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kicked in. Fuck. Okay, they just need to run another song through the system and then it will be all over. No such luck. Immediately after the song ended another one fired up. This song sounded familiar. It was the same song that was just played, which, now that I thought about it, was also the first song that was played. This guy is playing the same song over and over, I thought. He must really be trying to ring out the EQ on this new system. After the same song played about five more times I realized something that I think I knew all along but didn’t want to admit: this wasn’t a guy playing the same song over and over again, this was a live band practicing the same song over and over again. Outside. At 2:00 in the morning. On a fucking weeknight. My only guess as to why this was happening was that all of these guys work at different times so the only chance that all of them had to get together at the same time was really late at night. And I could just hear one of the guys in the band now, “Oh, we can practice at my place but my wife and kids will be sleeping so we have to do it outside.” Thanks a lot guys. Brilliant. ARSON OR DIRTY DIAPERS? One day as I pulled my car into my designated parking space (which was right next to the wall that seemed to lean more and more toward my car everyday) I noticed a waft of smoke pass by me. I got out of the car thinking that something under my hood was smoking (I had been having radiator problems at the time). As I opened the hood, another cloud of smoke passed by. I knew that it wasn’t coming from my car but I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. On the other side of the leaning wall was the building’s dumpster. And now it was on fire. Not the dumpster itself, but the contents. I looked around to see if anyone else was there to take care of it – I have to admit that I didn’t want to deal with it; I figured that I could pass it on to someone else if that person were around. No such luck. I came up with the brilliant plan to fill the bucket that I kept underneath my bathroom sink to catch the water that leaked from the drain pipe and dump it on the fire. I ran up to old number nine and filled the bucket (that probably held no more than two gallons). After dumping its contents on the fire (which at this point was raging a good three feet above the rim of the dumpster) I quickly realized that it would take me hundreds of trips to get this thing put out. Now the dumpster was making loud popping sounds as the metal was buckling from the heat. Finally, someone else came around. I held up my bucket and shrugged my shoulders in kind of an I-don’t-know-what-to-do-aboutthis-raging-fire kind of way. He raised up his index finger to tell me to hang on for a second. He came back with a length of hose that was no longer than twelve feet. I knew that this thing would not reach the dumpster from where the faucet was and moving the dumpster closer to the faucet was out of the question. So, I quickly screwed the hose onto the faucet, cranked it up as high as it would go, pressed my thumb on the end to allow maximum pressure and held my arm at 60 degrees to arch the stream into the dumpster. After about five minutes a small crowd had formed. After ten minutes I knew that my arms were about to give out. The stream of water that I had been shooting into the dumpster wasn’t putting much of a dent into the flame. By this time, I had help. Two guys had started dumping in buckets full of water. After fifteen minutes two others got the idea to push the dumpster closer using towels as industrial sized potholders so they wouldn’t burn themselves. When the dumpster was close enough for the hose to be placed inside I handed it over to a kid who was standing next to me and retired. I knew that everything was under control at that point. For the rest of the time that I lived in that building I would see that dumpster that was scarred black on the outside and smile. Much later a friend told me that sometimes, on hot days, dirty diapers will catch on fire in outdoor dumpsters. I’m not sure that I believe that, but it sounds pretty good. WHERE’S MY UNITY? No one ever really came over to that apartment. I honestly think that I have too many honky friends who see a neighborhood like that and immediately think that it’s a bad place. I don’t know if it’s just plain old racism seeing a 99% Mexican population and running for the hills or if the culture shock was just too much. I admit that I was a bit shocked for the first week that I lived there and then I realized that this neighborhood was as real as it gets. I had never in my life seen a neighborhood band together the way that they did on that street. I’ve lived in houses with as many as eight roommates and lived in so- called punk communities but nothing could ever compare to the sense of community that I felt on that street. Everyone was invited to the barbecue. I never saw or even heard of a crime being committed (something that I can’t say about ANY other neighborhood I’ve lived in in my whole life). I rarely ever locked my door and even if I did you could easily enter through the kitchen window that didn’t lock. Sometimes I even left my keys in my car. I wasn’t the only white person on the street. In the last few months that I was living there, two sisters moved into one of the apartments in my building. They hated it. Sometimes they would complain to me about how shitty the neighborhood was and how the building wasn’t well kept. I’m not your white shoulder to cry on. I like this place. I finally left that apartment to move into a house with roommates so I could lower my expenses. When I took a job at a pizza parlor a few years later there was a sign that listed a few neighborhoods under the heading: Do Not Deliver. On that list was the 1300 block of 227th Street. Fuckin’ honkys. –Tito Hatemyjob31@aol.com
