Misadventures On Monterey Blvd. Part 2: Speedfreak, Armed & Tweaked!

I've forgotten his name. All I remember is him endlessly stalking the long halls, arms twitching, scratching some amphetamine itch, his red rimmed eyes blinking ten times faster than yours or mine, a red flag flying unfurled in a self-created breeze.

He kept to himself. Grunted hello when spoken to. Never seemed to use the bathroom. Only ate candy bars. Wore the same clothes every day. Ran up and down the stairs a lot. Stayed up all night. Stayed up all day.

He'd only been there a few weeks, when Terry took me aside in the kitchen one morning, panic in her voice.

"He has a gun," she whispered. "I was coming in at 2 AM last night, and I saw him sneaking down the stairs holding a gun in his hand!"

I asked if she was sure, hoping she wasn't.

"Pretty sure. I mean it was dark. And when he saw me, he kind of hid it under his shirt, and ran back to his room."

We discussed what to do. We knew what not to do.

Question: Hey buddy, you got a gun in there? Answer: Bang!

Two nights later, a second roommate had a similar encounter with him after midnight.

As Paul was coming in the door, the guy came slinking down the stairs, holding something under his loose shirt, a paranoid look in his eyes. He stared at Paul a moment, then ran away.

That same paranoid look crept into our eyes.

Now he mostly stayed in his room. Behind his closed door, a tragicomic farce began entering its fatal third act.

Looking out from his big double windows was a coffee shop directly across the street. Tables set up on the sidewalk, with people sitting there all day long.

He became convinced these people were watching him, laughing at him.

No doubt they were. Because he was standing right in front of his windows, shirt off, making wild gestures and flexing his skinny muscles at them, like some amateur wrestler challenging opponents in a homemade ring. Center stage, he'd carry on for hours, a silent soliloquy of mental stupefaction. Nobody could help but look, point, and laugh at this spectacle. Impossible to ignore, it had become a daily floor show enjoyed by all.

Until he started waving what looked to be a gun.

On that particular day, lucky for me, I was with my girlfriend Monique in Emeryville, far from the scene of what was about to transpire. I heard the full account next day from the owner of the coffee shop, Fred.

"Crazy bastard started flashing a pistol. Then he wasn't at the window anymore. Next thing we saw, he was downstairs, crossing the street headed towards us.

"Everybody ran inside, while I locked the door. People were on the floor. He came right up to the window and banged on it. I said something like, 'We're closed, go away' and he ran back back to the house.

"I called the cops, told them there was a man with a gun across the street."

When the police get a call like that, they tend to take it very seriously.

Half the Ingleside police force showed up, lights flashing, guns already drawn. They blocked off the street. Every gun and rifle was now aimed at our upstairs windows, including mine, two windows away.

I could picture myself taking a nap, being awakened by the noise, then opening the window to look.

Bang! Bang! Ka-pow! Ka-blooie. The end of me.

In the confusion that followed, cops shouting, everybody shit scared, walkie-talkies blaring, he was eventually dragged outside.

Laying on the sidewalk, shirtless, sweating, surrounded by about a million cops, he offered the following account of his actions:

"Bluh b-bah ah don't wanna, bluh wanna bluh bluh. Huh? Wanna uh, buh blah b-bub bub, lemme huh?"

That was enough to haul him away, lock him up for 48 hours pending a psychiatric evaluation. The gun turned out to be a pellet gun, harmless but genuine looking from a distance.

His mother showed up the next day, distraught, in tears, comforted by Terry, while we all told her we thought it was speed. The guy was doing stupid drugs. There was nothing more to tell her.

Three days later he stomped back into his room. Late that night, I wanted to make sure he knew how much he was welcome. So I slipped a note under his door. Unsigned, of course. It could have come from any one of us.

Everybody here hates you, it said, Get the fuck out of our house you scum!

The next day I heard him angrily muttering these words, over and over, through his closed door.

And the day after that he was gone forever.

