Two Balls and a Strike

It was so hot I was sweating. I felt my wet shirt sticking to my back every time I moved… Or rather was moved. It was a very bumpy ride. The Buick handled well but not from my standpoint.

It was the summer of ’95, I’d just finished 5th grade. Hanging out with the neighborhood kids I’d become friends with some of their older brothers and their brothers friends. I liked hanging out with them more than with my friends. They were all 18 or older and to me being a 12 year old they seemed like gods.

My good friend and fellow juvenile delinquent AC had a older brother Mike. AC and I would hang with Mike and his older friends drinking, smoking weed and long, thin, menthol cigarettes AC would steal from his grandma. Being the confused, misled, fatherless punk kid I was I gladly accepted it when a few 18 year olds beat me into SDC, Southside Dangerous Crips (when I reflect on SDC I wonder if the older guys were just confused, misled, punk young adults who’d made up a gang).

Every day SDC would all link up around the neighborhood and drive around in a Buick Regal that belonged to a guy named Tink. We’d roll deep bumping Haystack’s ‘Car full of Whiteboys’ on repeat and Tupac’s album Strictly for my Niggaz. We’d drive from spot to spot and steal cigarettes and beer, which we’d later drink in the neighborhood or at the beach. We thought we were real hard, though we were real gangsters.

One day AC and I were rolling with our older SDC members when Tink told us about a easy come up he’d been planning for some time now; robbing a dealers house for a few pounds. The dealer was out of town for the week and Tink knew where the stash was. We went to pick up a homegirl named Erica. I remember she had a bright red shirt on and everybody was bugging out and told her she wasn’t allowed in the sky blue Buick full of Crips. After she changed her shirt we left the neighborhood and drove to Safeway where Erika, Mike and Tink went in and stole cigarettes.

Smoking cigs behind Safeway Tink said it was time to go through with the plan. Another SDC member, Josh, linked up with us before we left. Now being too many to legally fit in the cab AC and I had to ride in the trunk. We bitched about it while smoking a last cigarette but it didn’t have any affect on our superiors decision. We climbed in and made ourselves comfortable before the trunk was shut.

The music was extremely loud in the trunk. Every now and then someone in the backseat would lift out one of the speakers and pass a cigarette or a joint to us through the hole.
The road seemed to be getting more and more bumpy as we sat in the smokey, dark, sweltering heat of the trunk. I was happy to feel the car finally come to a stop.

The trunk opened and Mike was there with a gallon of Monarch. He passed it to me and I took a swig before giving it to AC. The car was parked at a pull off on the outskirts of a residential area. Tink told us the house was close and the door would be unlocked. We locked the car and followed Tink as he led the way to the dealers house.

The house was right on the road. All the doors were locked and bars covered the ground floor windows. It didn’t seem like the easy come up Tink had described a few hours earlier. There was an upstairs window right above the roof of the porch that was open. The older guys decided AC and I would climb up and go through the window and unlock the doors for them. I didn’t like this deviation from the original plan but I didn’t want to look like a pussy either. Mike and Tink gave us boosts up onto the roof of the porch.

The screen didn’t want to come off so easy so I had to break the metal frame it was held into the window by. The house was tidy, it certainly didn’t look like a dealers house. AC and I went down and let the older SDC members in. Tink went straight to one of the rooms as if he knew the house. I started to think it’d be an easy come up after all. He came back out of the room and said the stash wasn’t there. We searched the other rooms for the weed to no avail. AC took a few Super Nintendo games from the living room. Mike took a warm 6-pack of diet caffein free CocaCola.

Back at the car we drank the warm sodas with the warm Monarch. Tink was pissed off that we didn’t get anything that made it worth our while. Mike said he knew a spot close by that we could easily steal some guns from. That sounded a bit extreme to me but I refrained from voicing my opinions. We all (really just the older guys as AC and I didn’t get much say in most matters) discussed taking the guns. We drove about five minutes away and parked the car on the side of the street. Mike and Tink went to go check the house out while the rest of us waited. Erika showed Josh, AC, and I her tits for a few times. That was the best part of my day so far.

About 10 minutes later they came back and said that the guy wasn’t home but that his senile mom was. Mike explained to everyone where the guns were and how easy it’d be to take them with only the old lady home. After drinking more vodka the older guys told AC and I we needed to go and take the guns. We argued about it for a bit but in the end that’s how it was to go down.

