Robert E. Brown. Never knowing you were left behind

I had the same reoccurring dream for nearly a decade. For the entire time I lived in Albuquerque, it wasn't just a dream, it was THE dream. The only one I ever remembered upon waking and it viciously tortured me at least three times a month for eight years.



I was informed that I HAD to go back to high school. The school changed every time but the scenario didn't. My transcripts were wrong and I was forced to re-attend. Suddenly I was trapped, an adult amongst teenagers. I would wander aimlessly through the halls, frustrated and embarrassed that I had been sent back by some unknown power that be. At some point I would realize that I had to find an old girlfriend that I had regretted breaking up with my senior year. I would run through the halls in an eager panic, looking for her in order to apologize for breaking her heart and my own so long ago. After frantically searching for what would seem like an eternity, I would slowly realize that she had long since left, along with all my peers gone years before. I was still there and everyone had moved forward. I was alone and left behind.

I would wake up feeling defeated and morose. It was a closely guarded secret that I never once uttered until years later when I felt compelled to confront my subconscious in a very literal, real world way. But that necessary and humiliating confessional is another tale for another time. I pondered the meaning of the symbolism constantly through my adult life in New Mexico. But you know what they say about seeing forests for the trees. You see, I lived in Albuquerque because I was (supposed to be) going to college.

And what an academic career I had. Changed Universities once. Switched majors three times. Dropped out three times. It took me nearly nine years to complete a BFA. When I went back the final time hell bent on graduating, I read over my transcript in horror. Registered for 18 credits, completed 6. Registered for 16 credits, completed 3. My very first college class was literally straight out of high school. It was a summer session Spanish language class at NMSU and one of my lab partners was a kid that graduated high school at the same time. When I took my last semester in order to get my degree, I realized the professor teaching a course that I was contemplating, was that lab partner. He had his masters and had been teaching for years.

And what was I doing during all that time? Feeling the pull of "the Party." My townie friends and the heavy regiment of concerts and social gatherings conflicted heavily with my academic pursuits. But I really didn't have the excuses that my going down in flames friends had. I never became addicted to drugs-didn't become a junkie like so many. I only drank socially (albeit I drink beyond binge when I do) Didn't even like to smoke pot much. While I dabbled in drug dealing early on, I stayed on the sidelines of my crews ever increasing criminality. I just didn't know the party was over. No one told me, "Robert, it's time to go home now." I liked being in college and used to joke that I didn't ever want to go into the real world. "It's scary out there." I also liked being a rock n' roll scenester man about town. A hot girl in my lap while I hung out with the band. Neither predilection leant itself to the finishing of my academic training, which meant neither lent itself to truly starting my adult life. Instead I stayed in one place. My townie friends crashed and burned, slowly sinking into the lower bowels of addiction and total defeat. My college friends graduated and got real jobs. I stayed put, tormented by dreams of being left behind and never being able to find what I needed.


My Company

Robert E. Brown. Tales from the Land of Entrapment

Everyone takes a beating sometime.
Part III. Never execute a smart plan with a dumb man (finale in red)



I leaned into the front door and grabbed Alex by the collar and drug him into the doorway.
"Dude, you have got to get these guys out of here. It's going to be a bad scene."
"Yeah. Uh, no, no they seem alright.... Don't they?"
"Alex, use your head. Look."
We turned into the doorway and looked into his living room. One had popped himself onto the couch with his feet on the coffee table, a nervous teenage skater sandwiched on one side and a cowering dyed haired betty on the other. The second one was in the kitchen hunched over the open fridge pulling out beer and the third had corned Jen who was sitting on the stair well, blocking her escape with his arm leaning on the wall. He was obviously, aggressively hitting on her and she looked mortified. Most of the kids were already starting to congregate in at the far end of the room like jittery deer. You could feel the thick tension.
"Uh, no it's cool. Just let me feel them out" he said.
He walked over to the one talking to Jen.
"So uh, I'm Alex."
Without turning his head the vato said "Yeah?"
"Yeah, uh, this is my girlfriend Jen."
"Shit Bro, she could do better." Still not taking his eyes off Jen.
"Ha, uh so you want to smoke?" Alex said offering him a joint.
The vato took the joint, lit it and continued to ignore Alex who stood there awkwardly for a moment.
Annoyed by the lingering presence, the vato turned to him and said. "Homes, can't you see I'm talking to the lady?"
"Oh, uh, sorry." Alex retreated leaving Jen with a "please help me" look in her eyes. As he turned and walked back to the doorway, the vato on the couch casually winged a freshly emptied beer can past his head.



Out side I huddled with Alex and laid out a newly hatched plan. "Look, we get in the car, drive to a pay phone and call the cops on your party. When the cops arrive, everyone leaves and the VKC are out of your house. Then we go to the river."
"But they're all minors, I'll get busted."
"Not if you come with me. There won't be anyone over 21 here but the home boys. The pigs will just break up the party. The vatos won't think you dissed them."
At first Alex resisted my plan. Just the mention of cops didn't sit well with him, even though he had sold off most of his weed and there really wasn't anything for them to discover in his house. But he knew he was really fucked and the clock was ticking before the rest of the gang bangers came looking for their three friends. I instructed him to grab Jen and my little brother and meet us at the car where I went to wait. Jennifer and I got into the beat up impala and I started it up.

About 5 minutes went by and suddenly all of the teenage skater kids were wandering out into the street. What the fuck is going on? They were walking to their cars and talking in the middle of the road. Alex and Jen got in the back seat. "Alex, what the fuck is happening? I blurted, "this isn't the plan."
"Yeah, uh, I really didn't want the cops here so I had another idea" he said with confidence. "I told them that we were leaving to go to a party. But I didn't tell tell them WHERE the party was." He grinned. I banged my head on the steering wheel. Where was my little brother? I could see the gang bangers walking down the steps of the porch. They were slowly cluing in on the fact that they were being snubbed and were calling out to the kids trying to get someone's attention. The wolves were realizing that they had spooked the sheep.

By now everyone had pretty much gotten in their rides. In the rear view I could see my little brother heading towards us. Good. Looked like we were going to make it out in one piece after all. "Oh shit, I need to tell Heather something" Alex said and got out of the car. I banged my head on the steering wheel again. The vatos were in the middle of the road and by this point they knew their chance to start some shit was almost over. "Yo homes, where's the party?" Alex zipped passed them ignoring the question and Jared got in the back seat. Alex conducted his business and started jogging back. The exodus began and I sighed with relief. "I think I gave Chili Dog the wrong directions" Jared said and before I could respond he exited the vehicle. I stood out of the car and screamed my objections but he didn't turn back. In the confusion of multiple vehicles pulling out, Jared glided past the them on one side and Alex slipped past them on the other and got back in.

The home boys were trying to wave down the fleeing kids, now clearly pissed that they had been dissed. My little brother finished his quick communication with the last car as it was pulling away and headed back towards us with the three very large mean mother fuckers right in his path. My heart sank into my stomach because I knew what was going to happen next.