Final score: Speedfreak, minus zero. Danny, switching to decaffeinated.


Next, Part 3: A Giant Russian and 3 Stooges.

God Grant Me The Serenity... NOT TO KILL YOU!

It's not that I hate all drunks. I'm too big a Bukowski and W.C. Fields fan for that. It's the pathetic ones I can't stand. Slobbering, slurring, sentimental, urine-stained and staggering through life helpless, hopeless, eternally impaired, careening 80 miles per hour across all four lanes of whatever actual or metaphorical highway you care to imagine. Smart people become stupid, and those already stupid descend into the antediluvian muck with a shit-eating grin. Tell them the toilet's a buffet, and watch them actually eat shit. Hand them their car keys, pour them into the driver's seat, then stand back and wait for the entertainment to begin. In a perfect world, they'd only crash into another drunk. This is not a perfect world. Maybe you've noticed.

It's enough to drive you to drink.

Instead, try staying cold sober as everyone else around you gets sloshed sometime. Observe. Voices grow louder, faces get redder, actions become ever more demonstrative; more, more, more of everything you didn't want in the first place. Every uncorrected personality trait on parade, every sozzled emotion spilling out with 80 proof tears. Drunk guys pull out wallets and cry over pictures of the wife and kids. Wallets they just found in the bathroom, lost by other drunk guys, who are across the room crying over that.

Dry drunks are possibly even worse. Alcoholics Anonymous addicts clinging to that ole God grant me the serenity song and dance. Seems you must first have been brought to your knees by the booze, if not brain damaged by it, before you start spouting such malarkey. Sure, A.A. works for some people -- the dumb ones, who can only trade one crutch for another. At least drunk, they were free to dream their own poisoned, predictable dreams. But now they march in lockstep with the Wet Head Congregation, white-knuckling it every day. One day at a time. The motto for folks who until recently had trouble naming the day of the week. Easy does it. As though getting plowed was some difficult task.

Alcoholics Anonymous won't tell you this, so I will: On his death bed, the founder of A.A., Bill Wilson, begged for several shots of whiskey. For days he was pleading. In the end, all he wanted was to get drunk one more time. The people surrounding him, great humanitarians all, denied him this final request. Didn't want to cast doubt on the effectiveness of the program. Didn't want to face the obvious: once a drunk, always a drunk. The only true cure for alcoholics is not to become one in the first place.

Hello, my name is Danny, and I'm not an alcoholic. Never was. I drank normally for years, before it started making me fat. Plus I'm practically the only member of my family who doesn't have diabetes, or pre-diabetes. Booze being about the worst carbohydrate ever, it seemed a good idea to stop. So I stopped. No big deal. No roomful of former booze ghouls endlessly talking about what must be constantly on their minds. Problem is, when you don't drink at all, some people assume you must've at one time drank a whole hell of a lot, making me a magnet for mooks. It happens all the time. Former gin sponges slide up beside me with knowing winks, reeking of defeat, bending my ear with bonehead notions as I count the broken capillaries on a face lined like a road atlas.

If I buy you a drink, will you just go away?

.

Life After Death? Nope. Death After Life? Yup.

When you join Facebook, one of the profile questions they ask about is religion. Some dutifully list one, or another. More often it's some wise ass response like, Jiggle The Handle, or, I'm Allergic. Some proudly proclaim Atheism as their belief. These folks know for a fact there's nothing, and seem rather pissed off about it. They don't believe in God but they sure are mad at him. When it comes to religion, I believe in all of them. I also believe in none of them. I don't know. That's what I ultimately believe: that I just don't know. And neither do you.

Since time immemorial, there's been no shortage of jokers claiming to Know. And no shortage of suckers with lesser or lazy imaginations willing to listen. Somebody else has done all their thinking for them, you see. Somebody wearing a special robe, maybe a special haircut, in a temple built by other suckers most likely working for free. Throw in a few cheap magic tricks, maybe a sacrifice or two, and there you go. The rubes are thinking, They must know. They must. Otherwise we've just thrown away some perfectly good goats and virgins.