As AC and I went down the road to the house I explained it seemed weak that we had to do the dirty work after WE were the ones who’d busted into the last house. He agreed and said he didn’t want to do it. We crept through the neighbors hedge and looked in through the windows from the bushes. We could see the senile lady sitting watching TV or something. I told him I didn’t want to do it either and that I was shook because the lady was home. We sat in the bushes smoking cigarettes for a short while and went back to the car. The guys were pissed off we returned empty handed. We said the lady was staring out the windows looking around like she was looking for something or someone.

A few days later we’d just returned to the hood from a cig boost at Safeway. I had 17 packs of cigarettes in my jacket and pants pockets. Two cars pulled up to my friends house we were all at. One was a police car, one was a Honda Civic sedan. One of the homies said it was the land owners of the woods we always drank and smoked in. We figured they were coming to tell us we weren’t allowed to be in their woods anymore. The homie was wrong. It was my first of many unpleasant encounters with the police. The two people in the Civic were detectives. AC and I were arrested.

I’m not ashamed to say that at the station I cried a bit when being questioned by the detectives. I thought it would somehow change the outcome of my predicament and in all honesty I was scared. I’d never been arrested before, there’d been run-ins with the law before on Kauai and Catalina island but never a anything to this degree. Erika had told the police all the events of the day in detail. I to this day dont know how the police knew it was us, maybe some of the older guys had prints on file. I didn’t give the detectives any information nor did I do what I later learned is your best option in such a situation. Plead the fifth and demand a lawyer.

The police informed me of the class B felony Residential Burglary I’d committed. As well as the class B felony Theft of a firearm and the class C felony Unlawful possession of a firearm in the second degree AC and I avoided by hiding in the bushes rather than entering the second house and stealing the guns.

My court appointed Public Defender was named Tony Auto. He fought my case vigorously for me and I only served three days in juvenile hall, received a years probation and had to do 500 hours of community service. Tony Auto was hired to be my attorney for three cases I later faced, winning them all.

This traumatic ordeal sadly didn’t deter me from breaking the law in the future. I was clearly taken advantage of by the older guys (or they were simply mentally handicapped) and dropped SDC and didn’t hang with those cats for a few years.

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”

George Orwell

They were identical

They had moved to the island from California or some other place rich people came from.
They were about my age judging by their height alone. I later found out they were a few years older than I was. Seven or eight years old maybe.
They certainly thought they were the hot shots of the neighborhood.

They had matching bmx bikes. Black with chrome trim Mongoose bmx bikes. They would never let any of the other neighborhood children ride their bikes.

They invited me over a few times. I liked playing their video games and watching TV while at their house seeing as we didn’t even have power until we moved to Seattle nearly 10 years later.

I invited myself over one day to find the two twins preparing for their summer long trip back to California or some other place rich people went for the summer.
They let me play video games while they packed and after eating lunch said they needed to leave so I walked home.

A few days later I found myself thinking about the black and chrome Mongoose bmx bikes. It wouldn’t hurt anyone if I took ONE of them for a spin, maybe a couple jumps, couple skid outs, it wouldn’t hurt anyone. So that’s exactly what I did. I walked to the twins house, went to the back where I knew the bikes would be,jumped on one and I cruised.

All the other kids in the neighborhood knew exactly where I’d gotten the bike but I told them that they were wrong and insisted it was MY bike and my mom had gotten it for me and they should stop worrying about the trouble I may get in. I wound up crashing that bmx bike. I totally warped both front and back rims, I stripped out the handlebars somehow I managed to even snap the chain so I put it back… Returned it to its rightful owner.

A few days later I was missing gallivanting around the hood on my hot ride. I decided to go and take the second bike, I promised myself I’d be a lot more cautious with that one.
No more than a week later it was in the same state as the first bmx so I went and parked it behind the house next to the other trashed Mongoose and went on my way.

Once the first grade had started I avoided the twins at school and around the neighborhood, hung out with the others but mostly as I said I avoided the twins.
I realize now it was only a scare tactic but at the time it was one of the most dramatic things that had happened to me. The police came and took me out of my first grade class and asked me about the two black and chrome Mongoose bmx bikes.
I insisted I didn’t know anything about what they were talking about but I guess several kids from the neighborhood had said they’d seen me on the bicycles and that they were certainly the twins bikes and it was certainly me they had seen on them.

It turns out my mother had been planning to buy me a bmx. Instead of buying me a bike she used that money to pay the twins parents. At least for one of their bikes. I guess my mother had to come out of pocket for the second… For both of them in all actuality.