As Jared was crossing the street he kicked a beer can, bouncing it onto the sidewalk. They blocked his path.
"Yo homes, Did you just kick that can?"
They surrounded him.
"Do you think you can just kick a fucking can on my block mother fucker?"
Jared stood frozen.
I leaned down into the car, reached past Jennifer and grabbed the still full bottle of wine that I had opened on the porch.
"No one leaves this car" I said.
I stood out of the car with the door still open, holding my wine bottle club behind my back and shouted out to them over the roof.
"He didn't mean any disrespect."
In the time it took the vato to ask "What the fuck did you just say mother fucker..." they had crossed around the car, surrounded me and Jared had jumped into the back seat. I stood wedged between the car and the open door with one behind me and two in front.
"I said what the fuck did you just say?"
"We're not looking for any shit. He didn't mean to-" and one clocked me straight on the bridge of my nose. Blood squirted, I fell back against the car and then straight to my knees. The bottle dropped from my hand and shattered on the ground behind me. Both girls started screaming hysterically. The dude hit me so hard that I was stunned for a second and didn't even register that I was getting kicked in the ribs. I turned away on my hands and knees trying to pull myself into the car but this put me in a perfect position for the home boy behind me to start smashing the car door into my head. Ever slam a car door on your finger? Well it feels like that, except it's your fucking head.

Then I heard "Hey guys, let's all just be cool."
Suddenly the blows stopped coming and for a second, the girls stopped screaming. I pulled myself up by the steering wheel. Alex had exited the vehicle on the passenger side and was standing surrounded in front of the car.
"Seriously guys, it's all good. Just-" and they shoved him over and began slamming his head into the hood while punching him in the face. The girls began to scream again. Disoriented and bleeding I paused for a moment. Then I sighed, took a deep breath, put the car in gear and slammed my foot on the gas.
One vato jumped out of the way, the other two were seriously clipped. It seemed strangely comic, the way their giant bodies just rolled right up the hood, the windshield and then out of sight. It was also morbidly amusing that Alex managed to hang on for another 15 yards before he kinda peeled off the hood into the street. I slammed on the brakes. We were almost at the VKC house and all the screaming had brought their party into the street. A dozen more home boys were heading towards us. I made a recless U turn through a lawn, pulled up next to Alex and my little brother pulled him in. The three vatos were picking themselves up off the ground and I floored the gas. They lunged out of my path. So, finally, we went to the party at the river.

I didn't get back down to Lost Cauces for four months. I assumed either seriously bad shit would have gone down after that or Alex would have just broken his lease and moved. But I was wrong about the power of Alex the pacifist.
"No, it's cool, I just bought a QP of weed off of them the other day. They won't fuck with good business." Alex said with a dumb grin. "But they want to fuck you up for running them over." I couldn't believe my ears.
"What can I say man, I'm a lover now, not a fighter."

My Company

Robert E. Brown. Tales from the Land of Entrapment

Everyone takes a beating sometime.
Part II. Alex the pacifist.

After Alex's wounds healed he never looked quite the same. He was never an attractive man, but like the post car crash Mark Hamill, he just looked kinda.. not quite right.

With the fight beaten out of him, Alex discovered his sensitive side. His hair slowly morphed from Dee Dee Ramone to a tame Robert Smith. Still dirty, still dyed black but it slowly took on a mushroom form. While the guys were sitting in the yard drinking 40's, Alex began hanging at the kitchen table with the girls, quoting Smith lyrics and listening to the Cure. This new kinder and gentler persona (along with the shit load of drugs he began dealing) created a small entourage of hot chicks around him. "What can I say man, I'm a lover now, not a fighter." This culminated in Alex scoring a full fledged hard bodied jailbait trophy girlfriend on his arm. Jen was absolutely every bit as bitchy as she was double take beautiful. None of us could wrap our drunken, drug addled brains around this new hippie emo Alex or his pornstar bodied knows she's hot shit girlfriend who seemed utterly in love with him. We called it the Jen riddle. A simple one question quandary. "Why are they together?" They stayed a couple into their late 20's and for what ever reason Alex continued to stick around a crew that now smelled his weakness.

After all the bullshit Alex the Bully had put everyone through and the confusion and irritation over the Jen riddle, Alex turned from lil' general to court clown. Over the next few years his nick names included the troll, the nome, rat boy and the littlest pussy. He worked with several of our crew at a deli called Baggin's and they dubbed him Bilbo, placing a sign in the kitchen saying "you must be this tall to work the grill." Of course it was 3 inches taller than Alex. People would stick notes to his back at parties and pee in his litterbox. He never fought back again, even when it was in his very best interest to do so.

I had just turned 21, barely in Albuquerque for a year. Most of the Lost Cauces gang still lived in... Lost Cauces. I had shacked up with Jennifer and we regularly made the 3 hour journey to visit them in her beat up hand me down station wagon. We heard Alex and Jen had moved into a barrio downtown and we set out to find the party. We turned onto his block in the hispanic ghetto where there was a street party going down. We slowed down just long enough to see about 20 pairs of white wife beater tee shirts and tan dickies all circled and fixated on a low rider in the driveway, hydraulically bouncing up and down to a vibrating booming beat. "Uh, yeah, wrong party." Alex's house was at the opposite end of the block. But his party wasn't what what I expected at all. The door was open and there was probably about 14 guests in the front yard and living room. About 10 of them were girls and 4 were guys, including my little brother. All underage, most in high school still. They all jumped up and greeted at the sight of a townie elder statesman and in proper fashion I ignored them. "What the fuck are all these kids doing here?" I snapped at Alex.
"Nah, it's cool. I know them." He mumbled with breath that reeked from pot.
"Where's Jeremy and Keith?"
"They're at a party at the river."
"Where's John?"
"Everyone went to the river."
"Well ditch these kids and lets go to the fucking river."
"Dude, Brian and Vic are coming back in an hour, then we'll all go."

Irritated and refusing to socialize with these inferior minors, I went outside and took Jennifer to the far end of the porch. With my back turned to the party I popped open my cheap bottle of wine. About 3 minutes later I heard over my shoulder "Yo esse, the Vario King Cobras are here to welcome you to the hood."
I turned around and three very large old head vato gang bangers were walking inside. They were older, in their late 20's-early 30's with standard issue goatees, shaved heads and covered in latino gang tats. They were bouncer big, at least 250 lbs each and they had just crashed Alex's underage jailbait party. There were wolves wandering among the sheep.
"Shit, those dudes are VKC." I whispered to Jennifer with urgency.
"I thought you guys were friends with VKC?" she asked, a little confused.
The Vario King Cobras were a local hispanic gang. We had friends who were members but that didn't say much. VKC was a generational barrio gang and whole families and even neighborhoods were members. Through those friends we had brokered drug deals and even attended VKC parties, but it always felt tense and unsafe around the older, more serious members.
"If I try and drop names, they'll just accuse me of trying to suck up. It'll just give them an opening to stomp me."
I had seen this situation played out plenty of times before. They would fuck with people at the party until they got bored. Then there was a 100% chance that someone would get their ass kicked and a good possibility Alex's house was going to get trashed. It was just how it worked, our crew would have done the same. But our crew was absentee and these were only the scouts, there was a whole yard full of drunk homies right down the street.

I though extracting the gang bangers from the house without bloodshed would be tricky. But with Alex as my backup, I found it would be impossible.

My Company

Robert E. Brown. Tales from the Land of Entrapment

Everyone takes a beating sometime.
Part I. Alex the Bully.

"Everyone takes a beating sometime." That's a statement that everyone in Lost Cauces New Mexico understood. Living in a desolate desert, in a college town close to the Mexican border bred boredom, frustration and anger in a cultural environment of extreme machismo. Everyone got their ass kicked eventually. In my late teen's and early 20's fights were readily the nightly norm, and they were never fair. Being a skinny 140 lb. loud mouth shit talking punk rock kid scored me plenty of beatings and I learned after a while not to open my mouth unless I had numbers behind me or a clear escape route. That might sound cowardly but if you have been around enough real street fights and bar brawls, you know the bitter truth about fighting fair. Unfortunately for my friend Alex, that balanced "choose your battles" lesson was never learned. Alex let the pendulum swing from bully to pacifist. Both tactics seemed to get him beatings in the end.

