I needed to cool my jets this was "smog for the commute."

        I had been here once only before, and the lame possibility of my first time free play felt unjust as well.

        " I need to get a replacement member card, " I told the fag at member services "please ."

        I then went straight to the machine, there was no other way to put cash in my pocket. My sign up bonus had been burned. I was going to have to head for the casino bus depot to hit other despot fairgrounds.

       There is nothing like outliving ones' enemies, time wounds all heels.

        I was definitely under watch, and it seemed mostly by the underground. If it seemed plausible, the peace keepers would light my fire safe to another day, but it was my job to construct it's plausability. The only use for me at the moment was salting the wounds of totem placement.

        Everybody breaks the law, and I do mean everybody. It is God's law, as set in place in my opinion to keep each other from harm. Not to lock us up and throw away the key. Definitely not to redirect and own winnings by random consequence.

        Let me reiterate.

        Nothing happens by chance. Absolutely nothing, not even chaos. There is a physics program invented in the 1950's  driving weather satellites by a formula by that name.

        I picked a spot at the bar, clutching bus timetables, and turnkey corkscrew events and room rates in my ruddy paws.

        I lit a cigar, one of my few remaining and felt numb. I was not going to see them, my family. They reliably didn't know the trouble I had landed, both feet firmly in so quite possibly, not at all.

        The slot machine in the bar in front of me flowed and numbers flowed from it's screen, taunting my dummy brokenness. I would have to do all of my climbing from under the radar in a way I hadn't known, but taunted for years. I was going to have to go underground.

        The only difference in fighting fire with fire, is eliminating the fireman. Fucks are gonna come after me either way, so far as laundering guilt is concerned, just use protection I figure. Nobody likes to fuck with protection, std's or not. I mean it is now and forever a two way street, considering the length of stay. Please plead insanity for me.

       Difference now as opposed to before is, at least I know the skills and intentions, and that "can" is "able" and most likely doesn't. Takes more than "out a time" to get a permanent "time out". The part that drives my balls across the plate is that the curve is commentary on my tomb sequence for an up studio, "coming back for more"! I would pre date it too, if I was them and not just us.

        Such was my misidentification with the whole state of affairs. I needed one thing only, money. But at present, the former and to day by day the latter, is their choice never mine. Brought to my heel with a grindstone, headed up with a tomb stone, sanded down with riding the pine stoned. Or at least that to save my ass needing any other discussion. Yeah, it is shit or get off the pot though, and the connection is both.

        In recovery people call it "marijuana maintenance", I call it fake pro - active politics, cause these days you "...never trust a man who doesn't smoke." Partition being aside from apartheid, (ask a rasta) prohibition effects the paranoia gland easier with the green weed these days. Translation : if you want to know if they are fake, get 'em stoned, sativa bound. That'll raise some eyebrows, so do it good and public for sure reference.

        It is all about the history, really. From illegal to medicine to legal to unlisted past, my regular timeline at age 42 really. The bootlegging and celebrity tunnels were a vast mystery to me, though in the holy sin city, I had seen privileged engineers navigate them, taunting me with impossible skilled positioning, re-entering obviously via underground near an old speak-easy, now gone hookah lounge. The club was there for the likes of Dizzy and Dylan, Kerouac and Ginsberg, opening the doors to hide the secrets of the privileged.

        Those trusted were given access via means of riddling exposure to life under illuminati rules. The things unseen, remained unseen by those who would not see it through forward the exception the ones policed to no longer make it out living a life consumed by such decay. The ones that would never turn up at home, and be mourned having been lost to a needling desire.

        Yes, it was definitely time to treat life like it was headed there, underground. Damned sure.

         I had it good, I damned well knew it. My son he had a family awaiting his arrival on his terms and the rook was secure by hands that were the hands of the establishment. It was all I could do to turn the tide in faulty reason but the reason was truly true.

        "Money," the security guard spoke as I approached his exit "...he has no money but the seven thousand from yesterday!"

        I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, if only I could be cashing that voucher!

