Once in a while I like to indulge in a little pick-me upper for my wood. It’s probably not the healthiest, most doctor-prescribed way of doing it, but screw it. I drive over to a local Shell. I don’t know if I’m spelling his name right, but my boy Havi there plays this cool-ass Indian disco music. He pumps up the volume every time I walk in. It probably goes by a different name than Indian disco. Whatever it is, we dance pretty flamboyantly while I peruse the display of wood pills. Without exception, they all have rhinos on them. There’s chewies and blue and black capsules with different potencies. I don’t know what the numbers mean, but they’re in the thousands. I assume the higher the stiffer. Havi quotes other customers who apparently have sung the praises lately of the chewies and some other, honey-based edible. “Some day,” I tell him, then I default to blue. “Yessir, brotha!”
My whole rapport with Havi originates with my wood. The other day, though, I spent a little extra time bullshitting and checking in with him. To tease about my age. To catch up. I’d been away a minute. To dance. If you’re not moving to what Havi’s blasting out his bluetooth speaker, bruh, you’ve got serious issues. Maybe you’re too stiff.
“How’s things?” I ask.
“Slow, man, slow. Real slow.”
“What’s’ up?”
He smacks his lips in that frustrated kind of smacking. “Fucking sheet, man. Nobody coming een right now, bruh.”
I dive into it a little more. What Havi’s getting at very specifically is that the Mexicans have stopped coming in. Apparently, this particular Shell Mart relies on them. Havi explains they used to come in for coffee and Red Bull and lotto tickets and beer (and maybe once in a while clipped Havi and I flame dancing) and now–fucking sheet, man! I wonder if one day soon, I’m gonna head down to Havi’s Shell and not see his shiny Mustang out front, but instead a closed permanently sign.
If there’s any silver lining at all to working on boats all summer up in the Arctic Circle, and thus being confined to a small living space with a few other sausages for days and weeks, it’s that you’re not having to pay for food or gas or incidentals. But then I get home rudely to a twenty six dollar can opener at Ace Hardware. That’s not a typo. That’s also not including the ten point what-the-fuck? percent sales tax my state is famous for. But that’s not the point. The point is I get home to a twenty six dollar can opener and a sullen Havi, which, that’s saying something. Havi is one of the most cheerful people I can point to. He’s genuinely happy for me when I’m gettin’ some. This last time, though, I get home to news of nervous or deported Mexicans. And yeah, a crestfallen Havi.
I’ll go somewhere else if I positively need to. I’ll move to a different country. I’m already telling my twenty-year-old young blood that if he doesn’t pull in at least a hundred and seventy five K as a single to really consider the same. It’s a number I randomly not-so randomly arrive at based on the lifestyle I created for us or, I guess, didn’t. I don’t adjust for inflation. I’m also still in the middle of computing how much more he should earn per person who he adds to his life. I account for such things as daycare, education, the wifey wanting boobs and other work for sure by the time she hits fifty if not sooner. I press him on it: “I mean it, Dawg, move! New Zealand, wherever.” He goes there this coming spring to study. “I’ll move there with.” I say it with a poker face.
I doubt he would take me up on it or even if he could, practically speaking, But he could marry a Kiwi, correct? A Canuck? And that would–I’m obligated to harvest this kind of stuff from my muse and replant it in to his for future reference. Today’s state of our union occasions these kinds of conversations. It commands them.
Maybe it’ll all boil over. And the shit show will have ceased. Leaving Havi, my gauge, with no other choice but to turn up the volume again on his Indian music. I am not that optimistic at the moment. I can hear screechy homies to my left: “Told you so.”
No, assholes, you didn’t. Did you forget how we got here in the first place?
And to my right, more squawking: “You don’t like it, move.”
Well, shit, it just so happens that because of my life’s choices, I can move.
And I just might.
-tmc