Alex was a mean little Hispanic kid who was smoldering with Napoleon complex angst. He stood at an impressive skinny 5'2" and always adorned with a bad, dirty black dyed Dee Dee Ramone hairdo and the standard issue black leather jacket & combat boots. The first night I met him I was throwing one of my regularly occurring "father's away on business" house parties. Mobs of high school kids drinking shitty beer and even shittier wine while listening to poorly dubbed Black Flag cassettes on a beat up sticker covered boom box. A kid named Tony showed up with a new leg cast earned from being too bold on a half pipe and said something this new guest didn't like. I walked into my kitchen to find Alex using Tony's nose as the center target for his newly found flesh and blood punching bag. Tony stood defenselessly held up by two crutches as the little shit carefully took face shots that Tony had no way to block. The kid just stood there bleeding as he received at least 5 brutal rabbit punches before I came in to break it up.

After his stunning victory Alex decided to put his new strategy to the work two weeks later. Jonathan sat slumped in a chair all but passed out drunk. Earlier in the night he had been mouthing off and shit talking Alex who had waited to make his move. Jonathan's gimp leg still required the help from a cain so when Alex swooped in for the kill, he made sure to kick it from his victims reach. It wouldn't have mattered. Jonathan was wasted and incoherent. He barely registered that it was his turn to be Alex's bloody punching bag. The next day he had to be briefed on how he received his spit lip.

But don't get the wrong impression. Alex's fighting phase wasn't limited to sparing with the handicapped. He would pick fights with anyone, and for a time it seemed that the worse the odds for him, the better. One night we were at party at a shitty two story apartment building. I was standing outside on the second story walkway with some of my crew. "Oh fuck look" someone screamed. I looked down at the parking lot and Alex was flat on his back with a huge black guy and what we found out later was half the NMSU football team looming over him. They started to walk away and Alex staggered to his feet and said something we couldn't hear. The football player turned back around and jacked Alex so hard that he bounced into the air and tumble rolled for 10 feet.
"Oh shit. Do you think we should go down there?"
"Against those guys?"
"Good point."
And he got up again. Said something again. The football player walked over and hit him again. He stumbled another 10 feet across the parking lot and dropped to his back again.
"Hey Alexander, stay down!" We laughed and jeered.
"No, no get up Alex, do it again!"
He got up again. And we watched the same routine play out over and over again, slowly moving form one end of the parking lot to the other.

But it wasn't a beating from a hulking college football player that turned Alex into a pacifist, it was a beating from a skinny hair metal band. We used to make regular excursions into Juarez where the drinking age was 16 and tequila shots were a quarter. Alex had gone down there with our friends John G. and Kenta. They went to some dank mexican bar where Alex spent the better part of the night bad mouthing and harassing a table of hair metal guys from El Paso about their spandex and matching white cowboy boots. At the end of the night they made the long walk back across the border bridge and Alex spotted the hair band 50 yards ahead. He sped up his pace leaving John and Kenta behind in order to make sure the hair guys could hear his taunts. But as he closed the gap between him and his verbal victims, he left his own crew behind. Suddenly Alex found himself alone at the bottom of the huge bridge in a poorly lit, empty walkway surrounded by some very angry metal heads. Within seconds those matching white cowboy boots were kicking his face in. John G. and Kenta were only a minute behind him, but a minute is all it takes. As they came up on the scene those now bloody boots were casually walking away. Years later I asked John why he didn't go after the hair guys. "Seriously, don't you think it was a long time coming?" He had a point.

The next day upon hearing the news, I went to Alex's house to view the damage. His mother earned a living by using her house as a makeshift daycare and when he came out of his room all ten toddlers began to cry. One of the older children ran over to Alex's mother and while pulling on her leg he sobbed "make him take off the monster mask." Shit, I wanted him to take off the mask too. But that was his face. 40 stitches and a crushed nose on a mass of puffy tissue so swollen that he had to tilt his head at an angle to see out of the one eye he could still open.

In one night at the tender age of 19, Alex the Bully became Alex the Pacifist. The fight was literally beat out of him. From then on you couldn't get Alex to raise his hand and from then on he fancied himself a peace maker. Unfortunately for me, a few years later I found myself in a position where I needed the little scrapper back. But that Alex was gone.


My Company

Robert E. Brown. Baseball Desperate

There is something attractive about desperation. I don't say that regarding individuals, but in collective wholes. Philadelphia is an amazing study in desperation. A city with a historical importance but major self esteem issues. It's regularly voted the fattest, the ugliest, the least cultured. It's hyper violent and is surely one of the dirtiest. But when a desperate city with low self esteem has even a moment to be proud, a moment of hope, it'll take that moment and act... desperate.

Visitors of Philly are always confused by it's skyline. For one of the largest cities in the country laid out in dense east coast fashion, the skyline is shockingly small. This is because of the "gentleman's agreement" the lords of Philly's commerce had with the ghost of William Penn. In the early 1900's Philly's magnificent City Hall was built. The huge towering statue of William Penn dwarfed everything at a time when horses and trollies dominated transportation. The unspoken agreement was that no building would ever stand taller than the tip of William Penn's hat. In the early 1980's Penn was betrayed and Philly finally began constructing skyscrapers 80 years behind Chicago, New York and Boston. But they say it came at a high price as the ghost of Penn cursed Philadelphia for it's base betrayal. Philly's low self esteem over it's sad skyline was replaced at the exact same time with sports franchises that suddenly couldn't win a game. The Eagles, the Flyers, the 76er's and the Phillies all became frustrated, even disastrous teams. On rare occasions coming close to a championship, but never coming through. Even that fucking horse Smarty Jones got one race away from making history, only to choke at the last moment.



Then finally, someone had an idea to appease the ghost and lift the curse. Comcast centralized itself in Philadelphia and constructed a huge, immense skyscraper that dwarfed every building in the city and on the very top of the building, they placed a small statue of William Penn. Now his hat is higher than any other point in the city. This same year, the Phillies, a team with the worst record, not just in baseball, but in all of organized sports, won the world series. We all knew what was coming the night they won.

Now I don't give a shit about baseball, but I do love me a good riot. The stories of Philly fan behavior made national news. Families of Tampa Bay fans huddled in restroom stalls as psychotic mobs of Philadelphians dumped beer on their heads while trying to rip off the stall doors. The Tampa fan who escaped the mob by scaling a light post, only to get shot down by a flying Stoli bottle. The Philadelphian who was so overcome with joy that he stripped down to nothing but a tee shirt and lit his underwear and pants on fire in the street. The crowds who ended up in the hospital from clamoring onto plexi glass bus stop roofs only to come crashing through. The flipped over cabs, the demolished fire truck that was overran as it tried to respond to all the fires burning on broad street. (later the police found the the lost wallet of one of the vandals on the truck, he was a fireman) Of course half the windows in center city were smashed, stores were looted and it seemed like everyone had lost their minds.