They were identical, the bicycles and the twins. I hated them… The bicycles and the twins… And people who told the police other people’s business…

So street smart

DELK and PESTOE had been crashing at my house for a couple of weeks. They’d never been to Prague so I made sure to show them the grimy underworld, my world. We’d wake up in the early afternoon and walk up the block to Delvita. We’d all buy fried chicken and two or three Braniks (a very cheap delicious Czech pilsner which before CZ joined the EU had a savage depiction of Jesus on the label) each and we’d all split a pack of Start cigs (Czech cigarettes smoked by all laborers which are incredibly harsh and about an inch shorter that a standard cig).

DELK and PESTOE should’ve been staying at SNORE’s crib but he was being weak and wasn’t down to kick it, he was even witnessed doing some weird shit I won’t go into. After we’d eaten our chicken and beer breakfast overlooking this valley while peeping my roller I had on the other side of it we’d smash around town viewing the work we’d put in the night before. Eventually we’d head to the homie D’s bar and reup on that good.

I had these homegirls who asked if we wanted to go to Hiphop Kemp (an annual hiphop festival) with them so we all smashed out. The homegirls were sleeping in the rental. We didn’t even have sleeping bags or anything but we didn’t sweat it. I don’t really recall who preformed but RuggedMan and a couple heads from Wu-Tang were there. I had some work and PESTOE had a Sonics jersey to flip so we figured we’d make some paper while there.

We weren’t sure how we were going to sneak in as security was very high and we watched some kids getting beat pretty bad by the huge Skinhead guards. The festival bracelets were yellow with black print. It just so happens we’d bought beer on the way at Bila, a store that had plastic carry bags with yellow handles. Problem solved. We drew the Hiphop Kemp label and some other stuff on the fake bracelts and stuck them together with chewing gum.

We went to the rear entrance that only let official vehicles in and the guard wasn’t feeling us at all but DELK did his sad face and told the guy “Prosim” (please in Czech) and the guard pitied us and let us in. We found some heads I knew and this young buck Zeshawn was so amazed at our hustle he told us we were “So street smart!”. We partied hard until the Wu heads were supposed to preform.

The show was OK. Nothing special but our homies jazz hiphop band CherryHill opened for the Wu heads and we had a good time. After the show fools started clearing out of the main stage area and heading to smaller tents that went all night long. I found a bag of weed and a pack of cigs on the ground and we sat down and blazed. We decided to do a quick sweep of the main stage after the session before hitting a tent party. DELK found a wallet with around 150 euros in it and gave PESTOE and I both like 40 euros or something an we hit a tent to enjoy the come up.

We slept around the car on foam pads the festival was handing out for people to sit on. Waking up under a blazing sun was nice after the hour or two of actual night we’d slept through. I woke up and saw PESTOE had rolled off his mat palace. He was lying face down in the bushes behind the car, it was pretty clowning. When DELK and I woke him up he had grass stuck to his face, it was mad clowning.

We had found two official bracelets and one of us had peeled some buster sleeping on the ground so day two we had no problem getting in (not that we’d had any problems the previous day). We chilled with the homie Jean Luc (RIP) and got faded, messed with some GoFast I’d brought and just ran around the festival grounds acting a fool.

Sunday morning we packed up all the gear and were ready to smash out. One of the homegirls had offered a ride back to Prague to some other dude. We weren’t too happy about this, having to drive the three hour journey four deep in the back seat. the traffic was hectic leaving the festival. A car in front of us waved us to follow him and we left the main road and the bumper to bumper jam. The car lead us on a half hour high speed drive on dirt back roads, it was closer to a rally track then actual roads. We bypassed an hour of traffic I later found out from a friend who didn’t have such a guide.

About 30 minutes out of Prague we were flagged to pull over by the police for a routine check. I was bugging out because I had a pocketful of work and we were four deep in the backseat. The cops fined us the equivalent of $25 and allowed us to drive away (in the CZ you’re permitted to drive away drunk if you pay the standard $100 fine for DUI). No one had cash so I came out of pocket in order to get out of there. PESTOE, DELK and I blamed the other head for the routine check and fine. I told him he better just shut up and look out the window or he was going to have a big problem with the three of us. He asked to get out of the car as soon as we entered the city limits.

A few days later homegirl that drove paid me the 500CZK ($25) back and told me to give the guy a pass. We did just that though I gave him a hard time when I next saw him and said homegirl hadn’t paid me and he came out 500CZK. DELK, PESTOE and I returned to our chicken and brew breakfasts and catching wreck.