AYN IMPERATO AYN IMPERATO When I lived in San Francisco, I worked for a while as a personal assistant. It was pretty decent pay and, if nothing else, every day was never the same as the next. The position consisted mostly of performing basic and often meaningless tasks – everything from paying bills and answering email to ordering a staggering number of pain pills in obscene strengths from online websites. The lady I worked for was eccentric, festive and she liked to drink. The apartment I worked at had a panoramic view of the Bay Bridge, Coit Tower, The Transamerica building and Treasure Island. Looking out each window was like watching a real-life San Francisco postcard in motion. Giant cargo ships would sail by and glide under the bridge – you could see the state of the local economy by how many ships would or wouldn’t sail by that week. Often my job was to arrange flowers in the kitchen or prepare food while drinking rum and cokes and watching the ships pass outside the window. Yes, I said rum and cokes. I was a stand-in for an employee. And that’s why I stayed. Mostly, it was easy. Sometimes I had to make little crafts that she read about in magazines and wanted to try, but not really do the work herself. I would just sit there at the table and make little napkin rings out of twigs and dried leaves for Thanksgiving or string cranberries and bay leaves for the fireplace mantle. I was a punk rock Martha Stewart in a little apron and a studded pyramid belt. I gained many new, unusable skills. I still can’t cook to save my soul but, damn it, can I make a mean Christmas garland. One day I had to arrange these moss balls in a giant Roman urn on the porch. What is a moss ball you ask? I’m still not sure I know. They’re round. 38 They’re green. They’re covered with moss. I had to arrange them in this gigantor cream-colored ceramic pot. I sat there looking at them. How does a person arrange these… these giant green balls? “Make them look like food for the gods!” she shouted from inside. I paused and stared. Food for the Gods. Moss balls. I’m just not sure why ancient supernatural deities would choose algae-covered spheres as their dinner. I’m not even sure they would eat at all, being unable to, I don’t know, die and all. But what do I know? It’s not my job to know. I just moved them around and let the moss balls do the talking. If nothing else I have determined one thing. Rich people are weird. My boss is different than 90803 She just gave it to me. Trusted me openly, maybe blindly, to take all her secrets and take good care of her life. And it’s because she trusted and respected me, that I did. Moss Balls KAT JETSON AND GOOSE most in that she knows she is weird. She revels in it. I think it was even my job to confirm this weirdness. I think there is something in all that Fendi perfume and idle time that muddles and distorts a person’s perception. My boss rounds the corner. “Would you see if you can find my Marabou slides?” I look up. She’s wearing an orange facemask and a leopard caftan. She continues in all seriousness, “I kicked them behind the dresser a few days ago. And when you find them I can put them on, kick them off again and make us all vodka gimlets!” “Uh, yeah,” I nod, still working on the urn. “Gimlets. Yeah.” “Hey, when you’re done would you also look online and see if you can dig up some singing champagne flutes? They would be so perfect for my party next week. But drop them from the belly of the plane! I need them fast!” “Singing champagne flutes. Right.” And she bursts into laughter. I am so cynical she thinks it’s a riot. It’s like our running joke. I don’t think anyone has ever been so blunt or honest with her in her life. I pause with a ball in my hand. “I’ll just put those overdue tax bills on my desk aside and look for singing flutes.” “Forget taxes,” she cries. “Singing flutes!” She cackles and heads back down the hall to her room. Earlier in the week my job for the day was to track down a topiary plant for her hallway – a specific one with the right amount of tiers, the right height, etc. I spent half the day tracking just the right one down, then picked it up and brought it up to her apartment. She placed it in her main hallway where we passed by it every day. At first, everything was fine. But after a day or so, a spider web began to form. At first it was just a few white, light hairs on the upper tier. Then it spread, slowly, into a multi-layered web-nest, spanning all three tiers of the plant. My boss noticed it then – I mean you couldn’t miss it – it was like arachnophobia in her entryway, and she began to holler, “That web! Ahhh! The web!” She locked herself in the bedroom and would barely leave, except to hurry to the kitchen to eat. I told her I would get rid of it, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She simply couldn’t deal. “The spider,” she said, “wherever it is, will get loose in the house. Just leave it alone!” Then the spider came out. It was a monstrous spider, nearly an inch and a half long without the legs. When you walked by it would scurry towards your end of the web, prompted by, I can only guess, vibrations from feet passing on the wood floor. My boss would just cry out every time she passed, “Aaugh! The web!” and the spider would scurry towards her. And even
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