I rounded up some friends and we trekked out into the madness. My buddy Tracy discovered a huge stockpile of bottle rockets laying on the side walk and we casually lit them off every so often as we made our way into the crowd. We got into the mess after the main blast of mob energy had been quelled by the riot police. We started up Broad street towards Center City through the wreckage in a sea of screaming high fives. Within two blocks my palms were numb and red. Grown men were standing in the middle of the street sobbing and people were swigging and passing random liquor bottles to strangers. There were burning trash fires everywhere and by the time we reached center city, the street was paved with broken glass. Groups of fans would rush over cars jumping up and down, rocking them until one would spot the cops pushing through and then they would scurry back into the undiscernible wall of faces. By the time we reached Center City, Broad street was a fast flowing river of human bodies. As we got closer to City hall there seemed to be a slowage, suddenly the people in front of us veered off to the right and we were face to face with a wall of riot police. We too, promptly veered right. Walking to the side we pushed along with the main river of people still blindly moving toward the police. After about four blocks we suddenly hit another wall of riot police coming from the other direction, sandwiching everyone into the side streets. We rolled back down to South Street where the party had long since moved on. Unfortunately the Phillies had won the night before South Street's garbage pick up. All the trash bags that had been set out were dumped everywhere. The street was completely empty and as we walked down the middle of the road, the damage and trash gave an end of the world feel. We stopped for a moment and I stood on a knocked over newspaper box and surveyed the area.
"You know, it really wasn't that satisfying." I said to my buddy Johnny Franchise.
"Yeah" he said with a sigh.
Then he reached down and picked up a tightly tied off garbage bag and bounced it into the street like a lop sided beach ball.
"Did that help at all?" I asked in a hopeful tone.
"mmmm, yeah... kinda" he said sounding a little unsure.
I contemplated his answer for a second, then stretched out my foot and casually tipped over a garbage can standing next to my perch.
We all stared at the tipped over can for a moment and then headed to Tattooed Moms for a beer.



But it didn't stop with that night. The next day was only a lull for people to nurse hang overs. That second night you could still hear sporadic horns honking through out the city. On the third day philadelphia held a parade down broad street again. 1.5 million people showed up decked from head to toe in their Phillies red, like drunken militia men called to a makeshift army. At 1 am the next morning wasted clusters of fans were still wandering the streets. On the fourth day, I was crossing Washing ave. and a car slowly rolled by. The driver was hanging a copy of the Inquirer's front page out the window with a stern focused look on his face, coasting along, just in case someone missed the news. Philadelphia was like a needy first date with low self esteem who painfully clutches at your arm because you actually paid for dinner and didn't call her a bitch all night. She knows she's going to fuck it all up but doesn't care... because she's desperate.


My Company

Robert E. Brown. The 2 Street Chronicles

Tommy Trouble Part II: That's Not Slow Gin, That's Blood

The owner was the first generation of the family to move away from his Irish south Philly heritage, after buying into several other shady businesses he had become a man of means and settled his family in a wealthy suburban estate in South Jersey. He did his best to sequester his three daughters from their 2 street roots. Two of the daughters were true New Jersey debutants, but the middle daughter Katie had her grandfather and her great grandfather's blood running through her. Only in her mid twenties, Katie had multiple DUIs, assaults and even a high speed chase under her belt. All buried at great expense in lawyers fees, favors and bribes by daddy. You could take Katie out of 2 street, but you couldn't take 2 street out of Katie. She was an ardent drunken barfly and just after I started, Katie fell in love... with Tommy.

While Tommy was no prize, neither was Katie. It was clear that he saw dollar signs. She saw... well I don't know what she saw, she was perpetually cross eyed drunk. For a month after discovering his daughter's forbidden love, the owner would sit at the bar gnawing on his cigar, beet red and staring at Tommy while mumbling "how did this happen?" While they were the grossest, drunkest, ugliest couple I knew, they were also one of the smoochy smoochy cuddliest. In 2 street fashion, that can only mean trouble.

I had gone back to New Mexico to visit my family. I came into the bar to cover a day shift on a Sunday morning only to find the bar trashed and the manager arguing with the cleaner. As I walked in I heard the cleaner yell through his three teeth "That's not slow gin, that's blood."
"No, no, don't worry it's just slow gin." the manager said in a persuasive tone.
The bar was trashed. There was broken glass everywhere, a broken chair and pools and splatters of what was clearly blood.
"What happened? I asked.
"I don't know, the place is a wreck, the money was left in the register with a note from Jon saying he and Michelle quit. I can't get them on the phone."
Just then Jon burst through the door. "I can't take this fucking place" he screamed. "I didn't sign on for this." He pointed at the red all over the walls and floor. "You see that? That's BLOOD."
"Told you." mumbled the cleaner.

Now, I've always likened the incidents at this bar to the way Vietnam vets describe combat. Hours of tedious boredom marked by minutes of sudden terrifying madness that comes at you from all sides. From the way Jon described the night before, he would agree.

Jon leaped at a chance to work my Saturday night shift so he could be near Michelle. With her silky waist long black hair, huge tanned breasts pouring out of her low cut tank top and the little belly ring winking from her washboard stomach, everyone was hypnotized by Michelle. Unfortunately so was Tommy. The bar was packed and Tommy and Katie were drinking for hours. With each beer Tommy's eyes became more fixated on Michelle's cleavage and his tone became more flirty. With each beer the fumes of jealousy steamed off of Katie's butter face. But on 2 street you don't take it out on your partner, you challenge your rival. Katie had enough and followed Michelle into the kitchen. Jon heard screams and found Michelle cornered by a kitchen knife wielding Katie who was bellowing "Back off my man." Jon pulled the knife from Katie and as Michelle ran past her, Katie grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into the door. Michelle wiggled free and bolted out the bar with Jon in pursuit attempting to console. As they exited they passed three Columbians coming in. There was no catching Michelle and when Jon returned he found the situation in the bar to be much worse. When the old manager had taken the coke deal fall, it was under the stipulation that all parties involved were to send cash each month to soften the pain of imprisonment. Tommy hadn't sent a dime in six months and the Columbians had stopped by to give Tommy a stern message. Jon had bolted back into the bar to confront Katie and ran straight into the barrel of a revolver held by a Columbian who assumed the huge steel worker was running through the bar in order to try and stop Tommy's brutal beating. Katie had already been neutralized. She had lunged at them in his defense and was met with a bitch slap from a .38 and was laying stunned on the floor. Jon stood with a gun to his head for a full minute as he and the rest of the bar watched Tommy get bottles bounced off his head and his ribs kicked in.

And in one night, the manager's plan to staff the bar with a new generation of non 2 streeters all but died. "I guess you're probably going to leave me too." he said crumbling onto a stool as his brother walked out.
I thought about it for a moment and said, "the only thing worse than having a job is looking for one."
I lasted 8 more months.

My Company

Robert E. Brown. The 2 Street Chronicles

Tommy Trouble Part I: The Old Coke Stand and a New Plan

The 2 street bar had quite a history. It had been in the owners family for three generations, sporting the oldest continuous liquor license in Philadelphia. When the bar opened, it literally sat on the border of the city, the rest of south Philly was a third world shanty town of irish refugees living in muddy squalor. It was so old that at one time it sported running piss troughs along the floor of the bar. It was so old, it was one of the first tavern's in the city that decided to allow women. (albeit, through a new back door in a separate room.) It was so old that they had yellowed crumbling photos of the "nigger stick." A dented 2"x4" used on any poor black who made a wrong turn onto 2 street.

But sadly the owner's greed had nearly destroyed the bar two years before I started. The manager's father had run the bar with an iron fist for the owners family for 40 years. He was a feared lone shark who had used the bar as a base of operations to dominate the numbers racket in south Philly. But he had taken ill and passed, leaving a power void in the bar and on 2 street.

