B-of-Job Rev: Bk II Chapters 14 & 15

Chapter 14. The Art of Couch Surfing
or, How to Live in Santa Barbara 
on Less than a Dollar a Day

The Art of Couch-Surfing requires having a home base. Having a home base can consist of a bar where I tipped the bartender reasonably well when times were good, paid my bar-tab in a timely manner and, always and under all circumstance, remembered the two cardinal rules of behavior in a bar:

Rule #1; never piss-off the bartender.

Rule#2; never forget rule #1.

I had an instinct to know and understand the way these things work. I also understood what is surprisingly blind to most who find themselves in this situation. My first principle was to keep my camp as though I was a Boy Scout in the woods.

The Rules:

1. Remember that you are a guest and do all you can to be a most welcome one. Never expect to be entitled to anything; you are a guest after all.

2. Bring something to the occupants like a twelve pack of beer, a line of coke, a joint or even a bag of chips if that’s all you can get.

3. Do the dishes… hell, the laundry too (it is an opportunity to do your own while you are at it).

4. Volunteer to be the designated driver. Be the gofer for groceries and other errands.

5. Bring your own douche bag with razor, tooth brush soap and shampoo. Never use your host’s personal hygiene items. Your hosts resent running out of shampoo before all else.

6. Clean up your camp like a good Boy Scout. Even if you don’t smoke, empty the ashtrays and dump the beer cans on the way out in the trash before you move on. Never allow yourself to sleep later than your host. Get up and out before anyone else in the household.

7. Never wear out your welcome. Rotate, Rotate, Rotate: timely rotation is crucial.

I used the bar as my office. I ran errands for the bartenders for a few free drinks but, more importantly, to keep my bar stool without having to buy drinks. I found work here and there, picked up day labor jobs and cultivated future couches. It was my diligence in doing these things that kept me out of the bushes most of the time. The Rescue Mission and Salvation Army were the only year-round crashes in those days and the National Guard Armory was open to the homeless when the temps dropped in the winter months.

I did try to get in a sober-living home, New House Two.  I was asked; “Are you willing to go to any lengths to stay sober?”

Not realizing that my answer would be a standard qualifying one, and thinking honesty would get me a break, I answered, “Hey now, my friend, I don’t have a drinking problem. I might have a few after work, or whatever, but I promise not to drink if you let me in.”

I was not given a bed. 

At one time or another I broke every one of the Seven Rules of the Art of Couch Surfing and still got by okay. Yet, I knew it was impossible to go hungry, without shelter, or without a drink, in Santa Barbara as long as I paid attention to the Advanced Art of Couch Surfing, and cultivated and applied the rules even in a half-hazard manner.

Chapter 15. An Angelo of GAWD (1991) 

With Rubber Bumpers 

and an MG

I did a gig at Pal’s as bar-back/doorman checking I.D.’s and acting as a laid-back quasi-bouncer. I was offered a bar tending job but I didn’t want the responsibility. Bar-back wasn’t miserable work at all and it gave me access to enough beer to keep the edge off the day. Customers or friends sometimes bought a drink for me now and then to give me that edge. The pay was minimum wage but the bartender cut me a little off the top from her tips. It was a holding pattern because having a job of any kind more than that required that I have an address and telephone number other than Pal’s.

I eventually tired of barely scraping by. I shoved my situation up to the Cosmos in the form of a prayer. I wrote it down in my journal… date and time… to see how long it took to be answered if there was anyone was up-there that cared;

"C’mon, O Great Whazoo, I need a break here." I pled, Give me some direction and I’ll take it."

It was at this time something inexplicable happened that I was unable to explain. It had to be the work of the Hand of Gawd. These Whazoo moments are rare and usually come out of the blue. It’s like the old adage that says: “When the student is ready the teacher arrives.”

The next day, while I was holding on to my bar-stool, Claire slid a beer over to me, “This one is on the guy down there.” She leaned over the bar to whisper, “Lucky he calls himself.  Whew, he stinks.”

That name sounded familiar. The stink did too but something always fogged my memory whenever he made an appearance. I turned to thank Lucky. He’d slipped out the door just as an old acquaintance, Laura, (a former Vegas show-girl blackjack dealer, forty-ish, transgender, boob-job, long legs and all), entered the bar not knowing anything of my situation. I hadn’t seen her since before leaving Santa Monica for Nicaragua.

“Max, Myra said you might be in Santa Barbara.”

I had to think a minute to remember where I knew her from. I got off my stool regardless for a Southern California hug and cheek-kiss before it came to me, “Laura? The Beach Committee.”

“Sure, you read my Tarot. You were spot on.” She took the stool next to me. “I heard all about you… You’re famous for yelling at a statue.”

“Yeh, it’s my claim to fame lately. All the way to Santa Monica?”

“I was visiting an old friend, John, at his place. The bartender was telling this story about a guy he knew named Max that did some shit at a statue or something. I said I knew a Max that lives somewhere in town. He told me Max hangs out here.”

Claire piped in, “This is his office. Do you want anything to drink?”

“Sure, I’ll have what you’re havin’.  What is that?”

“It’s one I made up. I call it a Woo-Woo. After you drink one, you have to shout, woo-woo!”

