Posted by cockeyed on June 19, 2005, at 23:18:36
Friday nite I went to a softball game and met some friends. I bought some cheap cigars and a really cheap plastic bottle of vodka. I'd quit smoking and drinking but...anyway, driving home I remebered something I'd done when I was younger. I was paranoid that some cop might pull me over and I went in a roundabout, stupidly drunk way and got lost in the wilds of suburbia.
In a universe long ago and far away I was a social worker and I loaned a girl we called Tiny forty bucks when she gave me a sob story about needing busfare to go see her family in Maine.
I knew that if I loaned her the money I wouldn't see her again and had no chance of getting it back. I just wanted to be rid of her and hoped to get something off my mind.
Two weeks before that I'd copped forty bucks worth of weed. That was a lot then. I was drunk and woke up a friend of mine to get it. Then I drove around and got lost.
That nite I was supposed to be part of a "polictical action", a protest against the Pig and Amerika. One of the guys in my "study group" told me that I had yet to prove my commitment to the cause. He told me that a number of people were going to make "political statements." He didn't say who, what, or when only that I was assigned to "torching" an aband-doned building on behalf of the people.
I was scared witless. I'd cut my hair, got a job, a V.W., my own apartment, etc. He told me that it was up to me how I did it, but I was to do it that night.
What really bothered me tho was that my old man had been a cop. After he died a friend of his who I'll call Ray got me out of a jam involving, what else, Possession with intent to sell.
I used to meet Ray at one of the joints where he and my old man would hoist a few. A neighborhood place that was also a restaurant and not a cop hang out. We'd shoot the breeze about the old man and Ray would pick up the tab for all the Piels and Fleischman's, the old man's choice.
Almost as a joke, Ray would always remind me to keep my eyes and ears open and let him know if any of my "crazy hippy" friends might try anything. He had a way of saying it, it's hard to explain. A hard way. And he'd remind me how proud my old man would've been if he'd seen how I'd cleaned up my act and now worked for the city and had a real good job. And he'd remind me casually that he couldn't put a good word in for me again if I'd , "you know, screw up."
So here I am at a softball game, getting loaded on cheap and dizzy from the cigars and I remembered that once-upon a time nite and my "political action"
As an incendiary I chose pot and for fuel my first experience with hundred proof vodka. Then I drove around until I puked, and then, completely paranoid, tossed the dope out the car window. What strikes me now is that I threw the stuff away right near a park where I'd once played little league baseball.
When I finally got back to my apartment I passed out and called in sick the next day.
I lived in dread for the next couple of weeks. My political action days, my meetings with the "study group" were suspended. The next time I saw Ray he told me he'd met a divorcee he really liked. And tho he'd been married twice before he thought that this one was a keeper. She loved the New York Mets, loved heading out to Shea stadium and I might not be seeing too much of him for a while.
Once in a while he'd call and say he was thinking of me and my old man and would enjoy hoisting a few again but his time was not his own anymore. My "crazy hippie" friends seemed to forget all about me.
That year, 1969, the Mets won the National League pennant and the World Series. And I spent an awful lot of time wondering if my doorbell might ring some nite or if some one looked at me in a way I thought "funny", if that nite when I did nothing would come back to haunt me.
And it did. At a softball game in the 'burbs, courtesy of cheap cigars and cheap vodka. Yeah, and Tiny and my forty bucks. Cockeyed.
poster:cockeyed
thread:515796
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20050513/msgs/515796.html