Money

We live in a world, or society for lack of a better word where money makes up the difference between the upper and lower class of people. I for one believe those terms, upper and lower class, are separatists in themselves. Even if money wasn't an issue and it was based on something else, like the amount of cardboard we all possessed, it would'nt matter. There would still be that difference of people, that dreaded name used to describe how much or how little you have. If all you had was a cardboard box, then you would be considered the worst off or "lower class" of the cardboard people. And vise-a versa if you had a whole acre lot of cardboard boxes. You would be the Don Mega of the corrugated colony. Money is a drug, like all things that we crave and desire. One of the best ways to describe this I have ever seen had to be the nineteen eighty something classic, "Trading Spaces." It was a comedy starring Dan Akroyd as a "well-off" stock brocker and Eddie Murphy as a dirt poor, drunk, vagrant. The details to this movie in relationship to this blog entry is quite inconsequential. But basically what happens is Eddie and Dan trade spaces as to say, dan becomes a hobo and Eddie becomes a millionaire. The two of them have no idea what to do with themselves, Dan goes out of his mind, drunk and adorning a Santa costume. Eddie does what every honest American would do in a situation such as this, he milked it until the tit ran dry. Now what I'm trying to say by explaining this 80's flop is that it shows truthfully and honestly what happens to us when money is either added or subtracted to our lives. We turn into different people and have no idea what do with ourselves. The exact same can be said for heroin or cocaine. The only difference is money doesent make us feel good physically when we possess it. We feel good while spending it, just as a junkie on 6th street feels amazing shooting up his next mainline. All money ever has been since it's creation to replace what? Something that man has coveted since the dawn of ages, gold. Why you might be asking yourself? Well thats's simple, with gold you can make things. You could make a gorgeous necklace for your significant other, or you could gold stamp that leaf you found when you were seven in the ally and keep it forever. Money, what can be made out of money for our enjoyment or posperity? Nothing. All that can be done wityh money is purchase. Buy. Spend. Now! Don't hold onto that green piece of paper you worked so hard to earn and save, come over here and give it to me so that I can in turn, GIVE you this golden stamped leaf that's fake that I just got through making in the back. We need to stop putting all of our faith, our love, our asperations behind the shadow of the mighty dollar because no matter how hard you try to make that next 6k figure, it won't be enough to fill and feed your thirst for more. Once you come into money, you become dependent on it and you find that new little thing that you must have for whatever reason and then you think, "If I just spend three more sleepless weeks at the office, I could finally get this thing that I must have." Now whether this thing is a mortgage or something unimportant, your still a slave to it and wanting it. People think that the more money you have, the better you got it, and this isn't true. The more money you got, actually the MORE bills and bullshit you have to put up with from Uncle Sam. But, with all that money also comes the inevitable change in thought and attitude towards your fellow man and the world in general. As with everyone, The psycological change that takes place is the fact you have nothing to worry about. If your hungry, go up the street to the grocery store or better yet, why not, go to the resturant a little ways down the road and pay someone ELSE cook it and prepare it for you. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying any of this is wrong or bad. I'm simply trying to get people to take a step back and just look at themselves. Just to look and see what we've become as a people, as a society, as a whole. All we are to the untrained eye is a slew of crackheads. Except it's not a glass tube with a rock in it that we're lighting and it's not smoke we are inhaling. It's the basic morality of a human being that we're torching and it's our soul that we exhale instead of inhale. Mindlessly and monotonosly we drudge through our day, dragging our feet all the while as we strive to make more and earn more or worse yet, steal more. Some people want to tell me that human beings are the stronger race, the more intelligent and less animalistic. This is true in a sence, but when the dollar isd introduced into the equation, we turn right back into our most primal and simplistic beings. We'd do anything for that money, wether it's sellingstocks to the wealthiest and most important people on Wal-street, or selling your body for twenty-five dollars a fuck behind Elm Street, we're all whores for that green paper. People these days just walk completly numbed and descensitized to this fact. It's everywhere you look. Turn on the t.v. and what do you see? Buy this! Invest in this! Your ugly unless you buy my product! Spend More! Always More!!!! Never Enough!
Media and music alike tells us everyday that we constantly need to spend more money. Your life's asperations, your goals in the world amount to shit if you can't get paid for it and no one cares about what has happened to humanity. All anyone cares about anymore is how hot they're latte is or what time the new episode of America's Next Top Dancer is. Have we really become so emotionless and pathetic that we can't even see the destruction taking place right before our very eyes? Are our wallets really that important that basic morality, feeling, and self-respect go out the window? Look, I understand we all need it to survive and it's a kill or be killed world out there, I'm just pointing shit out. I'm simply saying that humans need to quit holding ourselves so high on the list of animals cuz believe you me, we can be just as instinctivly cruel as a lion munching on a cute little bunny when our sacred paper is fucked with.