“I’ll have one of those and one for Max too.”

I laughed one of the first laughs I’d had for some time. Laura was sexy the way a real good looking tranny can be, “Oh, Laura, if only you had the right plumbing.”

She smiled seductively, “Say, Max, are you looking for a place?”

“Well, lookin’… but I have to make more money than I am making here to afford one in this town.” 

Laura was almost a woman and I was halfway hoping she’d let me crash wherever she was staying. Really, I considered having sex with her if she didn’t have a dick. Or maybe she might know of a job that would pay enough to rent a flop.

“You know John, of John's Jon, don’t you?”

“Yeh, but not very well.” Hell, I knew every bar owner in town. In fact, my list of bar owners and bartenders were the only phone numbers I kept in my head. That was what enabled me to get out of jail on O.R. the last time. However, John wasn’t one of them on that list.

“You know his house on Anacapa Street?”

“Yeh? I sure do.” “

“I figured you’d know Alex.”

“Yeh, sure do. Alex, the distinguished looking gangster. He was always a gentleman. I’d hauled him around town a lot in my cab. I know the place. John’s his landlord?”

“You know; Alex is doin’ time in Texas. His apartment’s four-hundred a month and one in back of his place is available too… more of a shack than anything… it ain’t much but it’s cheaper.”

“How cheap? I haven’t much.”

“I think $180 a month … or so.”

“Shit, my VA check almost covers that,” the light turned on. I hadn’t a break like this in a long time.

“Well, let’s go up there. I’ll introduce you to John.”

The Claire, Laura, and I downed our drinks and shouted in unison, “Woo-Woo!”

It was settled. We checked out the place. It was small. A shared bathroom and shower. The kitchen amounted to a fridge and sink with one small cupboard at one end of the place and room for a dresser, couch or bed at the other. There was also a closet big enough for a single sized bed and some room for hanging clothes. The place smelled of mildew and we found a petrified rat when we inspected the closet but it was a palace if compared to the streets.

A handshake was all that men like John required for a lease and security check. Laura dropped me off at my new digs and sped off into the night. I never saw her around town since then to thank her . Truly, she was an Angel, the Hand of Gawd, to me.

Up to this point in my life I’d made plenty mistakes, errors of judgment, and downright crimes… misdemeanors and felonies… but I’d always acknowledged something more powerful than anything my imagination could conjure was available to me. It seemed at times arbitrary, fickle, and at times, cruel. But the timing was always perfect and it was always there when I needed it. I didn’t like to call it God because the word God had been sentimentalized to the point where it had become meaningless. I didn’t know what to call it: The Great Whazoo, the Hand of Gawd, or what… maybe just, Hey You! My whole life seemed to be constructed around this minimal faith and some people noticed it.

Marley, the wife of Denny, the owner of Pal’s, commented once while I was washing glasses behind the bar, “Max, there’s something special about you. I don’t know what it is but… well, it’s easy to see that you aren’t just another what… bum? … like you know something others don't.”

I knew I was a low level charmer. I tried not to manipulate people… if so, I did in the least noticeable way. Instincts told me I was somehow protected by an aura and did feel deeply that I knew something very few others did.

She continued, “People, at least I do, know you’re a good man when they meet you.”

I wondered if she was trying to score on me. Then she added something that poked my pride, “But something’s missing, Max. My God, you would be either rich or a saint if you weren’t such a fuck-up!” Then she smiled a gorgeous Marley smile, “Or, maybe you’re on your way to sainthood because you are such a fuck-up.”

One way or another, it didn’t matter to me. I recalled that Celeste once noted, long before that day, that something was missing: “Max, I wish I had your luck. You’re the luckiest man on earth, but, given a chance, you always turn that luck to shit.”

“I don’t know what it is, but it ain’t luck.” Examples of my luck go back… crimes and misdemeanors, errors of judgment consciously and unconsciously perpetrated… yet I always walked away seemingly unscathed.

I had a sign that a change of fortune appeared before my eyes. I saw my new place as a manifestation of that fortune and I was determined to hold on to it no matter what. It was my castle and it had become a symbol of cosmic grace. I was generous with my new fortune too. If another addict or drunk needed a place to crash, I had a couch for them out of gratitude for escaping the disaster I’d been through. I was soon to find out that most drunks didn’t know the Art of Couch Surfing nor did they care one way or the other for learning it. On more than one occasion I had to throw one out after the sot had lodged himself on the couch like a barnacle. Most often they remembered a part of one of the principle rules of the Art of Couch Surfing but forgot the rest. They would bring a taste of tar, a twelve pack of beer, a sandwich and chips etc. as an offering. That was their share of the rent as far as they were concerned and then they would attempt to become cohabitants… move in with bags. Some even tried to make it their base to sell drugs and, for all practical purposes, take over the place.

Finally, I put my foot down. I put both feet down on one of them to get him out the door. I had to throw the guy’s bags out onto the gravel driveway and pry his hands off the door jambs. Putting one foot on the poor guy’s chest, and pushing him out the door, was all I could do to get rid of him. After that incident I made a house rule. No more drunks or addicts unless they were female. Uh-huh, females, as long as they put out something.

