Drive Thru Damnation

Woke up early. James is away, back in the motherland, and so I've inherited his car. Where it was parked forced me to wake up at an ungodly hour and move it for early morning street cleaning. I'm not sure what street cleaning actually accomplishes though. A loud, slow moving truck comes by bearing huge spinning bristles that swirl around and scrape the gutter as the truck inches by. In its wake there is often garbage strewn about, blowing in the wind from its freshly disturbed place. The grime and general uncleanliness of the street still remains intact, however. I think a giant toothbrush with a big glob of oxyclean on it would be more effective. We'd just need to hire a team to scrub the gutters with it to get them all pearly white.

When I first woke up I thought I'd just go back to sleep after, that I'd still be tired from sitting in the car for an hour and twiddling my thumbs. I can see now that I was mistaken. I'm awake now. Maybe there's still time to tire myself out. I could do some erotic morning calisthenics. When the car is a rockin', don't come a knockin'. That sounds like a lot of work. On top of that, over the weekend I slept wrong on my shoulder, and now it's in quite a lot of pain. Any unnecessary exertion seems unappealing.

An unfortunate side effect of the injury I sustained while dreaming is that I can't go to the gym to lift weights. I might go anyway and just stick to cardio.

Oh, here's the street cleaner. Time to move the car. Be right back.

Ok, so I've moved the car, but now I wonder if I can leave the car here with risk of ticketing. The cleaning has occurred, but the sign says no parking between 6-7 for street cleaning. Since the cleaning has happened, and the cop cars have passed, is it safe to leave the vehicle even though it's only 6:20? I think I'll wait 5 minutes, and then if no wild traffic cops appear, I'll role the dice. This is a good case study on owning a car in San Francisco. Recently I'd been considering buying a car, a Jeep, but I hadn't considered the inconvenience of not having a garage. Cars on my street often get their windows broken by desperate crackheads looking for lint to smoke between the seats. Kids key the side doors. When I was younger we used to steal the caps off tires and deflate them slightly, for fun. Some nights for cheap thrills we'd drive around and smash the side mirrors off of parked cars. I'm owed a karmic return, you see, so I'm hesitant to put the car in a precarious parking position.

Saturday night, after a show, Holly and I got stoned and hungry. I floated an idea - a secret pastime of mine - of calling an Uber to take us to the McDonald's drive thru. She seemed giddy at the prospect, even though she wasn't particularly partial to fast food, especially McDonald's. But after a few kisses and a couple more hits of the bowl, she obliged. Carlos picked us up, a man who bore a striking resemblance to Uncle Fester. There would be two stops, I told him, the first would be McDonald's, and the second, back here. I asked him how he felt about circularity. When we got there I asked him if he wanted anything. I told him we'd pay but he insisted he could pay for his own. We're in this together, man, let me buy you a ten-piece. He laughed graciously but was firm about paying. Holly, sitting on the driver's side, had the responsibility of placing the order.

As she spoke to the voice coming through the speaker, she made a faux pas that outed us as two stoners. She asked for a Frosty. At McDonald's. No! How could you have been so foolish! They're onto us! She caught her mistake readily, and began laughing hysterically into the microphone, for what felt like eons. Don't do this to us, baby, please, stop laughing. Uncle Fester had grown older and more wrinkled by the time the voice replied. Is there anything else, he asked coldly. Yes, a ten piece chicken nuggets. Just then, Carlos blurted, "on a separate check." What!? A separate check!? At a McDonald's drive through? What the fuck do you think this is, Carlos? Have you done this before? When have you ever fucking gotten two checks at a fast food drive thru!? Holy fuck this was amateur hour. Not only did they know we were stoned and in over our heads, but they knew we had the nerve to drag a third party into this by hiring a driver to deliver us to our late night indecency. What kind of sauce, the voice asked. I want to pay, Carlos yelled back. Carlos, man, shut the fuck up. Put it separate, he screamed, put it separate! What kind of sauce? Just give him ketchup! Then there was silence. I heard a dog howl in the distance. Or maybe it was a wolf. Through the open window I could hear the judgement buzzing from the speaker. And then it came: you know, for a penny you could get 20 nuggets instead of 10. I was too high for this kind of math. For one cent we could double the number of nuggets!? We looked at each other. What were we supposed to do? Was he toying with us? What does one do when the offer is simply too good to refuse, and yet, too good to be true? I looked at Carlos, hoping to catch his eyes in the rear view mirror but all I saw was nervous sweat dappled across his bald head. JUST DO IT, I screamed. What was happening? Was I in a Nike commercial? Had they partnered with McDonald's? I knew one thing for sure, though, I wasn't lovin' it.