The Begining

Way back when I suppose about four years or so, I was a drug-crazed youth with what seemed like nothing to fuel my fire within. That is to say I had no set out plan of life, no treasure map. I just had a head full of ideas(some right some wrong) and a thirst to venture outside of the sanctity of my pacified world of culdesacs and clean neighborhoods. The anger and hatred I had towards everything and everybody around me was exponential. I hated the mere site or sound of anybody or anything. every dude was an asshole and every girl was a bitch.
So I did what every other confused, angry, and wayward-bound kid does at a time like this, I gathered up some of my belongings and called Billy, this guy I met while milling about in front of my Narcotics Anonymous class. Billy was a "tattoo artist" and had told me if things at home ever got sour, I was welcome to move in with him at the Airport Inn. So that night my folks and I had one last knock-down drag-out fight because I put my Mom's cashmere sweater in the dryer. Apparently as the sweater wasn't even big enough to put on the dog, your not supposed to put things like that in the dryer. So after the conniption fit that soon followed, I called Billy and was on my way to Wal-mart to meet him. I remember that night at one A.M. it was a bit chilly. A cool breeze that blew my mohawk back as I walked grudgingly down that empty street toward my final destination.
I arrived in front of Wal-mart about twenty or so minutes later and set my things on the ground. I lit another cigarette and sat quietly on the cool, hard concrete. I waited and waited for Billy to get his ass there for what seemed like hours because of the Xanax trip I had embarked on the day before. Finally I saw Billy walking quickly and faced paced up the driveway in front of the store.
I walked up to him and punched his arm and said, "What the Hell man? I've been waiting here forever bro, what happened?"
"haha" he snickered, "Look man, do you have any idea how far away we are from my pad?"
I shrugged my shoulders and started walking next to him. We walked a few yards and we were next to the entrance ramp to I-30 somewhere in Irving. I guess I was walking too close to the road because a car sped by blaring its horn comming with about a yard of my feet. So we kept walking, crossed a couple highways and walked under a bridge and then we were there. my feet were new and virgin to the amount of walking that we had done.
When we arrived at the pad, I could notice spray paint and magic marker etched and paited on the walls. I looked up and saw a big red and black anarchy symbol covering the entire cieling. Various spots of dried lugie spit covered the walls. I had a cigarette lit and I asked him where the ashtray was. He looked at me, walked up and grabbed the smoke out of my hands, threw it on the ground and ground it in the carpet with his shoe while saying, "Fuck it man, the floor's your ashtray."
I thought to myself that I would fit in fine here.
About a week later we started "working" for his grandfather refurbishing and doing warehouse work for ten to twenty dollars a day under the table. We had about fifty or so dollars saved up and Billy told me he was going to look for more pot in the motel complex. I just said, "whatever man" and took another drink of my Old English forty ounce I'd bought with a little change I made.
About an hour later Billy came back up to the room saying, "Hey man, ever tried ice?" I had smoked it once or twice years before that so I shrugged my shoulders and said, "yeah, but I didn't feel nothing, why?"
He responded, "'Cuz dude, this guy that lives down the way has some for sale, you in?"
So I thought to myself, "hey, my first step to vagrancy and utter self destruction is dependency on something foreign. I'm as good as lost anyway so why not? live fast and die young."
So we went to that guys pad. His name was "J" and it wasn't his pad at all, he lived with this woman who was around forty-five, crack and meth addicted, and who had a fourteen year-old son. I should also say that the entire time we smoked those drugs, her child was sitting on the bed. Had it not been for my own feeling of apathy, I might have felt bad about doing something like this in front of the boy. I remember the look in his eyes like it was yesterday. The look of complete disapproval, sadness, and disappointment at the sight of what his mother, the woman that bare him from her womb, was doing right in front of him.
"You want another hit honey?" The decrepit old bag asked me.
I broke concentration for a second and looked at her. Her eyes. Those eyes just filled with nothing. Two brown and black orbs that contained nothing. No soul or heart, just emptiness and an infinitely long void of blackness and nothingness.
But no time for thoughts of empathy and human feelings I told myself, there are drugs to be done here, lots of them. That train of thought is what led me to this seedy motel room in the first place. I remember wondering to myself when in God's name will it derail.