Oh, yes, there would be no trouble there!

Book of Job Revisited - Book II - Chapter 13. Juan Carlos' Revenge

There’s a time when the darkest hour gets darker and when nothing so bad as the worst gets worse. I didn’t know what it was that was happening at the time, however, n looking back it seems that I was being towed along by a thread towards something indefinable. Call it destiny if you like; but, from the time of the divorce, Vacaville and the concussion, Myra in Santa Monica, Kuka in Nicaragua, Nadya, the miasma of Santa Barbara, and now to the events to follow, it felt more like I was being pulled along by serendipity rather than by any pre-ordained noose. I was offered choices where each choice led to a series of consequences ever evolving into a strange progression. Is that destiny? I can't call it that.

A few days after that ride, about a month after the bloody Tien an Men Square massacre, around July 4th of ’89, I flipped. Those kids in China camping out under Mao’s nose: … the liberty statue… the hope against a murderous oppression…, it was all a sore reminder of the emptiness of my life after Nicaragua. The superficial posturing of rebellion by our clubbing generation on State Street became an obscene display of privilege. In lieu of cries for freedom, they cry, “Where’s the party!” and rioting in Isla Vista for more beer. Just that one lone protester, standing off a line of tanks, waving his shirt…! I could almost hear that thin thread my sanity dangled from…snap!

It was a typical Saturday morning for me and, as I had Saturday nights off. I spent the first half of the day in Pal’s after my shift ended at six-thirty A.M. Claire was the barkeep on Saturdays and her shift started at ten so I already had a good load going by then. It was the first of the month, I had a VA check, the week’s earnings, and a few bindles of cocaine (cocaine was the common graveyard tip for some drivers back in the eighties) and I had Saturday nights off. I was in that place where alcohol oblivion was staved off by a line here and there of coke and stepping out back for a few tokes of pot. Next thing I knew it was getting dark and my best intentions were to head home and perhaps stop off for chorizo con huevos at the old Casa Blanca down on the four-hundred block of State Street.

Across the street from Pal’s, in the middle of De La Guerra Plaza, a statue of the 18th century king of Spain, Juan Carlos, was mounted over a fountain pedestal turned open-air public urinal by the indigent. The bronze figure of the ole-bewigged-huge-schnozzled monarch presided daily into the night over a rag-tag assortment of vagrants, street level dealers, and pan-handlers. The statue became a tribute to improvised-assemblage-folk-art as people took advantage of the absurdity of the poor king’s foppish posture to adorn it with such things as underwear or a toilet plunger for a crown and white-faced make-up, et al: all of which changed daily. The city crews removed the work the next morning, making way for a whole new display to be improvised the next night.

I was tanked up and when I was tanked up I never knew what was going to happen next. Sometimes I merely wove my way home down State Street and crashed. Other times it was as though I’d developed Tourette’s syndrome as I made my way to the Virginia Hotel. I let out whatever peeve was bugging me at that moment to shocked, and frightened, tourists. This time it was the panhandlers that became the focus of my ire. I crossed the street to where we were hanging out. One scruffy character demanded spare change as I approached.

“What? You tell me what spare change is and I’ll think about it.”

I was counter-challenged with the usual panhandler nonsense, “You got plenty, part with some of it,” the wimpy creep demanded.

“It just so happens that I do have plenty…” I pulled out a wad of twenties and c-notes and peeled one off, dangling it in front the overly aggressive panhandler. The guy’s eyes lit up as he grabbed for it. Fooling with him at first, I deftly snatched it away and surprised myself by tossing it to the hangers-on sitting on a bench at the side of the square. Now everyone was paying attention. I had an audience now and began a rant.

“What is a statue of a murderous monarch doing in a prominent place on a street called State?” I shouted, needing no megaphone. The onlookers were puzzled. I was no longer impotent Max that sat in the Judge’s chamber; I was The Max. A chord… the delicate chord that bound my sanity… that chord that reined in the wild beast and kept me pinned to a peg… the tamed elephant had gone rogue… I had begun what I would finish… I tried all my adult life to live right but that chord had been stretched to the breaking point!

This noise raised a few jeers and a crowd started to gather hoping I’d either heave a few more bills or an opportunity would arise to take from me the wad I’d displayed.

“Why do you panhandle and play games begging spare change and dealing street drugs?” I continued, “This town is wealthy enough… why don’t you just take some it from those who have more than they need?” I became transformed into an old-fashioned rebel, haranguing the unwashed masses. I was imbued with the spirit of Jesus serving up a revolutionary version of the Sermon on the Mount. I was an anointed Thomas Paine spittin’ on the Brits, Saint Paul the Rabble Rouser at the Areopagus on Mars Hill. I was on fire with the not so holy spirit of Joe Hill, rallying the Wobblies: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth… six feet of it!” and this was my soapbox.

“That king,” I pointed at the statue, “was ordained by a Christian Pope to reign over and rip-off the lands of a thousand-year old civilization … yes, Chumash slave labor built the Santa Barbara Mission,” I harangued, “and you sit here on stolen ground pleading for that, which by the grace of a Christian God you are granted, a nickel or two! I say, ‘Fuck Jesus and fuck his bloody king too!’”