        "Here," the woman he spoke to handed him a bill "that is for the kitty!"

        "Thanks Benny!" he chimed.

        How strange and yet comforting the nuance of tens of hundreds being thrown down so easily in flux to the tune of demons and ducks.

        I did not have a penny less than needed to get where I wasn't going, but living in domino effect of AAA not being needed to pick me up and head for the lynch lumber jack again.

        "Never going to make that mistake again." 

        Some sorry sucker knew my plight I thought. Synchronicity or plain relativity? 

        Both.

        I was letting them cause me to abandon my wife. Insecurity led to insanity wealth worn through the making, I was nuts, an axe pick I was terminally allergic to. The greatest tornado hunter in the world I knew only had to put it right down the center to ride out the storm.

        They wanted me dead now. At first I was taken back, years ago when they started, spurned by vicious attacks only an in-law could spoke. But this was not in - laws. At this point I forgave all, but it was beyond forgetting. Life itself was threatening everything I had built, the life brought into this world. Risking my own well being was no longer an option, it was a forced factor equivalent to exponents I could never have seen coming. 

        Artificial intelligence racked and attacked, the network hanging "kick me" signs in autocomplete's, friend suggestions, post news-feeds and even engine results, networking was counter productive, had been for near a decade. The mental anguish was not worth the response. 

        The bus arrived at my drop off slash transfer point at around sunrise, and I shuffled nervously to the front of a line formed fifteen deep. 

        "Is this the line?" I asked the uniform donning man absently in my listless haze.

        "This is the employee line," he muttered back "get in that line!" 

        I looked forward and saw straight across two people in casual wear standing in the players club line. Well, I was going to have choice seats, back or front.

        Then the rest of the line started arriving. My addled brain rattled off stereotypes one by one, "Gang member, old Cartel low level, thug, old family, fresh inmate, and employed Cartel..." and I knew I was in good company. Hell I might even muscle my way straight to hood rat heaven at this rate. 

        The driver stepped down from the tour bus interior and started taking identification. When she got to me she stopped, and asked for my club card. She had never seen me before and I pushed forward my I.D. in desperate hope it would suffice. Then she said "First time? Just make sure and get a card at the front desk. You'll get free play!" 

        My happiness was so exhilarating as the blood rushed endorphins through my body, I felt my ears turn red. I might just outlive the line after all. 

        Forty - five minutes later I watched the front nose of the bus corner down the immaculate driveway that was hosting me finally. The trip had been a mix of me warbling pigeon self defense asides in broken spanglish, and outdoing myself with foxhole prayer. 

        As I ducked into the casino, I realized, I had no phone to two step verify my identity. 

        After a short relationship with the member services attendant I walked, assumed, to the players card terminal just off of the escalator being posted up at by the most testosterone I've ever seen in a female who wasn't yet a cop. Fidgeting for my card, I cursed A.I., the C.I.A. and the NYPD for not hiring her and started to examine my account on the giant tablet. Just as I thought, I needed a phone to win round one of casino class battles. I look over my shoulder, and she was eyeballing me and definitely not for a post shift lowball. Just maybe eight-ball with her maladjusted night stick. 

        As I walked away, I realized this was no time to lose the sale. I just needed someone to retrieve the email and I would have at least $25 to play with. I saw a young, very effeminate  looking  kid  crossing my path, and I swallowed hard. 

        "Can you help me?"

        Ten minutes later, free of charge I had my card loaded with $15 of playtime. For real cash to walk away with, I knew, I would have to win by a third more than initially recieved. As I scoured the floor of the slots areas I put a silent mantra of clear light knowing and scoped for Buddha. He was actually on a few of the machines, but that too worked away from me. I settled on a wolf pack machine, an old one, and loaded my funds.

        The wheels turned round, and the letters said, fifty free spins! As each of the spins racked up my earnings total, I dimly realized I was leaving town. It was neither an end, or a beginning, but I had won! Fifty dollars and fifty five cents to cash out, have paid out and get the Hell out before I got laid out! Not enough for a coffin, really.

 

 And so it began...

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