There was silence. Something was wrong.

What. Kind. Of. Sauce.

Goddamnit, got us again. Honey mustard.

Drive up.

We drove up, completely unprepared to meet the face of the voice of god. We were to be sentenced. The car crawled around the curve. Carlos had cut the turn too wide and the front of the car jutted out away from the window, putting as much distance between himself and the window as possible. He threw a crumpled up $5 bill at me and made the sign of the cross as he clutched the rosary beads that hung from the mirror. I could sense his shame. A pimply faced boy with long hair poked his head through the window at us in the back seat. His brontosaurus neck stretched into the car cartoonishly as his lips hovered just before my ear.

We might be out of apple pies.

Ay Dios mio, Carlos screamed. This was too much to handle. Out of apple pies? On a Saturday night? This was prime time! What did I come here for? We all know the nuggets aren't chicken, and the burgers are made of wax and perfume. Fuck. Fuck it all.

Just joshin' ya.

He dropped the bag into my lap. The smell was intoxicating. Once Holly handed him the cash, Carlos sped out of there like a bat out of hell. In the blink of an eye we were back at Holly's and Carlos was looking at his nuggets erotically, softly moaning under his breath as he tore open a ketchup packet. I wondered if there was a condom inside. As we exited the car I could have sworn I heard him whispering to the nuggets.

Cluck.

Cluck!

Cluck!

Hip-Hop Bounty Huntin'

Today something momentous happened. I discovered my place in the Star Wars universe. It happened in Dolores Park, while trying to determine the easiest way to lure my girlfriend out of the park and away from Pokemon Go. Boba tea, I thought, that should do it. And then it hit me; my name; the letters emblazoned in crimson against a streaking, ashen sky; Boba Fetty Wap.

How it took this long to dawn on me, I can't say, but now that I've found my place in the Star Wars canon I can rest easy. Just think: The Intergalactic Misadventures of Boba Fetty Wap. Who wouldn't want to read about that? Imagine all of the wacky space hijinks I'd get myself into as the world's first hip-hop bounty hunter. My debut album, It's a Trap, Queen, inspired by Admiral Ackbar, would for the first time in music history, break platinum. My beats would be so fire they'd need to freeze them in carbonite to handle them. My stardom would be catapulted into deep space, into the farthest-reaching, most elusive sectors of the known universe. Darth Vader, the greatest Sith to ever live, would make guest appearances on my tracks, from the grave. Just like Tupac. The number one single off the album, a cover of Jermaine Jackson's "Let's Get Serious," featuring Darth Sidious, aptly titled "Let's Get Sidious, would be an interstellar hit.

But to be a historied antihero I'd need to do more than just sell records and make more cheddar than I knew what to do with. I'd need to become a bounty hunter. And so it happened like this:

During a sellout, Pepsi-sponsored performance on Tatooine, my hair and face catch fire as the result of an ill-timed pyrotechnics explosion, leaving me hideously scarred and disfigured. The recovery is hard, and the pain is even worse. I lose an eye. Weeks go by while I lie in bed, clutching a blaster, contemplating suicide, cursing my fate. Eventually word gets out that my injury was no accident. It had been the work of a gang of rival musicians, jealous of my success. After faking my death, I leverage my enormous wealth by hiring Django Fett's brother, Mango Fett, to train me in the ways of stealth combat, surveillance and tracking, so that I might systematically set out to destroy each and every person involved in the plot against me. It takes years of training. Mango and I form an unlikely alliance and forge a deep friendship. He becomes like a father to me. On an ordinary night out in the delta quadrant off Bonadon, on a routine bounty collection, something goes wrong. Mango's jetpack malfunctions, sending him careening over a pod bay door and into a narrowing trash compactor. Seeing that the end is near, Mango reveals to me my true birth origins and tells me I'm actually the bastard son of his brother, Django. He dies as his helmet is tragically crushed like a soda can.