I was insane with virtue. I tossed the rest of my wad… about five-hundred bucks into the crowd… shouting out as loud as I could; “Jesus Christ did not die for my sins. He died because pigs like Juan Carlos could not abide him. Adding insult to injury, they use Christ’s name to bestow regal powers on a fop like this usurper! If you had any balls at all you wouldn’t be sitting here! You would be burglarizing those houses up there in the hills above us.”

One of the late coming bystanders, who’d missed out on the cash bonanza, called out from the crowd, “Why don’t you shut the fuck up and throw us some more money!”

The crowd laughed as the guy came at me swinging but I wasn’t going to back down. Shit… I recognized it was the Fedora Jerk! Did the prick’s trust-fund run out? What was a Montecito boy doing here? Or was he just there as a tourist buying drugs? I was untouched by him and, in spite of my boozed-up state, I landed a few good blows before we were interrupted by pepper-spray.

A bicycle cop had pulled up and saw what was happening. Clearly it was a disturbance that could not be tolerated on State Street. The cop had seen the fists fly… he called for back-up and cuffed both of us.

I came to my senses as soon as my arms were pinned behind and the handcuffs clicked on my wrist. I had two bindles of coke in my shirt pocket. How in the Hell am I going to get rid of this cocaine? Longingly, looking down into my shirt pocket, I felt frustration at my powerlessness when the hammer came down. My last hope was that the cop would somehow miss the two bindles. But, despite my wishes, the coke in the aforementioned shirt pocket were found when I was given a thorough pat-down and before being gently tucked into the newly arrived and waiting squad car.

“Now, what have we here?” says the bike cop.

“Wha…? I don’t know. It wasn’t there before. Someone must’ve slipped it in my pocket when I wasn’t looking. Hey, maybe that ‘A-hole’ planted it on me!” I nodded towards the Fedora. I was thinking fast but knew it wasn’t even a good lie. I’d seen enough on the reality show, Cops, to know a good excuse from a bad one and this one was very weak. But hell, I tried nonetheless to convince the cop that the Fedora had somehow planted the dope in my pocket while we scuffled. I had no shame at this point. I’d considered myself before then to be honest to a fault…. and never a snitch. One time I’d done three months because I wouldn’t turn state’s evidence. It was astonishing how hard and futilely I tried to push that lie.

My last thoughts were bleak: I’m no different than the toothless trailer-trash trying to lie their way out of a bust on those damned TV shows. Adding insult to injury I swore ole Juan Carlos was grinning down at me from my pedestal like the Cheshire Cat as we pulled away from the curb.

“Okay, you win.” I said under my breath from the cold plastic back seat of the squad car.

While getting booked into County jail, the sergeant asked twice; “Do you consider yourself a danger to yourself or others tonight, Mr. McGee?”

Thinking I would get another cell other than that damned stinking drunk-tank and prevent further confrontation with the Fedora, who had gone in cuffs before me, I answered, “Yeh, I am.”

“Let me ask you one more time,” the Sergeant impatiently asked again, “and answer so that I can hear you. Do you present a danger to yourself, or others, Mr. McGee?”

“Sir, Yes, Sir!” I answered boot-camp style.

Three officers appeared out of the vapor: one behind me and one on each side. Before I could flinch, I was being damned near carried to the Rubber-Room by my escorts.

Once in the cell I was ordered to drop to my knees. This was not so easy to do in cuffs; but, before I’d even bent a knee in compliance, my feet were kicked out from under by an officer from behind. I was driven face down to the concrete floor by the officers on each side, holding my arms as my pants were yanked off with very few deft moves on the part of the corrections officers. I had to admire the efficiency of the choreography. I hadn’t seen that move on Cops. They were always exceptionally polite in front of cameras.

The Rubber-Room had a bench, no toilet and the temperature was set so that only the most insane would want to stay in that room in underwear for more than ten minutes no matter how drunk. I passed time shivering that way.

The main thing was to get through the night. I was still insanely drunk but the antifreeze of Jack Daniel’s began to wear off and did no good. I tried exercising, doing jumping jacks, push-ups and pretending I was Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now flying around the cell in a sad imitation of his drunk kung-fu. Sweat did nothing to keep me warm but reactivated the pepper spray. My eyes burned. When the nurse came by to check on me I got some water on my face and some valium to take the edge off the anticipated hang-over. After I got the valium, I accused the nurse of being a low-level Dr. Mengele’s: as though I was an innocent, persecuted by fascist oppression.

The night passed… the day began. I didn’t know how long I’d been in the cell. I was finally given some Jail-House pajamas and led to another cell where a bullet-proof-window with one of those grilled speaker holes separated me from a young woman whose decision would determine whether I would be let out on my own recognizance (O.R.) or rot in jail until the day of my arraignment hearing. They had to reduce the felony drug possession charges down to a misdemeanor if I was going to get out that day. To my surprise, they did.

The belligerence I came into the jail with had evaporated by the time I was photographed and finger-printed on the way out. I felt contrite to the officer that led me through the process. “Oh man,” I said to her. Memories of the night before percolated up through the layers of booze and coke towards a bubble of consciousness and admitted, “What a mess I made of things.”