One of the bartenders took over and promptly cut a supply deal with a gang of columbians; using the bar as an over the counter cocaine stand. The amount of drugs sold was said to have been staggering. They estimated the average bartender collected around 5,000 dollars a day in drug revenue. Every bartender was double employed and became so busy that a couple of them subcontracted people to take on the chore of making drinks so they wouldn't be distracted from their drug sales. The owner claimed no culpability in any of this, turning a blind eye. But did institute a two drink minimum for anyone who came into the bar. Being that it was four deep at 11 o'clock in the morning, he was seeing dollar signs.



Eventually the cocaine became so openly over the counter that not even the Philly police could ignore it. My manager (who was then just the cook) came to work one morning to find the building boarded up and tacked with police notices. The manager/ringleader at the time was the one to get popped and took the fall for the other bartenders and the Columbians. He was hailed as a 2 street folk hero for not snitching and everyone toasted him with fondness. The owner however had some amount of buyers remorse. The LCB and the city did everything in it's power to take away the bar. A million dollars in fees and fines, countless court appearances and a year later the boards were pulled off the doors to vermin and maggot infestations from all the rotting food abandoned in the kitchen and walk in.

After years of watching the 2 street madness from the kitchen, the new manager had plans to combat the mayhem that was often amplified by the bartenders. His plan was to staff the place with outsiders. He brought in his brother Jon who was a tough but sweet steel worker who like the manager, had shunned his crime family roots. Then there was Michelle, a jaw dropping can't control yourself from drooling when you see her 21 year old from the italian area of South Philly. Myself of course being the ultimate stranger in the strange land plucked from his mother's art gallery. The only original true 2 street bartender left was Tommy, a neighborhood barfly who already sported dentures in his mid thirties from bouts with speed and 2 streeter fists. He had been involved in the coke dealing but was spared from jail because of the old managers tight lip. Tommy by proxy, wasn't going to allow the 2 street madness to go quietly into the night.


My Company

Robert E. Brown. The Office of Misfit Toys III.

Snore Torture

The weather was merciless that winter and the snow just kept piling up. The t.v. stations announced a major storm's arrival which created a special problem for the transfer agency. The FCC mandated that if the stock market was open, the transfer agencies and their call centers needed to be too. Philly's storm was not New York's problem. The company's solution was to sequester several teams in the hotel across the street from the call center to insure employees wouldn't get stuck in the snow and could staff the day shift. They drew lots and the misfit toys night crew were one of the teams required to sleep over and work the day. Christianne dropped me off like a little kid sent off to a shitty winter camp.

I got to the hotel late, around 8 pm and the rooms had already been assigned. I was the last of the stragglers and Tori was waiting for me in the lobby. She smugly handed me a key. "You room with Jamal" she smirked and bounded off down the hall, leaving me standing alone staring at my room number.

I got to my room and found Jamal already ensconced in his bed with his shirt and pants off, wafting a pungent oder from the folds of hard to reach fat that were already pooling sweat in a room he set cold in the dead of winter. He was surrounded with enough junk food supplies to last an average man a month. I figured I was spared from awkward tedious conversation because he was on the phone and really into his snack cakes. I was fighting a horrible cold and looked forward to an hour of basic cable and then sleep without having to be social. But Jamal wasn't used to being away from his family and was on a conference call with them and his preacher. His loud, mouth breathing voice boomed through the room and overpowered the t.v.
"Praise Jesus... Yes mama I do know... Oh his will be done... Praise Jesus... Lordy, lordy uh huh... PRAISE Jesus... I feel it, mmm hmmm praise Jesus...."
This went on for two hours. I laid in bed staring at the ceiling praying Jesus would shut Jamal up so I could sleep. Finally at some point, the sick and miserable in me overpowered my mind and I drifted off.

I woke up to a horrible sound. It was 2 am and Jamal was sleeping... and SNORING. Do you know what a 500 lb. man sounds like when he snores? The furniture was literally shaking. The pillows went over the ears. Then tissue in the ears under the pillows. I could feel the snores vibrating in the room. It was like trying to sleep next to a demolition site. I tried waking him. Jamal. Jamal! JAMAL!!! He couldn't hear me over his own breathing. By 4 am I left the room and wandered the halls, then the parking lot snow. Finally around 5 am I snuck onto a couch in the lobby and slept for an hour before the clerk discovered me and sent me back to my torture chamber. At 6:45 am Jamal woke up to find me sitting in the corner of the room staring at him like a serial killer. "Uh, hey Robert, you're up early" he said nervously.
"You snore Jamal." I said expressionless in a monotone voice.
"Oh uh, my bad, uh, I forgot to wear my snore guard"
I continued to blankly stare.
"Yeah uh, my bad..."
and he proceed to start getting ready for work.

He was too big to fit in the tub so his hygiene method consisted of dousing a wash cloth with a quart sized bottle of cheap cologne and wiping down the within reach fat folds of his near naked body. The stink from the cheap cologne only mixed with the stink from the body oder and nausea began mixing in with my cold and fatigue. For once the grey cubical cavern seemed like a sanctuary.

Since the center was only half staffed, the ding ding ding of the ticker was even more merciless and I was sick, exhausted and completely delirious. The weather still hadn't broke and we were informed that we were to stay another night. The whole region was snowed in and shut down, but the lords of the agency were thoughtful enough to provide us with prepackaged lunch and dinner. Cold wrapped hoagies and plain potato chips for both.

"No you can't switch rooms" Tori smirked after I pleaded my case.
"Don't be a pussy. Just knock yourself out" and she handed me some Nyquil gel caps. So after work I limped back to the foul rotten meat cologne stinking room for round two, armed with my stale hoagie and a fist full of cold meds. Counting the minutes until I knocked myself out.

The night started out the same. "Praise Jesus... He IS the power... Praise Jesus... Yes Momma, lord have mercy praise Jesus..."
But this time I had a plan and I deliriously giggled to myself as I clutched the Nyquil caps in my hand while fighting the urge to pop them too early. Tonight, tonight I would SLEEP. I popped all three of them and the effects of the meds mixed into my already exhausted system and I felt myself gloriously fade away to the words of... "Praise Jesus..."

And I woke up to a horrible sound. I sat up almost in tears. What the fuck??? The snore guard was on his nose and it didn't make a bit of difference. It was only 2:30 in the morning. "JAMAL! JAMAAAALLL!!!" No response. I seriously contemplated punching him in the head. Would that be an HR incident? The paper went back in the ears. The pillows over the head. No good. I turned on the t.v. I turned the t.v. to an empty static channel. I turned the volume up. I pumped it louder then louder hoping the steady white noise would drown out the snoring or wake him. Finally I climbed on the floor, wrapped the pillow around my ears, wedged my head underneath the bed and pulled the blankets on top of me. This along with the wads of tissue and the blaring white noise from the t.v. finally worked and I drifted off to glorious sleep,

I came back out of my magnificent oblivion from a strange poke to my side. When I opened my eyes I was a little disoriented from the sensory depravation cocoon I had constructed. I pried my head out from under the bed and pulled the blankets off. Jamal was sitting up in bed with his cain in hand, staring at me in horror. He had woke up in the morning to find me on the floor half under the bed with my legs sticking out from underneath a pile of blankets. He had been struggling with the cain to pull the bedding off my corpse from where he sat. The t.v. static was still on and defining loud and I reached over flipping off the power.
"Hey Jamal, what's up?" I asked upbeat and nonchalant.
"Uh, Rob man, are you o.k? he asked nervously.
"Well yeah. I've never been better." I responded and went to the bathroom to shower.