Employing my newfound tracking skills, I eventually locate my biological father, Django. When we meet he cuts off my hand and tells me I'm his father. Confused, I tell him that he's wrong, that he's my father and it's the whole reason I sought him out in the first place. In retaliation, I blast his dick off with Mango's blaster that he'd given me before he'd been compacted. Castrated, but realizing I held his brother's blaster, and must therefore be telling the truth, he listens as I recount the story of Mango's death. Revitalized by a deep sense of filial duty, Django obliges to avenge mine and Mango's assailants. Upon capturing and interrogating one of the men who'd ambushed Mango and I near Bonadon, we learn that they were working for an even larger organization than we'd previously believed, that unbeknownst to me, tucked away in my iced-out Jesus-head chain was a hologram sex tape of the emperor fucking an underage girl in her chocolate death star. The tape, if its contents were made public, would be the empire's undoing. It must be destroyed at all costs. There had even been a cadre of rogue Jedi recruited for bringing me in. So I did the only thing I could, the only way I knew how. I'd bring them to me. But to do it, I'd need to host a party.

I'd make the performance of a lifetime, back from the dead. It was the only way we'd be guaranteed to attract them. We flew out in the Millennium Bentley and set course for Alderaan, the cloud city, to get lifted. We smoked the stickiest of the icky and put more trees in the air than Endor. We popped bottles of Cristal and passed the finest Courvoisier. Things only started to get ugly when Lando brought the sizzurp out. There was the inevitable altercation and subsequent shooting, though it wasn't clear who shot first. The bitches scattered, glass shattered, and the only thing that mattered was getting our shit gathered. We ducked out backstage and waited. Then he came. In all his glowing, orange glory. The evil brainiac behind it all: Darth Donald. His hair looked thinner in person, and it seemed to be always about to blow off. It reminded me of the top of a cockatoo's head. And his hands, his hands were smaller than a child's. With a squint, a cocked head, and puckered lips, he revealed an enormous orange lightsaber. It was huge. I've got the best lightsaber, he said, it's the biggest. You know, you can't find a bigger lightsaber anywhere, even if you tried. It's not even possible. With one swoop of his arm he cut Django into two. That's when something in me awakened. It came up from deep within me. The force. A beam of firm, solid light ripped through my jeans and blared balefully. The color was purple and pulsing and it coruscated electrically. Darth Donald heaved a heavy blow at me but my saber was unmoved. He swung again, even more forcefully than the first time, but still my beam didn't budge. Emboldened by his futility, my sword swelled. I saw his eyes shrink as it overtook his in size. It's not possible, he screamed, swinging violently, desperately, parrying pathetically as I encroached. It was hammer time.

I used the force. I forced it in, and forced him out of existence.

And that's how my story begins...

The Good The Bad and The Pretty

I saw a foreign film last night with James. It was called Cosmos. It was one of those strange, artsy films, lacking any obvious narrative. Instead it relied on emotive feel and the juxtaposition of oddly chosen subtitled words with equally disconcerted onscreen queues; the visual poetry of a maddened mind. The story revolved around a man taking up brief holiday in a family-owned bed and breakfast in France. It's still unclear to me whether he was a law student or an author, or both. Many references were made to great thinkers and writers, like Tolstoy, Sartre and Shakespeare. At around the 4:00 mark, there was a line spoken that stuck with me throughout the film: Tolstoy wrote that our biggest mistake is to confuse the pretty with the good. It was a type of distinction so important, and so obvious, that I felt a fool for never having made it myself. We too often conflate beauty and goodness in our culture. And yes, of course anyone can (and should) recognize that what's beautiful is not also good...but to phrase it so eloquently. What a beautifully pocketable reminder.

But it raised the question: Why do we equate the pretty with the good? Why is it so difficult to discern the difference? In nature we see that what is pretty can often be deadly; predators utilize camouflage techniques to mask fatal intent. Prey use it, too. But is hiding the same as prettiness? It can be said that the sophistication of evolution has in it a certain beauty, but that too seems different than the charm of a camouflaged deceit. Or is it? There's something beguiling about beauty. It has a disarming effect. It's mere apprehension renders the viewer more vulnerable, susceptible to attack or exploitation either through ignorance or express manipulation. Perhaps beauty's power is its ability to be mistaken for the good. A trick for self-preservation. Then, is beauty just a mask? The thin and powdery wings of a moth made to look like the eyes of an owl?

The film seemed to herald the beauty of a woman as the most dangerous kind; the way it can drive a person to self-torture, mutilation, even murder. There is truth in that.

After all, it was Helen of Troy whose face launched a thousand ships to war, not Henry.