She was sympathetic and assured me it would turn out alright.

Even though I’d been processed for release in the afternoon, I wasn’t let out until after three AM. No buses run at that time and I didn’t have a quarter to call Jimbo to get me downtown from the jail. I had to hike the five miles home.

The city automatically pulled cab licenses after drug busts. Now I no longer had a job. I’d tossed out all my cash to Juan Carlos and, being unable to pay rent, I was going to be homeless too. I stayed at the hotel as long as I could sneak past Lucas, the desk clerk, or make up excuses if he caught me. Lucas was like a spider that caught almost anyone that touched his invisible web. When I finally got to my arraignment hearing I just pled guilty and was sentenced to time served, ordered to attend Zona Seca drug abuse classes that I had no money to pay for now that I was unemployed, and given three years’ probation.

The Book of Job Revisited - Book II - Chapter 12. Tell Us a Story

"At least you will fucking get to
see your Ariel again!"

“Hey Dawg, I bet you have some good stories.” 

Oh, shit... The three of them; the usual giddy UCSB geeks trying too hard to be hip, going into town from I.V., and they want a story. Any other time I might have obliged them but not that night.

“Nothing you’d want to hear.”

“Try us, Dawg.” demanded the white, blond haired, Orange County, master-race looking pretender.

How I hated it when these white college boys try to talk ghetto, “Naw…”

“C’mon, any sex going down in the back seat… any B-J’s… y’know… Dawg… hookers, biotches?” the boy was drooling for a sordid tale.

“You really want to hear my favorite… My best? Naw, you don’t have the stomach for it.” I liked DMZ, NWA, and all that Hip-Hop shit but I cranked up some Robert Johnson to tune them out…

Every time I’m walkin’

down the streets

Some pretty mama starts breakin’

down with me

Stop breakin’ down

Yes, stop breakin’ down

The stuff I got’ll bust your brains out, baby

Hoo-hoo, it’ll make you lose your mind…

My favorite… my Best Cabbie Story was from the previous night, if I would have, could have, told it like this:

Crushed, I returned to my room and tried to sleep before going to work. That night I got in my cab and drove around avoiding calls and flags. I’d picked up only a few fares since the shift started and it was already about three A.M. A call came over the radio: “89, Max.”

I picked up the mic and answered the call, “Eight-Nine.”

Dispatch gave me an address on the Mesa. “Work out something, Eight-Nine; I didn’t give her a quote.”

You never know when you get a call like that: a quote? It could be a long ride. That is what I needed too… as long as the fare doesn’t want to jabber all the way.

A young woman approached my cab dressed Goth; all black gear, Doc Martins, ripped-fishnet stockings, straight black hair with bangs framing a whiter than white face that accented the makeup running from her deep brown eyes across pasty cheeks to her cupid bow lips coated with glossy black lipstick. 

Hmmm, crying… sketchy… volatile, things could change in an instant. I thought: A break-up? A drunk boyfriend? Sometimes rides like this end a block away when the little honey changes her mind and goes back to the turd she'd just escaped.

“How… how much… would it cost to… cost to take me to Newport Beach…?” Between sobs her words had to work their way out her throat through her grief. Something bad had happened.

“The meter would be about One-Eighty….” Back then one-eighty would have paid my lease on the cab, my room for one night, and part of my bar tab.

“One-eighty?” She cried… it was a heart rending cry. Not the kind of cry that is the result of a fight with a boyfriend or even the death of a pet dog. I recognized that this was the cry of a deep-felt grief that had no bottom.

“Hey, don’t worry ... the meter ain’t set in stone. How much are you able to …?”

“I only have ninety dollars” she turned away… resigned and not even begging for a break.

“Hey, come on and jump in… it’s okay, I’ll get you there.” 

Hell, I’d thrown in the towel for the night anyway… hadn’t made any money and had already counted that night a loss. Ninety bucks would cover about my lease but not the gas… what the hell. Besides, I needed that long, dead-head, solo ride back… it was a godsend.

She got in the back seat and curled up. Every few minutes a heart wrenching, body convulsing, sob would cut through the dark as the flashing of passing lights splashed over her tiny body. She was an adorable young girl about twenty or so but my mind wasn’t there at all. I wondered, curious, what had torn her up? It must be something horrible. She hadn’t said a word since the ride started…. nothing but muted sobs. Dare I ask? 

Those sobs evoked a lump in my throat as I drove past all the Carpentaria exits. It was dark enough, along that stretch of 101, between Carp and Ventura, for almost thirty miles. It felt okay to cry with her: She wouldn’t see me. The tears flowed. I’d been holding it in. Two years of trying in vain. I just fuckin’ let it go and quietly, intimately, wept with her… I was holding her in my mind’s arms and inside-crying with her.

We must have been past Ventura, near Camarillo, before my tears caught her attention… well, caught it enough for her to ask, “Are you crying?”

I didn’t want to say anything but I might as well admit it. It felt strange to let her know I was crying… I choked it back … that lump, “You caught me…”

“Why?”

