I had just gotten out of jail and was feeling rather chippy. Within minutes of being released from my state sponsored vacation at the Larimer County Detention Center I was buzzed again, stuffed in the smoky back seat of a little Ford Escort watching the world go by. So much had changed since I’d been inside – the cars on the street moved so fast, people walked in such haste. The world had gone and gotten itself in a big rush. I really wondered whether I would be able to adjust to life on the outside. I heard there were even these things called computers. Ok, it had only been two weeks since I went in, but I still felt weird. I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs because I had a four year suspended sentence hanging over my head. That meant for four years if I got arrested for anything – even a J-walking ticket, a DUI, bar fight, anything – my sweet ass was headed to BIG BOY prison for four full years – no trial, no due process, nada. So of course I was breaking the law within minutes of being out, but that didn’t mean I had to feel warm and fuzzy about it.
Everyone in jail has a ridiculous, elaborate story about how they’re innocent. I was innocent. Sort of. In the movies when you get out of Rikers Island Wesley Snipes and his diamond-studded entourage are waiting for you on a rooftop overlooking the city and give you a big hug, welcoming you back. To reward your loyalty for not snitching Wesley gives you a stack of fifty grand cash just as “walking around” money. He snaps his fingers and Coco and Delicious, two insanely curvaceous Puerto Rican rap video models, each take you by an arm and lead you downstairs…
We just stopped at McDonalds and then headed back to Reilly’s house. Not quite as glamorous. There was a dude that looked like Wesley Snipes working at McDonalds, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him – his taxes would have been taken out of his paycheck.
Back at Reilly’s house I just sat around and smoked more and drank a Fat Tire, trying to unwind from six months of an unbelievably stressful process. It’s wasn’t working. The fact that I was now state property, Prisoner number 96CR275, was indelibly branded into my psyche. A few moments later I saw someone in uniform walking in front of the living room picture window out of the corner of my eye. What the hell? I got up and looked again – someone in uniform flashed across the side window now headed towards the back yard. Oh shit! The cops!
I yelled for Reilly, who came running from the garage (the only room of the house he hangs out) and told him that the Po Po were raiding his house. I started freaking out because of my suspended sentence, vowing that they’d never take me alive. He told me to shut up and chill and ushered me into the bedroom. He handed me an AK47 assault rifle and told me to hide. I’m not making this shit up. The only place to hide was under the bed so I scooted under there with the AK and waited for what seemed like an hour. I thought for sure I was going to prison, where I would have to try and kick somebody’s ass just so my fruit cocktail wouldn’t get stolen. The thought of blasting my way out of his house crossed my panicked mind. I heard footsteps in the hall and the door creaking opening. It was over – I was royally screwed. But it was Reilly telling me to get my ass up – it was just the meter maid.
The next few days I was trying to get back in the groove of being a responsible, law abiding citizen, but my friends had other plans. The first weekend I was out they threw a “Welcome Home from Jail” party for me, complete with pretend prison bars on all of our apartment windows made with black streamers. These are the same dueschehbag friends who I asked to bring my personal affects to jail and brought me soap on a rope. On visitors day they brought me lasagna in a to-go container and then asked me to pay for it. I’m not making this shit up.
The party was hot and I got way too drunk way too fast – everyone wanted to do a shot or smoke with me. Honeys were coming out of the woodwork wanting to hang out. I guess a guy with a little Thug Cred fresh out of jail is a turn-on? I couldn’t get a date for two years before that but I guess I needed to be incarcerated to improve my social life.
All of a sudden I didn’t feel so well. The room started spinning and everything was moving in slow motion like I had been hit with a rhinoceros tranquilizer, and with that crew it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the punch was spiked with it. I went out front to get some fresh air. I felt like I was going to puke so I ran to the bushes by the side of the apartment. I tossed cookies for a while but felt even worse – I knew I was about to pass out. You NEVER want to pass out around people from Connecticut – it’s scarier than going to jail. You’re assured to wake up with marker all over your face, covered in flour, or naked out in the front yard with a “Free” sign duct taped to you. Like a dog wandering off in the woods to die alone, I dove into the nearest bush, intending to hunker down and make it my resting place for the night. I could hear the whole party going on around me and people coming and going, but through the warped perception of a drunk dude in a bush. In the distance I heard the sirens of police cars. Oh shit, they were coming to get me. It sounded like they were getting closer. I was screwed again, going to prison for four years, not for an armed robbery, but a drunk and disorderly in a damn bush. Maybe it was minutes, maybe hours later, but I heard Reilly’s voice. He was asking around the party where I was. No one knew. He started yelling at our roommates for losing me and allowing me to walk out. What was I a Chihuahua? His blue Escort was parked in the driveway so I drug myself out of the bush and leaned on his hood. He was still yelling as he turned around and there I was, puke on my pants and remnants of bushes in my shirt and hair, blinking out of one eye because a contact lens had been poked out by a stick. I was too drunk to even talk, and he wasn’t asking questions. Reilly threw me in the car like a piece of luggage and we escaped before the cops got there.