I put my lips to the end of the pipe(I can remember wondering if sharing a speed pipe with some shwilly kid and a crackhead was really all that great of an idea. But I shrugged it off. Live fast die.) I remember not being able to taste it. All I can really say is it felt just like when you pass out and they wave that little thing with menthol in it over your nose. I went there originally wanting to just have a little with Billy, go home , load the bowl, and pass out like we did every night. But not this night. Not this life changing, depraved night that I was introduced to the greatest and worst thing I have ever experienced. After we got done with our little “shame session”(I call it that now because I still see that kid, and until the day I die I will never forgive myself for contributing to the delinquency of his upbringing) I ended up talking to “J”, getting in pocket with him, and bought forty dollars worth for twenty. Not a bad deal seeing as how we had Raaman, Saltines, and peanut butter at the pad so we had food for the week; not that we were even thinking of eating. So we got back to the flat and Billy started making drawings for more tattoo flash and I started doing sit-ups. About three hundred, more or less. Then after about an hour or so of athletics and art class, we got bored and sober. So we did what any other newly budding addicts would do, more drugs.

After about a week of continuous drug abuse and about four hours sleep, I decided it would be a great idea to ask this modern day(and artfully misguided) Dali for a tattoo. So after buying a case and a couple forty ounces, it was set. I browsed his flash on the wall and picked one I wanted him to permanently etch onto my arm. It was a stiletto with a banner going around it that read “No Regrets”. With my head full of hops and barley induced intoxication, I laid my arm out for what was going to be drawn onto it forever. “No turning back now,” I thought, “This is the first page of the new story I had started in my life. Until the day I die, I will never forget this night.” He drew it out and cut out the drawing. He then proceeded to place it on my arm and vigorously rub my arm with a stick of Old Spice deodorant. Then he pulled the paper off my arm and it left a copy of the drawing on my arm right where I wanted it. Then it was time for the pain. His tattoo gun was a professional gun at one time, but now all that remained was the skeletal remnants of what WAS a tattoo gun. The control of the speed of the needle didn’t work anymore and the “plug” was two wires that you would put in the electrical socket. As he put the needle to my forearm the pain really wasn’t all that bad. It kind of felt like being stung by a bee and then having some snot nosed kid pinching it, the entire time. When he finally finished after about two hours, I looked at it with eyes full of inebriation. It didn’t quite look like the drawing, but that was ok. The more primal, the better. Until I got a good look at it, the stiletto looked great. Then I noticed the spelling of “regrets”. It did not say “regrets” as I previously intended, my brand new tattoo said, “No Regets”.

“Hey man, somethin’ ain’t right here, YOU MISSPELLED REGRETS RETARD!” I shouted at him.

“I told you I was dyslexic, and I’m drunk. Fuck you, I’ll fix it. Come here.” He responded back to me.

He concentrated real hard and finally the fiend got it right. A few weeks after that, we heard that the group Roger Mirret and the Disasters would be in town. The night of the show finally arrived and we were ready, we had Amber(one of the Dead End Cruiser’s old ladies) giving us rides so we wouldn’t get stranded, an ounce of pot, and money for forty ounces galore. We got the beer and arrived at the show. Amber got out and looked at the sign on the front door. It read, “Show canceled. Roger Mirret tomorrow night in Austin. Amber came running back and said, “Pack your shit were going on a road trip tomorrow.” So that night me and Billy got to packing. I put my skin tight jeans, and my Lower Class Brats t-shirt in the bag and the next day I wore my bright blue boots so I was covered for a couple days. That morning went off without a hitch. Tommy, Jerry, and Amber came to our place and everyone piled into Amber's green Rav-4. There was no room because of the beer for me to sit so I rode in the back of this vehicle the entire way there. It was pretty nice because I’m so small, I just got wasted, curled up, and went to sleep. It was a great nap until I awoke to see Tommy turned back, snickering with a magic marker. I knew he had drawn something on my face, but because I didn’t have the ability to speak let alone argue with a six foot tall muscular guy with a Mohawk, I let it pass.

We arrived in Austin about four or so hours later and right when we did, my phone rang. It was Christina, a woman with pink hair, tattoos and her septum pierced who had worked as an attendant at the latest rehab I went to. She told me she was drunk and that one of my favorite bands, The U.S. Bombs were going to be playing at the Darkside Lounge that very night and if me and a friend wanted to accompany her and her friends, she’d pay for us. I jumped at the chance but because gas finances, or lack there of, they couldn’t drive us. “Fuck that, I’m walking” I said. So I set out on my journey. I walked a couple blocks and realized I was spun, high, and drunk and had no idea were I was going. I’d ask passersby but because of the racial diversity of Austin, Texas, no one understood me. It was right about then my phone rang a second time. It was Christina wondering what was taking me so long.