I was still sick, still sleep deprived but the news that the roads were clear and my knowledge that I was going to disappear from that place within a week made even the blaring ding ding ding and the shitty angry callers strangely bearable that day. Towards the end of the shift I was walking back from the restroom. Tyrone was standing at Jamal's cubical talking to him and I could hear them as I approached from behind.
"I mean who knows what's wrong with that crazy motherfucker. You don't know WHAT he was doing. I'm glad he wasn't in my room." Tyrone said to Jamal.
"Hey guys, what's up?" I said smiling and they went awkwardly silent and stared as I sat down at my desk.
Tyrone leaned down closer to Jamal trying to be quiet.
"You lucky it's over."
"I know man" Jamal whispered "Praise Jesus."



My Company

Robert E. Brown. The Office of Misfit Toys II.

Twinkies, Cockroaches and the Power of Prissy's Pussy.

They called the shift the "island of misfit toys crew" for a reason. The late shift was where all the physical and mental misfits were stashed. We would arrive right at as everyone else was beginning to finish up. The call volume plummeted in the evening and the single team only consisted of twelve people. The small group sat in the corner of the huge cavernous empty building. Unfortunately I was seated right underneath another ticker again. But by the last couple of hours they would give up on cutting people and if I still remained, I would have some small reprieve from the ding ding ding. For a while I volinteered to get cut every chance I could to escape the ticker, but eventually my checks were so small I had to stay. Those last hours allowed me the chance to savior the characters around me.

The team manager was a mean take no shit lady named Tori. Tori was 4 feet tall, had a hunch back and a shriveled deformed leg that forced her to walk with two crutches. She was all business and had no sense of humor at all. To my right sat a morbidly obese black guy named Jamal. He had to weigh around 500-525 lb. He would show up for the shift walking with a cain and carrying a grocery bag full of snacks. It would take him a full 10 minutes to shuffle from the entrance to his seat, wheezing and panting from the effort. He would collapse into his specially made chair that would creak and bow from his weight and then he would immediately begin to work on his snacks. Jamal always seemed to have a twinky in his hand. Directly behind me was Miss Prissy. Miss Prissy was a fire cracker black lady in her late 60's who was loudly obsessed with sex and had a mouth that would make sailors blush. To my left was Mike. I didn't like Mike. He was an smarmy white boy cardigan wearing aspiring thespian who believed himself to be the teams dry wit comedian. But he was incredibly thin skinned and his reparte crumbled when faced with my obnoxious shotgun mouth or my tendency to slowly pick at his brain. I would pop my head around the cubical between calls.
"Psst, Mike?"
"What now Robert?"
"Have you ever eaten a bug?"
"No Robert, uh, I don't eat bugs."
"Have you ever thought about eating a bug?"
"No. I don't think about eating bugs."
...."Psst, Mike?"
"What?"
"Not even a cockroach?"

He was unhinged at Miss Prissy's never ending crass sex talk. She reveled in making him uncomfortable and directly across from me sat (more often stood) her own personal Paul Shaffer. A 6 and a half foot tall ghetto fabulous skinny black dude named Tyrone who sported corn rows and a full grill of gold teeth. By the last hour of the shift, when the ticker stopped dinging, I would get the party started. It would go something like this.
Robert: "Hey Miss Prissy, getting any?"
Miss Prissy: "Child, you know I got some drinks in me last night and oh, you know my pussy hurts now."
Mike: "Oh god, please don't."
Robert: "So this guy did you right?"
Miss Prissy: "Shit, this was a big dicked motherfucker, and he fucked me good, all-night-long."
Tyrone: (standing up so he could see us) "You go Miss Prissy, you still got it."
Mike: "Stop it, you're grossing me out."
Miss Prissy: "Hell yeah I got it. Don't be jealous motherfucker. You want to get you a piece of Miss Prissy, but you know you don't got enough dick to get the job done. Ha!"
Mike: "You're as old as my grandmother, stop it."
Tyrone: "You tell that white boy Miss Prissy, tell him how a brother gets it done."
Miss Prissy: "Shit, I'll fuck me a white boy too. But you listen here motherfucker, if you want a piece of Miss Prissy, you GOTTA eat pussy first. You know, to com-pen-sate."
Mike: (grasping his head) "Stop. Stop it for gods sake, what is wrong with you guys?"
The spectacle would escalate until Mike was practically in the fetal position in his chair while Tyrone, Miss Prissy and I were laughing and slamming our hands on our desks so hard that Tori would bound over and snap at everyone to shut up. Coming from anyone else, on any other team, there would have been a law suit.

Even with this spectacle every night, I was rotting with boredom. The walls of my cubical were covered with push pinned reference sheets and forms. I began writing small notes begging for help.
"Dear God, this place is rotting my soul."
"Please help me, I think I'm in hell and I can't get out."
"I hate everyone here and want to die."
I would take the smaller notes and pin them underneath the reference sheets, knowing that on the day I bailed from there without notice, the morgue cart crew would woefully wheel up to my cubical and start removing all the push pinned papers only to discover my grim pleading messages hiding underneath.

I thought I was dying inside and I had only worked there two months. Then, finally, there was a reprieve. My head hunter called and had a job lined up for me in two weeks. I had a parole date. But the office hell had one last treat for me. One last special mind fuck howdy do.

My Company

Robert E. Brown. The Office of Misfit Toys I.

A Ridiculous Disguise.

I had a relatively brief attempt at functioning in the squares world. A series of dead end office jobs that seemed random on a resume were to be replaced by a focus on graphic and web design. After all, I had the skills and my first fiance was feeling the call of the suburbs. The lectures about my misdirected ambition and stress over her inability to keep up with her old Haddonfield peers were becoming intense and frequent. No one grasped the insane statement that I didn't want to use my art and design skills that I went to school for to create petty corporate logos and websites for Real Estate douche bags. But considering what a web designer was earning at the turn of the millennium, and with her sister jet setting Europe with her French movie producer boyfriend, and all of our friends shifting from the fringe to the bourgeoisie, the heat was on for me to throw away the staving artist tag and get us out of our center city shoe box apartment.



But alas, I got to the party right as it was ending. I spent most of the dot com boom doing tedious data entry temp jobs and office managing a series of laser vision clinics. By the time I signed on with a web tech head hunter, work was spotty and drying up. Finally it got so bad that I had to take a temp job at the Bank of New York Transfer Agency call center.** It was everything a shitty day job should be. Every day I would make the hour and a half-8 mile drive to King of Prussia where the Walmart sized call center was located. As I entered the building in my business "professional" or business "casual" dress, I felt like everyone knew I wasn't supposed to be there. When I sat in meetings I felt like I looked like the Joker right before he blew up the hospital. How could they not see through this ridiculous disguise?



On my first day a blizzard blew through and after about a foot accumulated outside they finally called a snow day. But it was too late. It took us two hours to dig out of the parking lot and another six for me to drive home. I should have taken the storm as a an omen as I inched along the gridlocked icy highway with scattered semi trailers apocalyptically flipped over all around me.