“Oh… shit… I just gave up on a long custody battle for my daughter yesterday… and, hell, I’m sorry, I just figured you wouldn’t notice if I cried with you.”

“What’s her name… your daughter?”

“Ariel…”

“Will you see Ariel again?” she asked in a flat and very restrained monotone.

“Maybe… to tell the truth, I can’t think that far ahead right now.”

The anger was as thick as it was animated… she bitterly let it out this time… “At least you will fucking get to see Ariel again!”

There was a finality in her tone that let me know someone very close to her… as close, or closer, than my Ariel, was lost to her forever. I knew better to ask and she never said…

We drove the rest of the way to Newport Beach without saying another word to each other but her sobs had stopped. We arrived in Newport with the rising sun at a parking lot where she had left her car the night before. I mumbled something about being sorry. I didn’t feel right about charging her money for this ride and tried to hand back the ninety bucks when she got out of the cab. She let it slip to the ground; let it slip contemptuously from her delicate Modigliani fingers to the ground. I watched her drive off into the sunrise and only then did I scoop the ninety bucks off the pavement. I fully understood her contempt.

I could have told this story to another cab driver like my good friend, Jimbo, but never to drunken voyeurs as entertainment. However, that was the story I would have told had they the stomach for it:

I can’t walk the streets, now,

to consulate my mind…

Some no-good woman, now,

she start breakin’ down…

Stop breakin’ down!

“No, really, you wouldn’t want to hear it.”

“Try me. I’ll tip you good…”

“…I don’t have time…” the meter read thirty-two-fifty… “Call it an even thirty… see ya.”

There was no tip.

Book of Job Revisited: Book II, Chapter 11. The Judgment

There we were, in the judge’s antechamber, the two of them, Celeste and Dirk with their lawyer, G. Alpink, and me… yes, the good ole bend over and let you fuck me in the ass, Max McGee. The venom welled up, adrenaline coursed through my veins and it was all I could do to contain myself. I reached for a magazine… a National Geographic. My hands were shaking. I thumbed through it pretending to be interested in the pictures and trying with all my might not to make eye contact… not with their lawyer present. I’d rained on their parade. They hadn’t expected me to show at all. I could tell Celeste was hesitantly trying to catch my attention… staring at me with worried furrowed brows that spoke softly, “Forgive us, please Max; this hurts me as much as it hurts you.” She cracked a faint smile, half-assed hoping all would be okay.  Dirk looked edgy, like he was ready to jump for the door as though I would do something stupid right there in the Judge's anteroom. Finally, we were ushered into the chambers where the Honorable What's-his-name sat behind a huge mahogany desk. He had a file in his hands and scanned the pages while we were taking our seats.

It was like a bad movie that played from a continuous loop for years to come.

FADE IN:

INT. LAWYER’S OFFICE - VISION

Trophies of decapitated heads decorate the walls of the Demon Alpink’s office. She perches behind her desk grinning with blood dripping down her jowls. Max is roped into his chair, unable to move.

DEMON ALPINK

So, Mr. McGee, you think you have an ice-cube’s chance in Hell?

FADE OUT:

I can’t remember much that was said up to the point where, from out of the fog of confusion, I heard the judge ask whether I had representation. It was an adoption hearing or deposition, something like that, in preparation for an adoption procedure. I was inside the pages of  the National Geographic I’d left in the lobby… on the jungle trail in Nicaragua again and looking into the teen-aged boys face… finger on the trigger… a short blast would be all it would take. Swooshed back to the here and now. The Judge asked whether I could afford representation. Of course, I couldn’t afford a lawyer and I answered the judge tersely, “No.”

The hearing was postponed until I could find representation and I was directed by the judge to the public defender’s office. It had come to this, I thought. So much for restoring the amicable part of the divorce. My mind went back to the cypress swamps where I was relatively safe.

At the public defender’s office, I was told that such proceedings were civil matters and the public defender only handled criminal law. That was a blow but, what the hell, I didn’t expect to have any help from the law. There are those for whom the laws are passed for all the good intentions and they work directly against any reason or positive result regarding the people the same laws were meant to protect. Nowhere is the law more subjective and bent against a man than in child custody or adoption cases.

I had a hard time finding a lawyer but I did come up with one who would at least look at my case. Joe Kindness took me up into the tower of the courthouse, pulled the file on the case, and read it. The truth was leaning against me enough, regardless, but the exaggerations and downright lies floored me: the greatest of which centered on the obstructions against visitation imposed by Kali and Dirk that were omitted…. that they had tried to hide the location of where in the hell they lived, restricting me to communicating only through a P.O. Box from the get-go. They had refused even reasonable visitations as though it was a privilege they allowed rather than a right I had as Ariel’s father. This had been going on for a couple of years in which I had only been able to see my daughter a handful of times. The fact that I had seen Ariel only a few times in two years was noted in the record, implying negligence, but the real reasons for the reality of it were not on those pages.

“Have you filed to assert visitation rights?”

“No.” I couldn’t explain. It was another Nicaragua moment when I couldn’t pull the trigger.

“It will be a difficult case to verify without some kind of court record.

“I have journals and letters between us with me now that account for every attempt.” I offered.

