The Late Night Valdez

Last night I slept terrible. 

I returned late from playing cajon with Astra Kelly and had missed the last landing at the airport by a good twenty minutes. Sleep came on rather quickly. But a late night Valdez came screaming through the night hauling in all the last-minute, Fed-Ex shipments. I had bought earplugs a few hours earlier, but I didn't put 'em in. Why bother? I didn't expect any 20-ton beasts to come howling through my windows tonight. Maybe the stripper that lives up the stairs from me, but no need to put the earplugs in for that. I slept like a horse after that, standing up, which meant that the next day I would be wired with a strange and neurotic energy. Call it a cocktail of deracinate roots. Or a bevy of Indian spices. I would even consider potpourri, but only if contained excesses of cinnamon in the mix. Of course, the most important part of any of this, was that I was in the middle of a terrible craving for Ben and Jerry's ice cream. It may very well have been one of those quirky stress cravings, but sometimes it's the simple things that can bring us back on solid ground. Which is where my story began this day.

The air was brisk, and as I stepped out into the evening, the city sounds were oddly hushed in momentary silence. Only a steady hiss of the interstate traffic wedged its way down this grisly uptown boulevard. In the distance, I can see the San Diego skyline hanging like proud little league trophies against the clear, dark sky. The thought occurs to me of walking there and riling up some homeless people, but that would most likely get me hurt. And I was in no mood for injury. Besides, anybody who's ever walked the Vegas strip knows that objects are farther than what they appear. What I really knew, was that the hunger pains in my gut would soon cripple me before I reached halfway. 

I headed West into Little Italy. A short five-minute walk puts you on the doorstop of a 7-11 that I'm pretty sure is padded with ice cream. I immediately wanted to go inside, but a bulbous man with a crack in his Liberty Bell was blocking the entrance bending over to grab his dropped nickel. I waited for him to stand up before sliding around him. Once I managed to get through the door, I discovered the store was empty. Nobody and nothing was happening, just my own quiet breathing.  

I immediately drifted towards the chillers, momentarily passing the beer, when the door chimed. A woman enters the store and screams, "I can't believe this fuckin' city!" I turn around and see her walking towards the pain killers. She looked visibly disturbed and rabid in the face. "It'll kick ya in the balls...if I had any!" she added, as if wanting someone to agree with her. I looked around, but the place was still empty. The clerk most likely shot down the street for a quick refill on his whiskey sour at the Waterfront bar, leaving me here to throw the water on this flaming hot-iron ready and willing to brand whoever stepped near her. I really didn't know what to make of this woman. Her yelling seemed over-implied and had jolted me from the smiling cows and picket fences on the cookie dough label. The woman appeared as if she had snapped and was just beginning to dig herself up out of some distinct and terrible catastrophe. She clearly needed the ice cream more than I did. I thought of suggesting Sudafed and a bottle of cheap red wine, but she knelt out of view before I could say anything. 

But none of that mattered anymore. 7-11's selection of Ben and Jerry's ice cream hovered just above tolerable. They had the modern classics like Phish Food and Cherry Garcia, but lacked that one, salient flavor, which had pulled me down her to begin with, Whirled Peace. And its absence meant either going without or choosing the one with flying toffee chunks over a river of dark chocolate flowing beside the rooster den. My timing was off. The ice cream had mostly likely been plundered in a midnight, panic-driven purge before the start of lent. I decided to go without. All or nothing, that's what I say. 

The beer shelves, on the other hand, were fully stocked in pre-Mardi Graus statute, with all of the brews you've come to expect from your local mart. By the time I agreed upon New Belgium and settled in behind the counter, the store clerk was ringing up the crazy-eyed killer, who was paying for a box of smokes and asking for a bottle of Jack. I felt compelled by the morose shadows hanging around her. It was the kind of heaviness that fills the deepest, bluest cavities inside us. I could tell she was in preparation for a long and grueling night ahead, sipping Jack Daniels in the candlelight of her dark, onerous gloom.  

Maybe it had something to do with the headline on the paper next to me: "Dow tumbles to '97 level as stocks plunge globally." A picture of a stockbroker on the floors of the New York Stock Exchange head in hands, confirmed it. The story went on.

Fears that the world economies are even weaker than had been thought ricocheted around 

the globe yesterday as investors from Hong Kong to New York bailed out of stocks. Losses 

cascaded from one market to the next as concern spread that governmental efforts have not 

been enough to stabilize troubled financial institutions or broader economies. The Dow Jones 

industrial average fell below 7,000 for the first time since 1997 as investors reacted to reports 

that construction and industrial activity has continued to decline and to a $61.7 billion loss pos-

ted by American International Group. It was the largest quarterly loss ever for a company. 

All this constant hammering about defaulted loans, bankrupt banks, and government take-over tells me just one thing, we're fucked. I mean, if you don't know by now that you don't actually have to own a collateralized debt obligation to hedge against it with a credit-default swap, well, it's not the media's fault. And, of course, the oceanic span of our financial canals used in International trade and lending, means that much of the world is treading water with us. "The losses were especially severe in Europe," the article reads, "where an emergency weekend summit ended in bickering and the rejection of a bailout plea from Hungary."  Everyone else seems to be in the same frantic, helpless, confused mode of "Where the HELL did all my money go?" I can't say for sure, but I think the woman had it right after all. We've got some long, grueling nights ahead of us. 

Where the Hobbits Roam...

My new studio apartment is tiny. There's room to sleep, but everything else is pretty much left to chance - including food. Unless I sit in the chair, which is sorta the living room area, I can choose to eat my dinner either on the bed, which I guess is the bedroom - or also the family room, and the lounge chair. But eating in the chair runs a choking hazard while leaning in for the salt. And dinner in bed feels too relaxed and subordinate for any typical dinner etiquette - table top dining, with a fat tire to your left and remote toggling Jon Stewart's face to your right. Then there's the kitchen, which is where I kinda feel the dinner happens. But when your standing here, pulling food out of a Jello bowl in the crunched corner of this dollhouse, everything becomes immediate and urgent. Why yes, I would like another glass of milk. What's that, you want my to wash my dinner plate before I'm done eating? You bet I will. Anything to get me out of this corner.

Of course, when it takes only one good stride to step from the bedroom to the kitchen, it makes hippies look not only incredibly simple-minded, but incredibly lazy too. I mean, where else can you watch the noodles boil from the comfort of your own bed? Where a bathroom break merely requires standing up? And where, at any moment, a cool, frothy beer can be found at arms reach? Nothing without sacrifice, of course. Washing your hair requires first bumping your elbows multiple times lathering the shampoo, then bending over so your hair can reach the waist-high fire hydrants rushing out to stab your body. There's no forgetting the 747s either. They're a constant in this ghetto. You either thicken your skin, or get fettered by an irritating rash that will never go away. My injury count consists of two cuts on the leg, one bruise on the shin, three stubbed toes, and one red, swollen burn on my left index finger. This is a total compression of life, in every sense of the word.