I was convinced that that building was a portal to a ring in Dante's hell. The building was one huge room. An open sea of shoulder high grey cubicles that ran on as far as the eye could see. The place was so large and had such a high turnover rate, that a team of two were assigned to a cart. They rolled the cart around the building, cleaning out cubicles of those who were fired or quit. Quietly removing push pinned charts and tax info folders from the abandoned cubicles in preparation for the next recruit. Their presence was a sign of another man down and there was a strange morgue like feel to watching them clean. From the ceiling hung a series of tickers that monitored the calls in cue. Every time calls were on hold for more than a minute, the tickers would begin to ring. Ding Ding Ding... Ding Ding Ding. But no one likes wasting pay on an idle employee. If the tickers were quiet for even a minute, it meant we weren't working, so they would start cutting people until the tickers starting ringing again. As you approached the entrance, the ringing would get louder and louder like you were entering a casino. But there were no glitzy lights or cute cocktail waitresses offering up free drinks. Just droll, beaten down faces and everything in shades of grey.

Within a week I was already in trouble. I was assigned a seat right underneath a ticker. Between the ding ding ding in one ear and the screaming geriatrics who hadn't received their tax forms in the other, I though I was going to lose my mind. I compensated by speaking to the callers in either ridiculous game show voices or in mirroring doddering old man voices. My team leader wasn't pleased with me at all. Then I heard that there were openings for the one night team and he pushed my transfer through to get rid of me. "I think you'll like that shift better" he laughed. "That's the island of misfit toys crew."

**(A transfer agency is the company that actually issues and manages a company's stock. When a stock broker is buying or selling for a client, the transfer agency is who they call. But most stock broker firms have their own "pools" of stock that they move the shares around in, so they don't really have to deal with the agency. 90% of the calls were coming from individuals who had stock but no broker. i.e.. stock options->long term employees with lots of that one company's stock->retired->cranky old people with no clue.)


My Company

Robert E. Brown. My Love Affair with Shit Fuck

(Vere Dic Tibi Ipsi)

One of my long time mantras, or slogans has been Beauty in Vulgarity, Passion in Madness. Now this may sound like an juvenile slogan, and perhaps when I started toying with the phrase, it probably was. But then, around that time I was writing artist statements about punching viewers in the face. I have a always tried, (albeit some would question how successfully) to balance between two worlds. To gain the life experience of those totally outside of society, and those who embrace it. A painter needs to know how to render realistically before he can credibly create abstract, a printer needs to craft fine lined etchings before he can move to free flowing monotypes. My Palahniuk/Bukowski instincts to stay outside of the "squares" world have always been tempered with an education of the etiquette I chose to ignore. I know where the salad fork goes. So when I go to the dinner party and eat with my hands, it's not ignorance, it's choice. I've always made the statement that I can blend in at either a biker rally or a black tie affair and you would never be able to pick me out.

Over the last year or so, I've been making a conscious effort to cut out all vulgar "verbal crutches" effectively eradicating all standard four letter words in an attempt to improve my speaking skills and mastery over the English language. But recently I got around to watching Deadwood. After 10 straight hours with my jaw open and brain stuffed with ear candy, I realized I had started going down the wrong path. I realized (perhaps remembered) that vulgarity isn't a crutch in language, it's an emphasis, an exclamation. It serves it's purpose. The use of vulgarity helps define the line between classes and status. Vulgarity separates those outside of society. (or defines separate ones) It helps the upper crust look down, and helps the dregs give the finger back up. I realized I forgot about my love affair with shit fuck.

I have an excellent knowledge of art, history and politics. I am educated and well read. I have a solid knowledge of food and wine. And it is absolutely against my nature and belief system to avoid peppering vulgarity throughout conversations in these or any other contexts. There IS Beauty in Vulgarity. When you constrain yourself with the strangle tie of propriety and etiquette, you squeeze out all the joy in life's experiences. Temper your ego, then let the Id shine through.



My Company

Robert E. Brown. Tales From the Land of Entrapment

Near Death by Multiple Choice.



Who you choose to surround yourself with helps define who you are.

That being said, one may wonder who I am. So many people in my life have been fascinating studies in an inherent subconscious, or in some cases, a conscious desire to self destruct.

I met Jonathan Jarden when I was still in high school. Our friendship lasted nearly a decade. Jon was highly intelligent, charismatic, loud and gregarious. Jon also had an amazing penchant for bouncing from one horribly dangerous and disastrous situation to the next. He was a couple of years older than me. He had been living in California making a living as a petty drug dealer. After selling coke to an undercover, he fled the Venice boardwalk into rush hour traffic. An oncoming car bounced him into traction and a full body cast. His family had money and arranged to smuggle him out of the state and he came to live in Lost Causes with his father. Within a few weeks of his arrival he got stir crazy and sawed off his last leg cast and showed up unknown and unannounced to a party; held up by a cain and limping like a gimp. This impulse decision allowed his leg to to heal crooked and the limp became a permanent part of Jon's life. I really feel like this introductional anecdote defined Jonathan. That self induced disability was his perfect metaphor.

While I often found myself compelled to get dangerously close, even hang off the edge of a cliff, Jon felt compelled to bound past me and jump straight off. I think we had a symbiotic relationship. I was hooked on the insanity he attracted, he needed someone to (at least try) to be a voice of reason.

I had just moved to Albuquerque to go to school and distance myself from the Lost Causes click. But soon Jon showed up in town and the rest of the Las Cruces townies began to follow. There was no escaping the old crew. That's when we had our quick encounter with Matt Green.



While Jon was a long standing fixture and drama magnet, Matt Green was a fast, dangerous blip that passed through our lives. I entered Matt's orbit right at the moment of his supernova end that almost took me with him. Matt was a hard drinking punk rock combat fetishist. He was obsessed with guns, knives, martial arts and fighting. Everyone has met that that guy. But Matt didn't fit the creepy stereotype. He was likable and funny. Somehow he pulled off a Colonel Kurz steel toe, black pajama chic. The first time I saw him he was trying to fist fight two skin heads outside a Melvins show. He held his own for a while and then got the shit kicked out of him. I thought, "this is a guy I want to meet." We all hit it off well and it seemed that Matt was destined to be a new and close member of our click.

Matt's ability to ingest huge amounts of chemicals and booze far surpassed ours. It became clear that this mixed with his love of lethal weapons and Jonathan's terrifying recklessness was a dangerous combination on the first night we went to his house. The three of us and our respective girlfriends had retreated to his run down apartment after the bar had closed. The girls all laid on his bed and I stretched out on the floor while Jonathan and Matt stood above me maniacally discussing guns. After a few minutes into the conversation Matt offered up a special treat. He reached under the mattress and pulled out a shinny chrome plated .44 magnum. Jonathan held it with awe. "Is that loaded?" My girlfriend Jennifer asked."Let's see" Jonathan laughed and pumped a round into the floor right next to me. The blast was so loud that I felt like someone had hit me with a crowbar. I went deaf for a split second before the wind tunnel ringing set in. I looked next to me in a dizzying daze and there was a crater in the carpet about 4 inches wide, right next to my leg. I looked up, straining to focus as Matt pulled the gun out of Jonathan's grip and unloaded the pistol onto the carpet, scattering shells all around me.

Now a man of good judgment would have said "This is not a smart place to be." I was there the very next night.