I showed Atty, Joe Kindness, one letter, tucked into the journal’s pages, I carried to the proceedings. Searing my heart, it read:

Dirk and I are married and are raising Ariel in a conservative nuclear family setting … Dear Max, please let go and allow Ariel to have a normal family life. She considers Dirk her father now and no longer sees you as anything but an estranged and very remote friend of the family.

“Don’t even let them know you have journals and letters,” Joe Kindness handed the letter back.

“Why, they document the whole business… in detail!” I protested further.

“Journals and letters are very useful weapons that could and would be used against you… they are, as a rule, so incriminating that it is better that you don’t bring them up at all. You do that and they would then be open to subpoena. They would then be able to read your whole journals… the anger… the frustrations… Do you want them to be seen in the open?”

I saw the point the lawyer was making. I could think of several passages in the journals that described the anger and murderous rage I reserved for those private pages. It took the wind out of my sails: It had come to this. I would be fighting for something that I no longer had the energy for. My will had been so worn down. I gave myself to the priests waiting for me with obsidian knives poised to take my still beating heart out my sliced open chest and from the top of the jungle pyramid toss it down the steps to Kali and Dirk in that moment.

It is hard to explain this to anyone that knew me in the old days. I was once a fighter and thrived on conflict, always on the side of the under-dog, no struggle too impossible… but this was different. I contemplated murder or suicide. I wanted to see Dirk roasting on a spit. I wanted to see Celeste tied to a stake and slowly, painfully, stripped of her skin. There was no torture or punishment too extreme or cruel and fierce that would have appeased my frustration and anger. The court records revealed where she lived but memories of that last embrace from Ariel reminded me that to take any further action would cause Ariel to suffer the most. The motivation to murder was stemmed. It was a nothing more than a violent fantasy and never a serious consideration. I simply left them alone. Tragedies are reported all too often on the evening news whereby an estranged father acts out what I had in my heart but, for Ariel’s sake, I was impotent to act on these impulses.

I cruised by their house at night and sometimes glimpsed Ariel going to the bus in the morning but I made no attempt to contact her. Were it not for Ariel, I would have just chalked it up as a setback. Life would have gone on and so would have I. Deflated, I put my life on hold. Only a crystalline pure hatred, harbored in the darkest corner of my heart, kept me alive. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking but I knew I had to stay alive for Ariel’s sake, even if being alive was but to be an abstract and intangible presence.

Oh, dear Kali, you make Job’s wife a saint. Her jealousy was animated by a need she had to be someone herself. She tried hard to “make it” in worlds that were closed to her. These worlds were closed to her because she had no center of her own and she could only ape the talents of others. Blaming her failure on a general bias against females in a male dominated world, she wrote for a local so-called independent rag as an art critic… or rather, an art gossip monger. That would describe better what she did. She became little more than a cheerleader for whatever trend was current and a slayer of talent outside that range or scope of her attention. She cropped her naturally beautiful multi-colored wavy locks and dyed them black with bright red tints. This acquiescence to fashion should have forewarned me that she was turning away from me and the Muse long before the divorce. She would become the destroyer of men with her girdle of decapitations wrapped around her waist like trophies and, as Kali, the mother of chaos; I had become passé to her: not even significant enough to be a trophy on her belt.

Chapter 10. Gracie and the Fedora

Late night cruising… light rain drizzling… just enough to keep the wipers going… pull over to the curb… they were arguing… young couple… they almost took the door off its hinges taking the backseat…he jumped in first… a real gentleman… and she slammed the door behind her.

“What the hell were you talking with him for?” he demanded.

She fired back,“What, I have to answer to you?” 

They ignored me, I'm only the driver. I tried to get a word in edgewise, “Where will you be going?”

“Just drive! Don’t worry, I tip well.” The dude in a fedora shouted over her protests.

“Anywhere?” I patiently cut in.

She was too involved to hear me, “I’ll dance with whoever I feel like dancing…”

“It’s, whomever, I believe,” I quipped. But to them I’m not there.

The Fedora finally acknowledged me by condescending… took off his hat and put the fedora on my head.  He continued with her, “You were on him like a bitch in heat.”

The rudeness of this turd pissed me off. I turned around, put a hand on Fedora’s shoulder and said, in my best Jack Nicholson…. “I hate to interrupt, but I’d like to know where I’m takin’ you?”

The touch caught the prick’s attention, “Valerio!”

“Okay, Chief.”  I didn’t care anymore. What the hell… the meter was running and I could dump this pain-in-the-ass a.s.a.p. I was busy most of the time with trying to cut a path through the jungle in my mind. It just didn’t matter to me at all whether anyone was going to fight or fuck in my backseat as long as the meter rate was paid at the end of the ride.

Her voice was familiar. I took a furtive glimpse through the rearview mirror… then I recognized her, Oh, fuck… beautiful… it’s Nadya! Now I took an interest in the argument. Gotta figure she’d hooked up with another asshole.

She smiled…recognized me too… “Hey Max! Long time no-see, Kimo-sa-be!”

Fedora looked pissed. Now his bitch is flirting with the cabbie!