“Where are you Colin and what’s taking so long?”

“Christina, I’m pretty messed up and I don’t know where I’m going.” I said back to her.

“Go to the nearest street corner, tell me what it is, I’m on my way.” She replied to me.

So I did what she said and walked to the first intersection I could see, told her what is was and hung up. I waited for a little while until I saw her red F-150 drive into the parking lot across the street. I ran across the street with excitement and embraced her.. The first thing she said to me after not seeing me for over a year was, “You look skinny, what drugs you been doing?” I tried to talk but all that came out was a collection of fast paced stammers and grunts. “Lemme guess, a lot of speed?” I looked down and nodded my head with disgust. She shrugged and told me to get in the truck. As we were driving, Christina started a little drunky talk saying how I didn’t need to be in the place were I met her and that if she had the chance she could have straightened my ass out in a jiffy. I didn’t really pay to much attention until she asked if I wanted to stay with her. I said, "Really? you'd really help me out like that?"

She nodded and told me how my living conditions didn't seem all that great and that she was extending her motherly instincts on me. Well that's nice, I thought to myself.

We arrived at the venue and got out of the truck, We walked in the door and to the back of the club where the stage was and she introduced me to her boyfriend Edward and a couple of her friends that I can not recall at this time. During the show(about midway if I recall correctly) I saw Billy, Tommy, and Amber run in the club and dog pile me. It was all a feeling of brotherhood at that concert, of complete comradery. We were all punks, dirty, grimy, drug dependent, and unhappy. Coincidentally though, that had to be the happiest night I've ever experienced by far in my twenty two years stuck atop this dirtrock orbiting in outter space. Duanne sang all of those punk rock anthems passionatly and heartfeltly for what seemed like all night. Needless to say it was a night for the books.

After the show, I explained to Billy what was goin on and how I would not be accompying him and the rest of the Cruisers home to Dallas. All he said to me was, "whatever man, just lemme get that Slackers cd."

Cool, I had a place to sleep for the next few nights and a whole new chapter was beginning. I knew I was in for something new and different and the only way to prepare oneself for total self-destruction and depravity is to do exactly what I was doing, nothing.

Less Than Thin Liz

So that night I had been thrown back and booted out of the apartment. Thrown out of the apartment my friend and ex-rehab attendant Christina lived in by her FRIEND, a skinny single mother of two who had been staying there because she was in between houses. Her boyfriend and children were coming in town to stay a few days and since i was the odd-man-out with the couch-space I had to go. I had been wandering and meandering for that entire day until nightfall. I was deep in thought about the idea that I was going nowhere on the account I had nowhere to go. So in theory I was lost but not the feeling of panic and horror you get when you don't know where you are going physically, but a new feeling of freedom and awareness to the surroundings around me. It was a weird place to be at that time, my head that is. So I took yet another long drag off my cigarette and looked up and I saw a kid who didn’t look to unlike me. A sight such as this even in Austin were few and far between so when I caught a glimpse of this boy in an old ripped and stained Oxymoron shirt, I knew I had to make myself known. So I just walked up to him, introduced myself as the name I had been given by fellow travelers I'd met along my way(Checkers on account of my hair). He said his name was Justin and he told me about this girl whom he'd been squatting (for those who don't know, squatting can be best described as a more scenic route to drifting. For those who don't know what a drifter is, stop reading 'cuz you won't understand any of this.) with for about a month. I thought to myself, "What the Hell? I got nowhere to go, why not?" So I asked him if they were interested in having an addition to their vagrant collection. He said he'd run it by her when she came to pick him up about a mile down the way. We walked and talked, and drank and stank. He told me all about how he and this tramp (train hopper that rides freight) named Huckleberry, or "Huck" for short, had hopped a train out of Spokhan,Washington and that’s how they ended up here. I asked where Huck was and he told me I'd be meeting him later when that girl (named Liz) picked us up. We sat in front of the 7-11 and waited until she finally pulled up in her 87 or 88 Cutlass. I peered into the front window and saw her, a portly looking gal with a shaved head all except for a green and orange piece of hair flowing in front of her eyes. I shrugged my shoulders and got in. I learned that Huck was still at the pad and I'd meet him soon. So we drove and she leaned over to Justin and said, "Another little squatter for me to take care of?" Justin shrugged his shoulders and muttered something I couldn’t understand. I took that time to let her know that I appreciated her letting me squat at her place. When we arrived at her apt., I noticed that it was a clean and fairly kept up place, all except for the gargantuous piles of dog and rat feces that had accumulated in the corner. As I walked in I was greeted by a ginormous fellow with a tattoo of a cat with blue balls running after a cat with a bow in its hair. these tattoos were on his, in plane view of anyone who looked in his general direction. This must be Huck. I walked over to him and outstretched my hand and said, "hey man, I'm Checkers." He looked up from his beer and said back, "hey I'm Huck." Bingo, 'cuz I'm that good. We three rolled a couple joints and bought a case with the money we had "earned" and got down with a pretty nicely orchestrated party. While I was stumbling through the hall Liz walked up to me and said, "you really don't expect me to make your cute ass sleep out there with them do ya?" I did, but I wasn’t going to let her know that. "I don't f#@$in know" was all I could get out before she lunged all her bodyweight(which was a lot) in my direction, tackling me and rendering me helpless to the fairly large woman gyrating on top of me. I laid back and cracked a half effort smile and thought silently to myself, "Pretty good day, wonder what’s next."