Quite simply, anyone claiming to know what's on the other side of the grave is at best a sincerely self-deluded fool, or at worst just plain lying. Slinging around the shit, as it were, to gain power or prestige or special privilege on this side of the grave, where it really counts. What lies beyond is anyone's guess, with all guesses being equal -- from the most well-reasoned philosophical musings of a great mind, to something some dunce pulled out of their ass while drunk -- because both are just that: the wildest of guesses. Nobody can prove anything, either way, except maybe one thing. There is Death after Life. Take a stroll through any cemetery and you'll face the fact of it. But beyond that? Well, nobody's in any real hurry to find out, are they?

You can go first, and let me know.

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Movie Review (You Pick the Movie)

You know the Warning. You've seen it 5000 times and you'll see it 5000 times more if you're a good consumer. It's virtually impossible to watch a movie on DVD or VHS without J. Edgar's Boys first putting a gun to your head. Then come the threats from Interpol, first in English, then French -- which almost nobody can read. In fact, nobody reads anything anymore. That's why they rented a goddamn movie in the first place.

Next comes some intimidation via the corporate logos. Paramount. Universal. Tremendous mountains in all their purple majesty, or the vastness of the galaxy, or something else jaw-droppingly, tremendously large, and all of it carrying the same message: We are big. You are small. We have the power. You have zilch. We own everything, and you're behind on your payments.

The warning includes "infringement without monetary gain," meaning, if you make a back-up copy of Legally Blond 2 for yourself (and your own horrendous taste), it's "punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000." Holy hell! I'd call that incentive to make a lot of monetary gain; and since it caps at a quarter million, you'd wanna make about twice that, pay the fine, and enjoy your wealth... after five years.

Think Bin Laden would still be still be at large if somebody reported him selling bootlegs of Rocky IV from the trunk of his Pontiac? No sir! But now I'm kinda wondering... does that copyright warning include absolutely everything on the disc or tape? Including the warning itself? The one I just copied, and posted above?

Oh shit.

.

Nancy Has No Grace

What kind of people watch this inhuman creature? What type of person enjoys watching an ignorant, abusive, hate mongering hillbilly bitch exploit human tragedy for personal gain? Why, Fox News fans of course!

Picture Nancy on her knees each night, praying. Praying that another child gets abducted -- a white child, of course, and preferably female, and cute. Nancy knows her fans won't give a damn if the child is black.

I've never been able to watch this pig for longer than 5 minutes without puking.

Misadventures on Monterey Blvd. Part 1: Sex Cult!

I was the second tenant. The first tenant, Stephanie, had moved in a week before. Stephanie was cute and sexy and in her late 20s. Stephanie also belonged to a weirdo sex cult called The Family, and she was there to recruit members and colonize the house. Of course, she neglected to mention these very interesting facts when we met.

The first thing you'd want to know is the last thing they'll tell you.

Every morning, Stephanie would knock on my door. I was supposed to be out looking for a job, but there she was. Knock-knock. Bottle of whiskey in one hand, fat joint in the other. Scantily clad and smiling sweetly. Job search forgotten, she'd lure me into her bedroom. She'd play music, all my favorites. It was uncanny how, with each passing day, we'd have more of the same things in common.

She'd change her clothes right in front of me. Then she'd sit on the bed and stare deeply into my eyes. She'd talk about sex. A lot. Turned out later she was being coached by experts. Having just moved to California, all my friends and family were 3000 miles away. Cut off, alone, I was targeted as a likely recruit. Every personal detail I told her she then told The Family, who in turn advised her on what to say and do next. This was happening daily, when she disappeared each afternoon. Stephanie was being coached to pretend she was my friend, so she could better manipulate me. Coached to pretend she cared, when all I was to her was some mark. Pure evil.