The first order of business was to get the hell out of town. Larimer County, Colorado had the strictest criminal codes in the country outside of this one Medieval county in Texas where they’ll even hang you for not voting Republican, so it wasn’t a great place to spend four years watching the clock tick down towards my freedom. San Francisco seemed like the logical choice – my old homie Goo Rasta was living out there and had an opening at his apartment. In San Francisco anything could go down and you wouldn’t get arrested, even if you ran naked in the streets covered in human blood while smoking a crack pipe. Just don’t wear fur and you’ll be ok. So it seemed like the perfect place to let me freak flag fly and at the same time stay off the radar in Larimer County.
There were only a few details to wrap up because I had been living pretty Spartan to begin with. My furniture consisted of milk crates and a dirty mattress, so I just threw them in the dumpster. After being arrested I was summarily shit-canned from my job as a counselor at a youth center so through the winter, while I was waiting for my trial, I had been painting houses for Sketchy Gene. Gene was a big fat Mexican guy who wore his sunglasses indoors and ran a painting company as a front for moving weed and pills. He walked with a slight limp from when another drug dealer took a baseball bat to his knee years ago. Every day I painted and froze my ass off for a few bucks an hour while listening to his incoherent ra-ra pep talks. After paying attorneys fees and all the bullshit court costs I was barely scraping by. Every week I donated plasma twice just to get grocery money. Donating plasma is different than donating blood – they stick a huge needle in your arm and for about 45 minutes drain your blood, running it through a centrifuge to extract the white blood cells and platelettes. Then they shoot the remaining blood back into you. The first time I donated plasma in a week they paid you $15, the second time $12 because your blood was less hearty with the good stuff. $27 for selling my life force, and that was my grocery money for the week. I’d stumble out of there all dizzy and sick, but at least I got a free cookie and a Dixie cup of orange juice out of it.
I was hungry and I was scared. The looming specter of heading to prison where you’ll have to fight to save your ass everyday has a way of sharpening a person’s survival instinct. I swear I must have done 500 pushups and 100 pullups a day, alone in my room because I couldn’t afford a gym, and all my clothes hung off of me. For six months a big Saturday night for me was to go to the local coffee shop and that had 99 cent bottomless coffee and jazz music and read Dante and Voltaire in the back corner. I was the most cultured thug in the yard. So leaving town was easy – I told Gene to go F himself and moved out of my apartment on 623 ½ Remington Street, crashing on Reilly’s couch until I split. There was only one last detail to attend to – selling my car.
My car had actually been impounded and my license suspended when I got arrested, even though it had absolutely nothing to do with it. I drove an old blue Toyota Corolla with a Samples bumper sticker, a great car that had served me well in college back in Connecticut, criss-crossed the country a few times, and brought us down to many Phish shows at Red Rocks, where we partied out of the trunk. But now it was dirty, neglected and beat down. I didn’t have a dollar to sink into it and it was falling apart. In my haste to get out of town I was ready to donate it or just dump it to someone for a few hundred dollars.
But Reilly talked some sense into me. He proposed that we take our time and fix it up right and then sell it. The voice of reason. You have to understand that Reilly loved anything that had a motor. He confessed that everything he owned uses gasoline, quite possibly even his girlfriends. Think of a 6’4”, 240 lbs Redneck with a shaved head who’s a cross between Kid Rock and Brock Lessner, but with the heart of Mother Theresa. Reilly brushes his teeth with warm Budweiser and his favorite color is denim.