I thought, hell, it's going to be an entertaining ride after all. It ain’t my fight but I can take sides. “Yeh, what have you been up to, Gracie?” I threw in my nick-name for her just to piss off the Fedora some more and let him know we go back some.

“Do you know him?” Fedora spat out, him, like a cat coughs up a hairball.

“Gracie and I had a moment, didn’t we Gracie?” I dug into the turd a little deeper.

“Sure did…” from her smile I could see that Nadya loved this moment too.

Fedora wasn’t taking it… “Her name ain’t Gracie. So just drive asshole!”

“It is, if Mick calls me Gracie!” she fired back.

“Shut the fuck up, cunt!"”

That did it… the C-word. It has a history with me.  I checked the rear-view mirror to make sure she had her seat-belt on and the Fedora didn’t. There are times when service workers can’t abide rude, condescending, pricks any longer. The waitress snaps; dumps a pie ala-mode and all, on the patron’s lap and walks away: the bartender points out the door: the cabbie slams on his brakes! 
“Fuck you. Punk!” The cab braked, tires screeched and skidded over on the drizzle-slicked pavement in a perfect drift to the curb… “Now, you walk.”

Fedora wasn’t used to cabbies doing this sort of thing to him, “Who in the fuck do you think you are?”

Smiling, Jack Nicholson took over again and told him who I thought I was, “I believe I am the one with the brakes and the gas-peddle. In cases like these, it doesn’t matter who I think I am. It's what I think you are.” Still grinning, “Now, I’m askin’ politely, get the fuck out of my cab, asshole.”

I got out of the cab, opened the rear door on the driver’s side, and winked at Nadya.

Looking up at me from the rear seat, Fedora demanded, “Gimme my hat back!”

“Consider it the good tip you promised.” I doffed the hat gentlemanly.

Fedora was out on the street.

“I know your boss. I’m reportin’ your fuckin’ ass!”

I got back in the cab and hit the button that locked the doors as the Fedora reached for the rear-door handle.

I opened my window half-way, “I don’t have a boss.”

“Then, I’m callin’ the police. I’ll have your license!”

I threw my card out the window to the wet pavement, “Here’s my card. Be sure to get my name right.”

Pulling away, I looked back in the side-view mirror. A man, clearly out of his element, was standing in the middle of Santa Barbara Street… in the soaking drizzle… matted hair… less one fedora, and cursed by cosmic forces beyond his control. He wasn’t getting laid tonight.

“Hey, thanks.”

The meter shut off, I gave her another wink, “It was nothing… Where’d y’ meet that fucker?”

“Oh, we go back a ways.”

“Sorry to hear it.” I drove up the hill past the Saint Francis Hospital.

“Yeah, he’s one of those Montecito trust-fund babies…”

“Town’s full of ‘em.”

“I know… I’m one of them too. I went to Cate School with him… went separate ways after that…then he was off back East to college.”

“Old flame?”

“Sorta… he was a nice guy back then. I don’t know what happened at Brown but he’s a jaded jerk now.”

“Life can do that to a guy, even in the Ivy Leagues, eh?”

“You look ridiculous in that hat, Max. It’s too small for your head.”

“Maybe I’ll get a haircut”

“He dirt-grabbed it at the bar anyway.”

Nadya had moved to a small apartment on Santa Barbara's Riviera overlooking the town sparkling with jewels of light at night. I stopped by when my shift wound down between three and four A.M. I’d bring a taste of coke and we chattered like teens on a date that was going well, but, like high school, it never ended in sex. Cocaine made sure of that. I loved her but wasn’t in love. I harbored a hope that somehow she would transcend the coke and part the Red Sea between her thighs for me once more. It would not be so.

Since Kuka, I was in that purgatory of “Just Friends” with damned near every woman I’d met and now it was Nadya. I knew from bitter experience that, once you crossed the Rubicon into the Provence of “Just Friends”, there was no turning back. The hotel room way back then was my introduction to what I was going to be missing out on for the rest of this relationship and that it was all I was ever going to get. To make things worse she asked me to sleep with her now and then, but still no sex.

Nuzzled up under the covers… spooning up to her round, soft and luscious ass, I tried again and again, “C’mon girl… what gives? I can’t take too much more of this.”

“I’m tired… get some sleep…” the finality of the order killed my libido… worse than killing me, it was an excruciatingly cruel form of castration. However, I’d no longer the drive of a teen. When a woman said, “No”, not only was it the correct response to answer, “okay,” but to agree that it was a good idea. Our relationship, if you want to call it that, evolved into more of a brother/sister one that was parented and fueled by cocaine and the tease of false hope. This was the first of a series of these blue-balled experiences and I wondered what had changed in me to become a middle-aged forty-three-year-old eunuch and a magnet for frustration of this kind.

I tried to break away from Nadya but she would call for my cab whenever she dated another of her latest in a string of assholes. She’d even track me down mornings in the bar to tell me about the current jerk she was with. She could really pick them too. I eventually cut it off completely with her when she married one of them. The groom was a member of a British rock group and she had just inherited the rest of her daddy’s money. That Brit figured out how to cash in, knock her up, leave her with a darling little girl, and, skip out and off to England after the money was nearly gone. I considered the justice harsh but it was justice.