The Family (having apparently never heard of Charlie Manson and company), was based on sex. Something called "do" as in doing yourself. That is, masturbating. Using some special technique, they claimed to have achieved orgasms that lasted for hours. Hours! They even sold VHS tapes; basically some failed actress, surrounded by cult members, endlessly diddling herself and moaning in Extended Play mode, faking an orgasm. Which is the one thing all whores do well.

Stephanie also freely admitted that she'd spent some time on the farm -- the balloon farm. Her mom had tossed her in there. She really hated her mom. Mom hated her right back. Her father had abandoned them both, back when she was little. But now, lo and behold, he was back to rescue her. She was released into his custody. Big mistake.

Her dad happened to be Grand Poobah of this sex cult. Thumbing her nose at mom, she sailed straight into his slimy clutches.

But Stephanie wasn't very good at being a cult member. She'd fucked up, somehow, somewhere... and now she had to redeem herself. She was on probation with The Family, and on a mission. Namely, to colonize a house and recruit new members. And her sights were set squarely on me.

As she stared into my eyes, she'd describe this "self-improvement group" she was part of and how it had enhanced her life. The Family could enhance my life, too. She showed me their web site; pictures of lost and confused young women with their tits hanging out. Lots of glazed eyes and fake smiles. She also thought she was hypnotizing me with that deep stare, but she only ended up looking cockeyed.

Like I said, The Family didn't exactly consider her employee of the month.

Granted, it was hard to disguise the various scams and schemes going on. They'd suckered Safeway into donating past-dated though still edible foods under the guise of giving it to the hungry. It all ended up in my kitchen, lining every shelf and filling the refrigerator to bursting. I'd watch as they skimmed off the steaks, the portabella mushrooms, anything halfway decent, all going straight into the stomachs of The Family, while whatever half-rotten crap leftover was shoved at the needy with great fanfare. They did this with donated shoes, clothing, whatever they could get, they got.

Early one morning, I met her dad. Scary looking bastard. Big and fat. Sweating profusely. Shaved head and creepy, menacing voice. Like some super-sized Kojak, dressed like a pimp circa '74. Carried a knife big enough to skin humans. He showed it to me. He showed me how the knife handle twisted open to reveal his stash of pot. Magic pot.

"This pot," he explained, "has voodoo properties. It's flown in special, from Haiti, smuggled inside a corpse. Don't take more than one hit. Otherwise, you'll freak out."

"Gimmie that pipe," I said, taking up the challenge. "And I'll smoke you both under the table!"

I took three, maybe four lung-bursting hits.

Then I freaked out.

Maybe it was the talk of cattle mutilations; the graphic descriptions of animal dissection by Venusians that the guy started in on soon as I took that first hit. Maybe it was the fact that he was shouting all this at full volume, waving his knife like a maniac and fixing his hoodoo eyes on me. Maybe it was the pot. Being completely, instantly terrified, all I could do was laugh. Laugh and laugh and laugh. I couldn't stop. It was so absurd, I was scared to stop.

Then Stephanie's cell phone rang. Between Daddy's raving, and my mad laughter, she couldn't hear the phone.

"Daddy!" she whined. "Why don't you take it outside. Go talk on the balcony. Both of you."

"B-but Stephanie," I managed to sputter, "it's c-c-cold out there, and I'm already f-freezing!"

That was the only way I could explain the uncontrolled trembling that now racked my body.

"Here, wear this." She helped me into her nightgown, a frilly, lacy thing. "And this." She put a woman's hat on my head.

She shooed us both out onto the tiny balcony and slammed the door.

There I was, shivering, full of fright, dressed in woman's clothing, hopelessly stoned out of my mind, and all alone with the King of Fuck himself.

It wasn't even noon yet.

On the balcony, it was suddenly quiet. Daddy Whorebucks had tuckered himself out, blown his diabolic load in one massive, verbal money shot. All he did now was wheeze and pant with the self-inflicted asthma of any fat pothead. Our conversation became conventional, even banal. We talked about the weather, dish detergent, overdue library books and whatever else I've long forgotten. Eventually, I crawled off to bed and slept it all away....