Self-certified Green Harvest

Blood was dripping freely from my hand. All I could think of was my DNA covering the ground. OJ had gotten off but that was before DNA tests were around. I frantically wrapped a one dollar bill around the wound and continued chopping…

The year was 1999. I was in trouble with the judicial system again. I had in a way fled the state of Washington. I’d moved to Hawaii and was living with my dad for the first time in my life.

My dad was a trip. A skinny, goofy, soft, hippy, nonrapping version of E40 or some other rapper who was grinding his way to the top. We lived on the North shore of Kauai, the island I’d left behind over eight years ago. I surfed and blazed the days away as it was a few months before I was to start the 10th grade.

The only cat I really kicked it with was my boy Saint J (that was never what he went by but thats what I’ll call him as he had a biblical name and I don’t want this tale ever coming back to cause trouble for him). I’d crashed at his crib one time and his mom said it was nice that I was over again. We both asked what she meant and she told us we’d been good friends in the late ’80s. Saint J was a year older than me. He didn’t go to school. He grew some of the best weed I’d ever smoked. He always had so much weed I thought it was a trip he didn’t drive a Lexus or something like that.

After hanging out with Saint J for a month or two I learned he didn’t necessarily grow all the weed he always had. He peeled a lot of it. Maybe he peeled all of it. I guess that explains why he didn’t drive a Lex. If heads know you’re a weed ripoff nobody fucks with you. I heard (and I believed it without a doubt) if a Hawaiian grower caught you pulling their plants they’d kill you and bury you where the plants were hidden up in the mountains.

In Hawaii the weed some people grow is so fire it’s hard to believe it is outdoor. Better weed than I’ve ever seen come out of Humboldt Co., better outdoor weed than anywhere I suppose. It’s the PERFECT climate all year round. I joined Saint J on a few missions and was always glad I did as he’d give me a few zips every time. A few times we just took fools cages (a lot of people grew in homemade rabbit cage type things to protect their plants from the wildlife) and left the weed because it was premature or whatever.

One day he asked me if I was down to go on a mission. Not just any mission but one that was in a valley that only the craziest Hawaiians lived in. He explained he knew who’s plants they were and that they weren’t some 380lbs. local’s. I said I was down. Saint J was like an old Indian or a tracker or something like that when it came to spotting people’s concealed trails. He could stop on the road and stare at the jungle for less than a minute and quickly pick up a trail leading to plants.

We were riding our bikes up the valley when he told me he’d seen the trail and we’d hide the bikes in the bushes so that’s exactly what we did. After following the trail (which to me didn’t exist as we were blazing through dense hau bush,lilikoi vines and cats claw) for maybe 20 long minutes he stopped. There it was. Three nice four footers, they were premature but still looked good to pull. Saint J said these were a decoy to throw peelers off making them believe they’d found the end of the trail. We continued up the mountain.

We traversed up the winding ridge and found 24 plants in total all but the first three planted individually with a few hundred feet of jungle in between each other. Saint J said we’d come back in about a month and the yield would have doubled. We carefully retraced our steps, making sure our visit wasn’t noticeable on the trail. We got the bikes out of the bushes and left the valley unnoticed.

A few weeks later Saint J and I were skating from my dads to the hitchhike spot to hitch into town. There was a big hill on the way. I stopped and sat on my board. Saint J came flying by and I yelled he should buttboard it. Towards the bottom I watched him get speed wobbles and take a tumble. He screamed. His bone was stabbing through the skin just below the elbow. He rushed off in an ambulance and the next time I saw him he had a cast on.

A few weeks after Saint J broke his arm I decided it was time to pull the plants we’d found in the valley. I hitchhiked to the valley turn off without Saint J and found the trail he’d discovered. I had a duffel bag with me. After chopping all the buds off about five or six of the plants I took a smoke break. As I blazed my joint the jungle began to come to life with sounds, as a jungle does when undisturbed. The more I smoked the more I listened. The more I listened the more the noises sounded like someone headed up the trail.

Marijuana has been known to induce paranoia and that’s exactly what it induced in me there on that ridge that hot summer day in 1999. I frantically began cutting the buds again. I had spent a good 20 minutes sharpening the school scissors I was using to cut before I’d left my house. I cut my finger deeply and it started bleeding profusely. I was so paranoid I imagined the grower finding my blood and DNA testing it and finding ME and burying me on the very ridge I was ganking the plants from. Nearing panic I wrapped a one dollar bill around my finger and returned to clipping.

