Hanging in ‘charm city’ with Jimmy L, nice and quiet out like the dead already dawned and it’s now after lunch and they sleepin’. Walkin’ by I saw a young man of my shade (maybe a bit lighter even) wearing shades, a casual suit and a nice big black cane in his hand with a large handle. I had my stick with a few other necessities and as I crossed White Avenue (don’t laugh ya’ll) we looked at each other and he smiled.
“Seems like everybody is walking with a stick today” He said without missing a beat(ing).
“I have no idea why!” I said with faux surprise, both of us laughing at the joke that the city we both were currently standing in was technically lawless. It was beautiful, sunny and mild with the spring buds in full bloom and proof that anarchy could work if only for a minute or two on a block here and there.
Jimmy L and I talked and ate and drank and talked.
Our first drinking hole was boarded up already in a sort of urban post riot camo and we returned to the fabulous 1920’s (I wish) as we were now technically at a speakeasy with no password. After knocking on the door for a few minutes a face of irish (and maybe polish mixed in) extraction long americanized looked upon us with very suspicious eyes.
“It’s Last Call, already.”
The earliest Last Call in history, not counting when the Persians were finally conquered by the Towel heads. The implication was that we should leave was more than implicit and dare I say tinged with a degree of learned fear. A woman inside recognized the esteemed gentleman, Jimmy L, and soon we were allowed entrance to the bar from the not so classic horror film “Feast”(Whose star Clu Gulager once remarked of myself, Mescaline Franklin, that I ‘looked like an actor’). Inside we were allowed one beer and it felt apocalyptical and surreal with no day light coming through the one window In the joint, boarded up to resist the savage hordes of cop destroying high school kids.
Inside everyone seemed a bit subdued but I enjoyed the time, the End of the World fetish; punctuated by some senile black pastor talking typical social justice nonsense mixed with scripture (oh wait it is one and the same, hence my anti-theism, which includes atheism as the most hated of religions). I was like, “who is this fool?”
Some worthless asshole gets his chicken neck or back or whatever snapped by pigs (some animals are more Equal than others) and people have a right to destroy things?
Actually they do, not because of the injustice (of which there is none) but because THEY COULD.
They took the moment and imposed their wills and kicked the crap out of the pigs who make you and I nod, put our hands where they can see em and prevent us from defending ourselves. No Justice, No Peace is actually quite accurate, although chanted by mindless hordes. Right for the Wrong reason.
There is no Justice only strength or weakness.
There is no Peace, only a lull in the war we call life.
Anyhow, we ended the night at the hipster bar across the street which was packed with hipsters, even one or two of their children, some lesbians and some gay guys. Jimmy L, Me and Mister Quinn( who could not get a drink at The Worlds End pub) sat and talked and drank , 80’s new romantic music in the background. The ever astute Jimmy L noticed the difference between the Happy Hipster and The World’s End Pub.
The smart and beautiful people were not afraid although few of them could probably defend themselves at all from savage youth attacks. Meanwhile the tougher and weathered working class was bugging out early. Was this a turn on its head, dialectical moment at the end of history?
Nah, son. It was one group that has been hammered between the pigs and the savages for so long, it was like a beat dog cringing. The beautiful people across the street (And some were, I won’t lie) were confident that they would be safe. Apparently never knowing a sucker punch from a youth or getting a fat cop finger put in your face.
Like the SWPL saying goes, “there is no unhappy ending.”
Five drinks or so later, we were the last ones at the bar and soon the owner asked us to leave, looking at us with both disdain and slight trepidation. Hey we made that place more interesting, pal! The wait staff there are really cool however and I wish them luck and safety till next we meet. Same with the staff across the street. My dwindling faith in humanity, both hipster and proletariat is challenged by these good people. So we left and were technically law breakers the second we opened the door and set our foot out onto the sidewalk.
The Curfew.
We walked off into the quiet night, beautiful and moonlit. A night for dark spirits to work their magic and the lunar goddess watching us and hoping her cousin the comet would come visit and wipe out these disgusting primates. But not tonight, sadly.
Not a minute down the ave, a grey umarked paid for by joe sap taxpayer pulled alongside us and asked us in that condescending and I-hope-you-give-us-a-problem-so-we-can-fuck-you-up tone. Being ‘Cauks’(as per Tito Perdue), we would not be avenged or cared for. After answering diligently and with full compliance, we were allowed on our way to roam back to a safe place to lay our heads. Still the restless call of a moonlit and still night lead to another beer and sitting on the porch.
As american as it gets. Jimmy L counted the cars that went by and noticed this was a pedestrian curfew only. The first one for adults he could remember since the Gipper administration. Despite his sage stage and wizened years, I suspected no senility and took it for his word.
Good luck with your pass, tonight! Remember to show your papers..
It was fun and surreal. One imagines five years from now. The Iron Masked lady with the slowly melting face is up next for eight years. The gynocentric wheel is turning ever so more and its what this place deserves. Womanly men and women who act like womanly men and the hordes who are separated by an ever thinning wall of cannon fodder whites, soon to be mestizos (they hope) as arabs did of their Turkish ‘servants’.