Meantime, I had this girlfriend named Sheena. She was black and beautiful, with a big booty (which I liked) and silicon boobs (which I didn't). We'd met on the set of High Crimes (2001), a lousy movie, working as background specialists, i.e. extras.

Whenever we took a stroll down Market or Haight streets, every black bum in sight wanted to shake my hand.

"What's a skinny whiteboy like you doin' with a woman like that?" some asked, eyeing Sheena's va-va-voom shape with wolf-whistle regard.

"I'm doing the same thing you'd be doing," giving them the Groucho eyebrows, "if she was your girlfriend!"

That always got me a high five.

In truth, it was a mismatch. If we'd just stuck to sex, we'd have been a perfect couple. We didn't have much in common intellectually, socially. She thought I talked like a professor; I thought I spoke to her normally, same way I spoke to everyone else. Even Stephanie picked up on this.

"I know she's not very smart," Stephanie noted one day, with perfect candor, "but she's a good woman."

The one time Stephanie had a point.

Sheena was also a functional alcoholic. She'd start early in the morning, with Irish coffees, drinking through the day to maintain a steady glow. I stupidly tried to keep up with her. One banner day I consumed 14 shots of whiskey, chased with who knows how many beers, and Sheena still left me staggering in the dust. Our favorite hangout for lethal Bloody Marys was Twin Peaks in the Castro, a dinosaur bar packed with old gay men, and us, straight, interracial, and 20 years younger, so out that we fit right in.

Never much of a tippler, after just one day of booze fueled nirvana, I was ready for anything but drink. Sheena having one already in hand, it became another point of conflict. By the time Stephanie showed up, we weren't really getting along -- a weak point the cult immediately exploited to the hilt.

They tried to drive a wedge between us, divide, hoodwink, and conquer. Stephanie -- counting on Sheena's besotted simplicity -- invited her to their meetings, an invitation I always turned down. One time she went as they loaded Safeway food onto a truck. Sheena told one member casually that she'd been fighting with her boyfriend. Within minutes the news had spread through their group mind, all 20 or so buzzing around her.

"I heard you had a fight with Danny," each one said in turn, although Sheena hadn't mentioned my name. "Just forget him. This is where the love is," they continued, enveloping her with stage smiles and choreographed hugs.

The meetings themselves were elaborate pickpocket affairs. The first one was free. But, they'd all recite, if you're really serious, you should come to our one hour session, only 50 bucks! Then, if you're really, really serious about making some amazing progress, you'll attend our 2 day seminar, a bargain at only $300! Zombies all nodding in unison, one whispering conspiratorially, I sold my car for the thousand dollar weekend retreat, and it was worth it! The idea being to suck you into their Scientology type tier system until you were swindled dry of every last cent. Eventually you'd find yourself living in a Family group home, working for free, and trying to ensnare others.

After Sheena attended two or three meetings, then detailed such bald chicanery, we both finally realized this was no question a cult, a fact The Family went to great lengths to conceal. Even after this revelation, there followed a brief tug of war, a battle for Sheena's befuddled soul.

In short, I won. Quite a blow to Stephanie. But hot on the heels of this hollow victory came a deeper realization: I saved her; so what? Now that I had her, I didn't really want her.

Dumb enough to almost join a cult?! So long, sister.

In the end, The Family just gave up. Even though a second member, Mia, moved in late summer 2001, it was finished. The final blow was when I told every other roommate in the house that they were cult members. No longer able to hide behind the shadows of euphemistic double talk, amateur hypnotism or Scientology style scammery, they stood revealed in the stark light for what they were: con artists and cunts.

By Thanksgiving, they were both gone, having failed to colonize the house. For this I gave thanks.

Final score: sex cult, zero. Danny triumphant... for the moment.


Next, Part 2: Speedfreak, Armed & Tweaked!