As dusk fell I was creeping down the ridge with a duffel bag full of bud on my back. I jumped in the bushes every time I saw headlights until I was out of the valley and had walked quite a ways down the road from the valley turn off. I imagined the grower would pick me up as I stood hitchhiking on the side of the road. That didn’t happen. A tourist picked me up and gave me a ride almost all the way to my dads house. Obviously he could probably smell the weed but he didn’t mention it if he could.

Saint J wasn’t very happy I’d finished the mission without him. But he understood as he was mostly staying home until he got his cast off in a week or two. He was very happy though (he and I both) when the triple beam leveled out at just under five and a half pounds…

“Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk.” -Winston Churchill

On the Vltava

As usual I had drank too much for my own good. It seemed I was at a stage in my life where everything was better after a beer. But it also seemed one was too much and ten was never enough. What do the youngsters say these days? YOLO.

So there I was, drunk as hell wobbling my way from D’s bar towards the bridge over the Vltava. The 10 liter bucket of paint I was carrying wasn’t helping my balance at all whatsoever. As I stumbled over the bridge I thought of the shock I’d give the Czech scene when tomorrow’s dawn brought the nights action to life for the first time. I looked forward to the shame and envy that all of my haters would feel when they realized how they’d slept on such prime property.

I tied the heavy twine I’d got from D to the carry handle of the bucket and lowered it down the 10 to 14 foot drop and sloppily scaled down the rock wall. It was early December and there was snow everywhere and damn was it cold. It took all my concentration to avoid falling in the water as I slithered against the wall on the riverbank.

I shimmied down the wall on the thin ledge of a bank maybe 200 feet until I was in between the two nearest bridges. Across the river from me was a party boat and a large institute of some sorts. I’d chosen the perfect spot for good coverage. Damn it was cold!

I set the bucket down and took my backpack off. Kneeling beside the bucket I took the roller and tray out of my bag along with latex gloves. Sitting on the bucket I smoked a spliff and took in the marvelous view of the beautiful city I’d called home for the last four years. The colorful skyline doubled off the Vltava and became a bit too much for my enjoyment in such a discombobulated state. I threw what remained of my spliff into the water and readied myself.

With everything prepared I went to open the bucket. My fingers were so cold it burned when I tried to peel the lid back. I kept trying to pull the lid off but I was to inebriated and my fingers were beginning to numb. I decided the best way to open the bucket would be to use my knee for leverage and pry the lid off against my weight.

Misjudging the physics I grasped the lid with my hands and instead of pulling up on it while keeping my knee in place I pressed all of my weight down on my knee. My knee went through the thin plastic lid and the white paint being displaced by my leg erupted out of the newly punctured lid. The white wave broke over my crotch, stomach and feet.
SHIT!!!
I figured I better take the loss and finish what I started. I pulled my knee out of the cracked lid and was disappointed to find that nearly all the paint had been spilled.

I had enough paint left to sign my name in small simple letters. When I was finished I threw all my supplies in the river. Luckily I had sweats on under my jeans. I took my jacket and jeans off threw the pants in the water as well. I washed the paint off my hands in the icy water and put my jacket back on.

After somehow managing to climb back up the rock wall and crossing back over the Vltava I was lurching back to D’s bar. It was too dark to see anything I’d just done. About a block away who should arrive but
my friends the law…

They pulled over alongside me and asked me to step to the vehicle. My shoes, the bottom of my pant legs, from waist to half way down my thigh and half my jacket were covered in paint. I don’t believe anyone has EVER been arrested for being too drunk in the Czech Republic, EVER.

The officer on the passenger side asked why I was covered in paint and so highly intoxicated. I explained how I’d helped a friend paint his apartment and had been drinking heavily to make the painting more enjoyable. He then asked why I’d been painting in a down jacket to which I explained we’d finished by painting his balcony and it’s furniture and by then I’d had many drinks and fell over a chair into a roller tray.

The three young cops (it seems all the cops are young in Prague. They also roll three deep in the car) had a laugh and told me not to drink any more and carry on my way. I returned to D’s bar and carried on sipping, smoking and slurring my speech.

“I drink to make other people more interesting.” -Ernest Hemingway

Interviews with God

I’ve heard a saying “There are no atheists in the trenches.” which to me says ALL turn to God when there isn’t much else left in terms of achieving salvation. A few times while incarcerated I spoke to God.
My first subjection to God was when I’d casted myself into the trench by getting in too many fights at Kapaa elementary school.