The Taintalizing Tale of Hippie and Hair Dye.

As I walked down the road (I believe it was 6th street or Guadalupe) I lowered my face from my ciggarette and thought about how I ended up on that street. I think I got dropped off by that chick I met at Arby's.
I remembered sitting down at the booth-bench seat with a copy of whatever free newspaper i picked up the night before at the bus stop. I looked in the empty pack of ciggarettes i had been putting change in that I'd spanged and panhandled along the way and I noticed I had about a dollar fifty or a dollar seventy four or so. I realized I had enough to get an order of those fried cheese and potatoe things. So I walked to the counter and dumped the change on the table. The girl working there could easily notice my clothes were far from new and personal hygene had not been at the top of my priority. So I guess either out of pity or her just wanting to meet someone interesting and new, she gave me the potatoe things for free and threw in a free onion bread Arby's melt sandwhich. She ended up starting a conversation with me and I ended up telling her how all I'd wanted to do was just go to a local show and try to weasel my way into whatever scene I could. So I ate my free sandwhich and my potatoe artery cloggers(for free I might add) and browsed the newspaper I had walked in there with. I noticed some record shop accross town that said they had a bunch of underground albums so I thought, "What the Hell? I got nothing else better to do with my day." So Arby's girl told me to get in her car and she'd drive me at least a couple miles closer to the shop than where we were. I happily obliged as my feet were huring from the six or so miles I had just walked.
We arrived at my designated stop and I bid her farewell with a thank you and I started hoofing it towards the general direction of the shop. It seemed like a millenia I had to walk until I finally got somewhere besides the shady nieghborhood I had been seeing. I arrived at what appeared to be, by the crude drawings and images of senseless and painful fornication, had to be a sex shop. I entered this horrid place and some of the things I saw were so depraved and horrible, if I were to repeat them everyones mind who is reading these chronicles would implode with disgust and fear. So I'm in this place for one reason and one reason only, to find out where the Hell I was and how the Hell I get to the record shop. I was directed accross the street by a man dressed in what I saw was a rabbit costume. I got to the shop and found out they were putting on some local metal show. I thought why not? Why would'nt a homeless punk rocker want to get pummeled and beatin to a pulp by a bunch of steroyd pumping metalheads? I could'nt find a decent enough excuse to keep me away so I set my sign and started the ever boring process of panhandling. I managed to make about three dollars the first twenty minutes. Not bad except I needed five. I walked over to the bookstore next door to widen my bumming options. I met up with two girls I had seen walking about earlier. I walked up to them and explained my predicament. It was hard for me to believe they took such a likeing to a little nomad with a backpack bigger than him but they did. As a matter of fact they both ended up taking me home to thier house and sharing whatever alcohol and other mind-altering devices with me. Then we all got the crazy idea to dye my hair like a checkerboard. The girl who I could only imagine was a present day hairy hippie took control of the whole operation. Her fingers felt like little spider legs as they danced and picked at my hair. All the while careful with whatever she was ingesting at that present moment. After we sat and talked and killed a small bottle of Hypnotic it was time to call it a night. They walked into thier room and I sat. Quiet and collected in the darkness and silence. I took one last swig of an already warm beer, gathered my belongings(at that time a backpack) and headed for the door. These people I had just got through encountering I will never forget until the day I die, but I had to see what was next on this escapade I had embarked on.