We checked the Blue Book and saw that in fair condition the car was worth about $3,600. Not too damn bad, especially for a broke ass like me back in 1997. We went down the list of things that was wrong with the car and would be easily noticed. I vacuumed it out as Reilly tinkered under the hood. If we didn’t have the money for the parts to fix it correctly he went McGyver on it. Duct tape held a few hoses together. Super glue was applied to the door handle and window lever that had fallen off. Five Green Tree air fresheners were hidden under the seat to mask the smell of weed smoke and Big City Burrito remnants with fresh toxic pine. We were almost done and this ship was starting to look like it would sail again. The last thing was trying to affix the license plate holder, which had fallen off when we drunkenly ran into a boulder up at Horsetooth Resevoir one night, back onto the front bumper. Reilly sweated over it for a few minutes but it was turning out to be more difficult than we anticipated; there was no place to screw in the license plate holder anymore because the bracket was bent, so the screws would have nothing to dig into. Reilly arose from working on the car, took a step back, and handed me a piece of bubblegum. What the hell? Had he given up? Why would I want bubblegum at a time like this? But I’ve learned to rarely question Reilly’s instructions; half the time they actually made sense and the other half led to something uproariously entertaining. Plus I was hungry, and a piece of Watermelon Bubbalicious was more nourishing than some of the meals I’d been eating recently.
After I chomped on the gum for a few minutes Reilly held out his grease-stained hand. I took out wad of gum and put it in his hand. He got down under the front of the car again, fiddled for a while, then got back up, revealing a perfectly intact license plate. He had screwed it into the buggle gum so there was some place for it to catch, and when it dried it would hold. This grease monkey had actually put my car back together with bubble gum and super glue. Incredible. Not necessarily mechanically correct or ethical, but incredible.
Reilly put an ad in the paper for a refurbished Toyota Corrolla in perfect condition and got flooded with calls. In one Saturday he got fifteen phone calls, every single one from an Asian person who wanted to see it immediately. I didn’t know there were even fifteen Asian people in Colorado. He set up showings with the ones who spoke the least English and were obviously right off the boat. One guy only spoke a few phrases of rough English and had just arrived in town from China on an internship at the local University, Colorado State. He kept talking about how he needed to bring his academic advisor to see the car. Perfect. By this point Reilly spoke fluent Mandarin and we were ordering General Tsao’s chicken in honor of our new friends, which arrived in seven minutes flat with extra eggrolls. I guess the word was out that Reilly was a friend to the Colorado Chinese community…for now.
The Chinese dude came on by and brought his wife and to look at the car. He seemed like a nice enough fella but was dressed like Long Duck Dong from Sixteen Candles. He kept talking about his advisor and how he needed to be in on the deal. Reilly never did like college, even when he was in college, so he told him to leave the advisor the hell out of this. The guy wanted to bring the car for his mechanic to check out. The mechanic wrote up a list of repairs that had to be made, not including super glue or bubble gum, and we deducted those from the full Blue Book value. After deducting the price of repairs we ended up at $2,400, down from $3,600. We thought that was fair so everyone agreed on it and they finalized the deal. The Chinaman balked because his advisor wasn’t there but handed Reilly $2,400 in crisp hundred dollar bills. In those days $2,400 in my pocket was a friggin fortune. I had probably not spent $2,400 in the previous six months combined outside of my attorney and court costs.
Long Duck Dong got in the car with his wife, proud as punch with his new shiny purchase, and they started to drive off. It was a hot day in August so his wife started to roll down her passenger window. The handle broke off in her hand. We could see her waving it at her husband and yelling. Uh oh. The car screetched to a halt as they examined the super-glued handle like it was an ancient artifact. Reilly had been handling the whole transaction in the front yard, so he immediately opened the screen door and handed me the cash and went back out. I just stared at the money, my newfound fortune, and thought about all I had been through, all the stress and struggle, and what freedoms had been taken from me. I ran. Like a rabbit freed from a trap, I turned and bolted through the house and out the back door. I sprinted across the backyard and jumped over the 5 foot fence, through a neighbor’s yard, almost knocking over their birdbath, over their fence, and onto the street. I don’t remember where I ran to or when I stopped, but wherever I was it was with $2,400 cash in my pocket and Long Duck Dong nowhere to be seen.
I caught up with Reilly later that day. He said that they had driven off after that. Over a cold beer I started thinking about what to do with my fortune. I would finish paying off my attorney bill and a credit card, and that would leave me about $1,200. I really wanted to make good use of that money and turn over a new leaf, being responsible and prudent. Maybe I was rehabilitated?
The next morning you could tell it was gonna be a hot one. The forecast predicted it was going to be 100 degrees, one of the hottest days of the summer. Reilly and I were sitting out on his front porch, enjoying the shade and shooting the shit. Up rolled a light blue Toyota Corolla with an entire Chinese family inside, tires smoking as it parked half on the sidewalk facing the wrong way down the street. Funny, that looked a lot like a similar car that I used to own – what a coincidence. Long Duck Dong jumped out and crossed the front lawn yelling at us in rapid fire Chinese. Uh oh…there goes our egg roll hookup. He kept saying the car was no good and he wanted the money back. He had already called his advisor, who was on the way. Long Duck Dong screamed that the car was already falling apart and he took it to emissions and it didn’t pass. He really wanted his money back.