“For the greater glory of God.”
-Catholicism

My mother hoped I would find God at Saint Catherine’s.
All students needed to wear uniforms. Prayers were said three times daily. Nap time was mandatory. All those things didn’t pose as such a big issue to me but what was the worst was that St.Catherine’s was directly across the street from my former school, Kapaa El.

Even at six years old I felt like a caged animal. Sweating in my Godly uniform, watching my friends only a rocks throw away playing all the games I’d joined in just weeks earlier. I wasn’t sure if God was watching me but I knew the nuns weren’t. I jumped the chain link and rejoined my ungodly friends across the street.

I remember being very interested in and impressed with the large, vibrantly colored glass depictions of a man bleeding from the wounds that covered his body as his head drooped under the weight of his thorny crown. Interests in colorful glass wasn’t enough for God’s servants. At least not the servants I briefly knew at Saint Catherine’s Catholic School…

“Never forgive – Never forget.”
-Judaism

My mother and I left Hawaii with a man I to this day compare to captain Ahab from Herman Melville’s tale of the fierce white whale. A sailor. A man who as a boy of 17 killed people in Vietnam. A beast of a man and a Conservative Jew.

For roughly ten years of my adolescent life Ahab insisted I read from the Torah. While my friends were having fun at the movies, playing vids or flashlight tag on a Friday night I was at home eating chicken and challah while sipping manischewitz in the light of the menorah. A few of my friends made called me Chinky Jew because of the Star of David I wore but it didn’t bother me.

Ahab had serious anger issues. Everything would be totally normal and then he’d just explode out of nowhere. I’m sure it had something to do with the things he’d done in Vietnam. When we lived on the boat I’d climb scared into the rigging and listen to him yelling at my mom. I wanted to kill him for hurting my mom. A boy will learn to take his lashes but I wanted to kill him for hurting my mom. I hated that man. And because of that man I hated Judaism…

“The Love of Christ compels me.”
-Church of Seventh Day Adventists

A few weeks before school started at 7th Grade Orientation a girl I knew was responsible for laminating the ASB cards. I asked her if I could laminate something, she said it was fine and that I could laminate whatever I wanted. I laminated a condom. I collected my homeroom papers and went into the city. Later that morning, with hundreds of students and their parents waiting in line the laminating machine started smoking and the janitor pulled the remainder of the condom out right before the machine lit on fire. School hadn’t even started and I was expelled.

Hoping for some sort of divine intervention my mom enrolled me in a Seventh Day Adventist school. All the kids were sheltered rich brats. I was forced to attend bible studies every day. We even went to some large event in northern Oregon held by the church with thousands of children from all across the country.

One of my classmates fathers was the pastor of the church which was on the second story of the school. He tried to convince my mom to have me baptized. She said it was up to me and that she wouldn’t make me. This pastor sat me down one day and told me of Sin and the Wrath of God and the benefits of baptism and the embracement of the church.
I told him I didn’t believe in God, at least not the same God he was trying to force upon me and he told me if I didn’t receive a baptism I would be asked to leave the school. I told him God hadn’t made him manager of the believers but that God had rested on the seventh day.
I thought this was a very confused man and a very confusing sect of the church…

“Salvation and Maturity.”
-Sufism

My mother has always been a very spiritual woman, not devoting her belief to ONE order or following of THE one God but rather simply believing in divinity itself.
So when she asked me to meet her in Istanbul to tour Turkey with her and a group of Sufis I offered no rejection.
It was nice to see her whatever the cause of us meeting as it’d been a few years.

Over the month spent traveling Turkey we visited several ancient biblical sites. When not on one of our religious excursions I noticed the leaders of the group (who were the higher figures in the Sufi organization which had arranged the tour) to some extent hustling the other people on the tour. All but physically making them buy souvenirs from this shop or that market. I knew that each and every shop was owned by friends and or partners of the groups leaders. I explained to my mom I knew what was going down and took her to better shops and markets with better prices and vaster selections.

I watched one of the leaders (a high ranked holy man) insist a woman return a carpet she had bought. He actually escorted her there and spoke in Turkish with the salesman as they sipped tea and smoked heavy tobacco. I knew this was because at that particular shop the holy man had no deal with the owner and would not receive his cut of the very high price paid for the hand spun wool. I got to know this holy man and he was actually a very good person.
But even good men, even good holy men must eat…

I have never held ones faith against them and know I’ve no right to judge anyone for their choice of beliefs or to judge anyone over anything for that matter. But where I come from (not the place but more the road on which I’ve traveled through life) the ONE real God has many faces. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln Hamilton (though in this day and age those faces are becoming less and less Godly), Jackson, Grant and Franklin.

