When I was a kid we used to run around and get ourselves into trouble as often as we could, and with more fervor than most. I grew up in a dirty little town in Queens called College Point, nicknamed Garbage Point by the kids from wealthier families in the neighboring towns of Whitestone and Bayside. It was a predominately poor town, mostly Hispanic, with a strong Asian presence on the south side as it became Flushing. It was quite literally a dead end town, surrounded by water on nearly every side. With only two main roads out and in, it wasn't a place blessed with booming commerce or a large exchange of people on any given day. It existed like an extremity with strangled circulation, slowly suffocating from lack of sufficient blood-flow. The part of town I lived in was sullen and soot stained, populated by countless factories all adorned with half-assed amateur graffiti; even they looked poor.
The youth were drug addled and prone to violence. It wasn't uncommon to see fights break out on the street or watch drug deals go down in the park near the handball courts. It was a place that attracted an eclectic variety of degenerate scum; hustlers, thieves and junkies, lowlives with big ideas. In time I would watch friends succumb to the allure of College Point's deviant charm - the danger, the money and intrigue, rebellion and excitement. Eventually they, like those before them, would be claimed by the seemingly inescapable pull toward drugs and dead futures. But this was way before that grim eventuality and we were all still relatively uncorrupted, enjoying the reckless abandon of youth without consequence.
Before we had licenses we would steal our parents' cars while they slept at night. It was a time of much hurried whispering and premeditated movements in the moonlight; a diversion in the house to mute the sound of the car starting, kinly accomplices conspiring with us to enable an assured escape. Radiohead, Tool and Rage Against the Machine were anthemic to our adventures. We'd drive around with the music loud, causing trouble and picking up girls who'd snuck out of their houses to meet us. Many times alcohol would be involved, as was the case this particular night.
We did it responsibly though, taking care to ensure that the person driving had drank little to nothing, in an effort to mitigate our risk should we be pulled over or crash the car. That night, we were in Bayside, parked at a girl's house whose parents were away. I was in the backseat of the minivan with one girl, and my friend's brother was in the middle with another. Our driver was inside the house with the last girl. Everything was going swimmingly - concentrated adolescent hormones surged as we groped at one another with unadulterated desire - until my phone went off. It was a text that read "start the car, her parents just came home!" Half drunk and fully panicked, I jumped behind the wheel and started the car as my friend came crawling out of the house through what seemed like the doggy-door. "GO GO GO," he shouted, as I threw the car in reverse and gave it a little too much gas. The car lurched backwards, loudly toppling a pair of trashcans that fell into a parked car, setting off a car-alarm. Trembling with exhilaration I put it in drive and we quickly drove off around the corner and away from the scene.
Once we got to a safe distance my friend took the helm and decided we should call it a night. Since it was late and we weren't going to get laid, we plotted the course to drop the girls off. As we turned onto Francis Lewis boulevard - a major avenue that cut through Whitestone and went all the way out toward Long Island - we realized we'd driven straight into a road-block. The stopped cars ahead of us weren't the result of some late night traffic accident, it was a police checkpoint. It was too late to maneuver out of it. Flares, police tape and orange cones blocked off the turnout. The car was dead silent. A wooden Jesus on the dashboard brandished an admonishing smile. From the backseat Nick's brother said "holy shit, a roadblock!?" We were trapped. Like dogs left in a car on a hot day, we peered out through the glass with sad puppy eyes, while the girls whimpered in the back.
"Yep; we're fucked," I said.
I looked at my friend Nick and we both began hysterically laughing. If you can't laugh at your own misfortune you shouldn't laugh at anyone else's. We inched up the line, moving closer and closer to where a group of policemen stood inspecting licenses and vehicle registrations. As we moved closer we quickly collected the beers and hid them under the seat away from view. I rummaged through the glovebox looking for the registration so that we could immediately hand it over, giving them less time to sit and smell the alcohol on our breath. There was now just one car ahead of us.
It seemed like everyone in the car stopped breathing as we pulled up. The officer asked for the license and registration. We all braced ourselves for the cop's inevitable response, "can you step out of the vehicle." Instead, he flashed his light on the ID and paperwork, and then at Nick and myself. Then he handed the documents back to Nick and told us to be careful as he waved us off. We fought with all our might to betray the smiles that tried to twist our lips. "Just a few more seconds; be cool until we drive off," I thought.
"How the fuck...?!" Relief hugged our hearts and we all sighed and laughed. Victorious, we dropped the girls off and headed back home. When we parked the car we stayed out another hour while we questioned our unbelievable luck and wondered how and why we'd gotten away with it.
The next day Nick told me the Jesus statue had vanished. He told me that he tore the car apart trying to find it, but it was gone.
Sweet Jesus...
No comments:
Post a Comment