Reilly is no polyglot but when talking to foreigners, or those from Texas, he can mirror an accent so badly that even I was offended, but somehow he gets the point across.
“We have no money. No money!” Reilly yelled back at him. “We spent it. It gone. Gonnnnnnnnnne! You go now!”
The Chinaman wasn’t acquiescing and kept yelling about his advisor and that we had to give his money back. When Reilly refused he went back to the car, unloaded his wife and three kids, and sat Indian-style on the front sidewalk. This Chinese family was officially boycotting the Reilly residence; it was a good old-fashioned sit in. The wife looked very confused sitting on the sidewalk but the kids were having fun, like this was a new American game they hadn’t heard of yet and all of their schoolfriends were probably sitting in front of a Rednecks house as well. But the Donger refused to budge and kept yelling at Reilly about his advisor and the damn money.
By ten o’clock it was toasty. By noon, when the sun was directly overhead, it was downright smoldering. If someone was to drive by they would see a very angry Chinese family melting on the sidewalk, staring daggers at me and Reilly relaxing on the front porch. It was actually pretty comfortable in the shade on our lounge chairs, and the lemonade with vodka that Reilly had made us was downright refreshing. Extra ice cubes Norm? Sure thing Reilly. Sure is a hot one! The family was sweating profusely, like they were working in Kathy Lee Gifford’s factory hand-sewing knock-off purses for 14 hours a day with no bathroom breaks. Every twenty minutes or so the yelling would start with the Chinaman demanding his money back and Reilly screaming back “No money. It spent. It gonnnnnnnnnne! You go now!” Then everyone would get tired and give up and just stare at each other in silence for a while.
The advisor never did show up, but by one o clock the pitcher of lemonade was gone and it was getting too hot for us even in the shade. Reilly had all he could tolerate of this Mexican (Chinese?) standoff, so he went inside to call the cops. I was shocked. “What the fuck Reilly – people like us don’t call the cops – people call the cops on us! What the hell are you doing?!” That’s all I needed – the fuzz showing up and shaking me down because was fresh out of jail and accusing me of fraud or something. I was well versed in the inner workings of our legal system and unfortunately guilt and innocence had nothing to do with it. But Reilly had to get the Dong family the fuck off our front yard somehow before we started an international incident. Great, I was headed to jail once again. Forty eight hours of freedom and I was going back. I heard Reilly inside on the phone with 911. He was laughing and chatting away. Five minutes later he came out with a smile on his face – the 911 dispatcher was an old friend of his and that owed him a favor and she was going to look out for us. Cool. Score: Reilly 1 – China 0.
The cops came and we explained the situation. Of course they couldn’t understand much of the Chinaman’s complaint and raised an eyebrow when he kept talking about his advisor. The policeman explained that the car was sold perfectly legally and that even though the sidewalk was public property, they couldn’t loiter in front of someone’s house. And he gave them a ticket for being parked illegally. The Dongs got back into the Corolla and drove off, shaking their fists but happy to be in the AC, and Reilly and I went back inside to watch Shark Week reruns.
Me? I was concerned with doing the right thing with the remaining $1,200 cash. This was all I had in the world so it was imperative I allocated it correctly. I deliberated over it all afternoon – at the bar, scratching my head and penciling out numbers on a cocktail napkin. My financial planning session went well into the night, and the next day. It was such and important decision that I enlisted the help of my friends Pistol Pete and Reilly, who were happy to come down to the bar and help me. Our economic Think Tank went into the next day, and the night, and on for two weeks straight. We sat at the bar at Lucky Joes in Old Town or in the perfect grimey shadows of Tony’s, home of the stiffie, and planned the best financial strategy for investing $1,200, err..$900, err….$400 dollars. After two weeks, most of which I don’t remember, the money was completely gone. Gonnnnnnnnnnnnne! Damn I have great friends. The three of us got up from the bar and they drove me to the airport to catch a flight to San Francisco.
The good news is that the car was fine – it just needed to be driven around a little before they put it through emissions and they actually got a hell of a deal at that price. Six years later Reilly was drunk inside Tony’s around Christmas and almost spit out his Jack and Coke out when he saw a light blue Corolla pull up on the street and a Chinaman get out. He had a few more grey hairs under his Denver Broncos baseball cap and a nice little beer belly, looking a little like Ling Ling the Panda at the Denver Zoo, but the car was still kicking. His advisor was nowhere to be seen.
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