In God we trust…

Snitch like Coolio

I entered M1 club off Prague’s old town square and saw my squad sitting at the VIP table in the back corner next to the DJ booth. Coolio looked like the past 10 years out of the spotlight (any light for that matter) had been rough on him. Very rough. I grab a Long island Ice tea and join D, Jr. and a couple other homies at the table.

My crew and I were all comparable to Red in Shawshank Redemption, the kind of guys who could get things. That’s the only reason Coolio was sitting with us. He was dropping loot on whatever he could get his hands on. I remember looking into his eyes and thinking he was past gone. His eyes were so glazed he looked like he had cataracts.

It was about that time for another drink. I weaved through the crowded club and ordered another Long island. I made it back to the table at a near sweat. It was thick in the tiny club. D asked me where his drink was. Fuck, I had said I’d grab him a Jack and Coke.

I smoked a cigarette, slammed my drink and headed back to the bar. As I was crossing the dance floor some young buck asked me something I couldn’t understand. I figured it was the loud music and he just wanted a cig or some other petty request. I continued to the bar and got myself another L.I. Icetea and a J and Coke for D.

Back at the table Coolio was acting a fool. Yelling about how he was Coolio like it was ’95 and we were at the Dangerous Minds release party or some shit. I wasn’t even paying attention to his over the hill banter, nor were any of the homies. I saw the young buck heading across the dance floor.

He came up to me and asked me the same thing but this time I could tell it wasn’t the loud music but rather whatever the gibberish language he was speaking that made it impossible for me to understand. I told him he best get on and he said
“Obviously you don’t speak samoan.”
I didn’t even want to waste breath on this clown so I told him to go back to Samoa and kick rocks. He leaned in close and said
“You want me to kick your ass?”

He obviously didn’t know why my people call me Loc or how loose I was. I didn’t have any other option than my typical reaction to such a rude comment. I grabbed his neck and punched him in the face. He fell backwards on the dance floor. I still clutched his throat and followed him down punching him over and over until the bouncers pulled us apart.

D, a bar owner who’s well linked at just about all the spots around town, came over and told the bouncer holding me I didn’t do much but defend myself. They threw the young buck out and were discussing wether to do the same with me. D had my back the whole way through and talked them out of it. Right as they let me go Coolio stands up and yells over the table that it was me and that he saw it all.

We all went back to the VIP table, the bouncers included, and Coolio tells them it was me who started the fight. He was waiving his arms around like a basehead on a jones and babbling about how he was Coolio and how they should throw me out for disrespecting the club HE was in on HIS visit to Prague. The bouncers just walked away…

“I ain’t never crossed a man who didn’t deserve it.” whatever Snitch.

REAL TALK COOLIO IS A SNITCH!!!

A Frenchman named Boris

Roughly seven months after the start of the Iraq war I was sitting on the rocks over looking the somewhat secret beach in the middle of downtown Cascais (a 20 minute train ride outside of Portugal’s capital city Lisboa), putting that good in the air we watched as a small inflatable raft was rowing towards us from a freshly anchored sloop. The name on the side of the grey zodiac was painted in bold black letters GAY CHARGER
The rower said bonjour and some other fancy sounding stuff in French and we all busted up laughing.

As I was the only native English speaker I spoke to Boris the frenchman and learned he was looking to be yet another putting that good in the air which was easily made a reality.
He had sailed from France and was on his way to Brazil by way of Morocco. I introduced myself as RivLoc the American who was playing streetrat in Cascais by way of everywhere I’d ran a muck. We all hung out on the rocks while it was continually put in the air.

I asked him why his boat was named GAY CHARGER…
We all had another long laugh (Boris included). He explained he’d peeled it off some yacht and a solid come up couldn’t be hindered by such a trivial thing as a decal. I thought it made sense though I suggested he renamed it.

We invited him to hit the store with us. We were about eight deep and lurked to MiniPreco, which if directly translated was named MiniPrice. We had even more mini prices in mind so we boosted a few bottles of wine.

Over the next few days Boris joined my portuguese posse and I getting loose around the town. He took my friend Ere and I out onto his boat. We went spear fishing and ate a solid dinner fresh from the sea. Over which I told Boris how I’d sailed from California to Hawaii to Alaska (through hurricane Iniki) and down through the inside passage of Alaska and Canada when I was younger. He was quite impressed.

After a few weeks lurking with the crew, finalizing his boat and provisions for his journey he was ready to be off. He asked me if I wanted to sail to Morocco with him where he’d pick up his girlfriend before crossing the Atlantic to Brazil. I weighed my options. Stay in Cascais with a bunch of other goons or regain my lost but not forgotten sea legs.?.

Off to Africa…

To this day Boris is sailing the world. Though we stay in contact I don’t think I’ll be able to accompany him on any future voyages.

Negro League

Most of the time there wasn’t even anything that would make the minimum 15 minutes needed to check all the shelfs worth it.
Some times fools would stash good kicks in the children’s section among the sizes no one fit. But today was different. I found a fresh pair of Negro League Santa Clara Diablo’s Nike Vandal Hightops. I switched some tags and scored them for $19.99.

I didn’t have a backpack or anything but wasn’t going to carry some Nordstrom’s bag around for the rest of the day so I tied the laces together and hung them around my neck. I caught the number 11 bus up to Capitol hill to meet Malvo. We lurked the hill for awhile before linking with more crew at the Maha.

Malvo’s girl swooped him up and I copped a 40 from QFC and started heading back downtown. I finished my 40 and threw it in the trash. I was pretty loose. As I approached Pine and Bellevue some dude poked his head out of a buildings door and said something I didn’t quite catch. I asked him what was up and he beckoned me to the door.

I could see he was just a basehead so I wasn’t really sweating him but I thought I’d give him the time of day as I was drunk and blunted. He stayed inside the hallway and I could see another basehead behind him, probably his lady. He asked me if I wanted to buy some rock and offered for me to step into the building. I told him thanks but no thanks.

As I turned to continue striking downtown he grabbed at the shoelaces of my new Nikes and tried to strip them off my neck. Instinctually, the same as a pit bull would, I lunged at him and clamped onto his throat with my right hand and hammered his face with my left. I landed maybe four punches square in his face before he was able to free himself and shut the door and ran down the dark hall way.

Through the glass door I could see my hat lying on the floor. I pounded on the door and yelled at the woman basehead to give it to me or I’d break the glass. She could probably see I was serious as she immediately picked my hat up and threw it through the crack she’d opened the door and scurried off into the darkness.

I liked these shoes and the occurrences following my purchase so much I bought a second pair of them the next day. I brought a backpack with me the second time around…

“I’ll beat him so bad he’ll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.”
-Muhammad Ali

Afraid of John Walsh

It must have been 1994. I was in the fourth grade. I’d make sure to be home every day in time for John Walsh’s program America’s most wanted. I’d never pay much attention to the show itself but pay very close attention to the short segment when John Walsh listed individuals most wanted locally. At that time in my life that was Western Washington’s most wanted…

Awhile before this practice became a habit I’d been hanging around downtown and went into a comic store. Apparently all the employees were busy at the time as I found myself alone surrounded by comics, baseball cards, Marvel cards and hockey cards, everything a comic/card shop sells. I noticed a Spiderman hologram card sitting on the counter. I didn’t know anything about Marvel cards but I thought it looked pretty cool and casually slipped it into my pocket, looked around and took my leave.

Being the self enveloped, self-absorbed dumb fourth-grader I was I had a special surprise for the class the next day show and tell.
I specifically recall a friend asking to see the Spiderman VS Venom hologram which I proudly permitted.
Quite a few of my classmates asked me how I’d come across such a rare, valuable card. I explained how happy I’d been to open a normal old 12pack I’d bought at Safeway and !!!SCORE!!! there the card was.

A few days later my friend who I’d showed the card to asked if I’d lifted it from “…..”. I said of course not and he told me there was a sign up offering a reward for info leading to the return of the card. I played it cool but was worried about who else may see this sign…

There was a card convention a few weeks later. I figured it was the best place to get rid of the hologram. I asked a few stands what they’d be willing to pay for such a card and sold it for the highest offer at $110. I felt like I was king of the world. As I was cutting out I was stopped by the owner of the card shop from which the hologram first came into my hands. She asked if I had been selling a specific card, I told her it must have been someone else and left. As soon as I was out of site of the convention hall I ran as fast as I could all the way to my bus stop.

From that day forward for the next few months I was always in front of the TV full of suspense and filled with fear as John Walsh told the entire state my name and showed a picture of me. The police were at my school the next morning.
That wasn’t how it ended but I was always afraid John Walsh would say my name…

That same card is now worth roughly $35 dollars.