Jonathan's girlfriend Kim was driving us home from a party and he began a sloppy drunk fight with her. The argument escalated and Jonathan demanded that she drop us off at Matt's house a mile from his own. While Kim was a sober ride, I insisted that we get out with him. Matt's friend Tom was visiting in town and answered the door. "It's a bad scene" Tom said. "Matt's wasted, I don't think you guys want to be here." Jonathan laughed and knocked over a beer can pyramid trying to get his hands on the last drops of cheap whiskey sitting on the table. Matt stumbled into the room with a glazed blank look in his eyes. He was holding a 12" Bowie knife and tried handing it to me handle forward. I declined and brushed it away. "Uh, Matt, are you okay?" He just stared and tried handing me the knife. I brushed it aside again. "Uh, no thanks." He smiled re-offering again. On the third refusal he sat down in a beat up easy chair with the blade still in hand and blankly stared into space. Jonathan sat next to him and began drunkenly rambling, oblivious to the fact that Matt was holding a huge knife and hadn't said a word. Alarm bells were ringing and I called Kim and begged her to come back and get us. After five more minutes of Matt's eerie silence, she arrived. The second she pulled up, I grabbed Jennifer and we hopped in the back seat. Kim had decided to bring Jonathan's huge Rot-Chow mix breed for the ride and it cheerfully panted at us as from the front seat as Jonathan and Kim screamed at each other in the street. After some time the doors opened. Jon sat in the driver's seat and Kim adjusted the dog on her lap in the passengers side. "No fucking way are you driving" I said. "Hey, you make the choice" he slurred. "You can stay or you can go." From my curb side view I could still see Matt still staring off into space with his knife lit through his living room window and I said "...drive."

We screeched out onto the empty streets. Jonathan wasn't weaving, he was careening. We bounced up one curb, then he pinballed into the opposite lane, then back to the first curb at 50 mph. "You're driving like a maniac" Jennifer screamed from the back seat. "You want to see crazy?" Jonathan laughed. He slammed on the brakes. The car spun out of control and bounced off another curb, spinning the car backwards to a smoking stop. The giant dog flew into the back seat and it's paws raked across Jennifer's bare legs. The scratches ran deep enough to leave scars visible for years. My head hit the side window leaving a bloody crack in the glass. Everyone but the driver immediately ejected from the car to veiw the damage. Suddenly Jonathan put the car in gear and drove off with two flat tires and a bent axle. Kim chased after him on foot and we watched their ridiculous slow speed chase fade into the distance.

Matt disappeared for two months until one day I saw him on campus. He was sitting on a bench, sullen and defeated. His arm was wrapped in bandages. I asked him what happened and when he answered a chill ran down my spine. After we left he had started hounding Tom to take the knife the way he had done to me. Finally Tom accepted the knife. What Tom didn't realize was that he was accepting a knife FIGHT. Matt had another Bowie knife sheathed behind his back and when Tom took the knife he pulled out the second one and stabbed. Tom put his hand up in defense and Matt thrust the blade straight through the palm of his hand. On realizing what he had done to his friend, Matt decided to punish himself by thrusting the other knife between the bones in his own forearm and ripped the blade up his arm. Matt was blacked out drunk and had no memory of any of it. He slowly sobered back into consciousness in a hospital room to the news that both he and Tom had nerve damage and neither were going to be able to fully use their wounded appendages again.

I didn't see Matt for three years after that. One day I bumped into him walking down the street. I couldn't believe my eyes. He was standing in front of me with a shaved head and orange robes. After things blew over from that night, Matt went sober, moved to Santa Fe and became a Buddhist monk.

Jonathan however, never had that one brutal lesson learned. His was a slow, horrible decline.

My Company

Robert E. Brown. The 2 Street Chronicles

Ode to Cookie and Charlene part II: Toilet Corpse (the punchline)

Charlene's fiance had demanded that she stop stripping. She had taken a job as a server at a sports bar by the stadiums but she just wasn't making enough money to feed her poker machine hobby. After a few weeks she started secretly taking shifts across the street again. On this infamous night Cookie arrived at her poker stool early. Charlene was dancing and Cookie had gone over there to visit. Strangely a customer had accused her of stealing money off the bar and she had been evicted. She had only just been allowed back in. (She had been 86ed eight months earlier. After blacking out drunk, she had rushed the stage and knocked a girl off the pole. Then ripped off her own shirt and exposed her ogre breasts to the terrified patrons. Then promptly passed out cold on stage.) She was in a foul mood and began to immediately order shots while feeding the poker machine with her newly found money. An hour later Charlene showed up stumbling drunk, slamming her big gym bag full of stripper costumes on a table. She had left in the middle of the shift, sloppily slurring oaths that she would never work there again. She had suffered one too many insults. First her dear mother had been wrongly accused of stealing, then she had been denied another drink by the manager after falling off the stage.
"Yo, I threw a drink in that cunt's face when I left." she said cockeyed and wobbling.
I believed her.

A few minutes later the owner pulled me aside, "Charlene just put 300 dollars into the machine. Buy them a round of shots."
"Uh, you know she can barely sit up in that stool?"
"Perfect, then she'll put another 300 in."
So I set them up with more shots.
Then more.

For four more hours they sat bobbing back and forth, drunkenly smashing their fists at the buttons. Occasionally screaming insults at the machines or each other. Eventually the bar closed but they were still at it. I was stuck, ready to go home, but resigned to the long wait for the poker machine to read 0. I started reading at the end of the bar and about 20 minutes later Cookie began screaming. "Rob, Rob, I'm worried about Charlene." I looked up and she was gone from the stool.
"Did she leave?" I asked.
She went to take a piss and hasn't come back" she screeched.
"Cookie, the restroom is 3 feet from you. Why don't you knock on the door." I answered blasely.
Cookie tried getting off her stool and fell straight to her knees. With some effort she stood up and weaved to the door and began banging.
"Rob, she won't come out, I think she's dead, I think my baby's dead."
I thought my head would explode. I walked over to the door and it was locked.
"You have to get her out, she's in trouble" Cookie wailed.
I did my best to calm her and popped the shitty lock with a kick to the door. I squeezed my way into the tiny bathroom and found Charlene. She wasn't dead, but she was dead drunk, passed out cold on the toilet. She seemed to have lost consciousness right after she had pulled down her panties. She was slouched sideways on the toilet and covered in piss. The restroom was too small for both Cookie and me. She continued to shout her concerns from outside. "Is she dead Rob? Is she dead?"
"No Cookie, she's not dead."
I was able to hike up her piss soaked panties, but as I tried to pull up her jeans she slunk down to the floor and her head cracked down with a slab of meat sound. I tried to lift her up but the dead weight was just too much and I exited the restroom flustered and irritated. Cookie bolted in past me and started trying to drag the body out by one arm. She got Charlene half way out the door and fell flat on her ass.
"You need to help me drag her home." she said "We only live 3 blocks from here."
I just stared at her as I envisioned what I would say to the cops as they found me at 3 in the morning, dragging out a stripper's body from the tavern.
I sat on top of the bar and contemplated the very tough spot I was in. I couldn't leave them there. I couldn't get them out. There was only one option and while it offered some danger to me, it also offered some bit of comeuppance for them.
"You're going to have to call Charlene's fiance."
Suddenly Cookie's face became very somber. "Please don't make me do that Rob." in a tone I never heard from the ogre, but immensely enjoyed. After a couple of minutes her resistance waned.
"You know it's your only option." I smirked.
"Fuck you Rob" she said in a quiet, resigned voice, and flipped open the phone.
Her conversation with him was quiet, nervous and stuttering. She closed the phone announcing a 5 minute ETA. I unlocked the door and positioned myself defensively behind the bar with one of the bats in reach, not knowing how this spectacle would be received. I pointed out to Cookie that she may want to work on getting Charlene's pants pulled up. She stumbled over to the body but the lower half was still inside the restroom and the door blocked access to the jeans bunched at the ankles. Cookie's solution was to resume tugging on the body by an arm but the jostling set loose all the Swedish Fish shots and Michelob Ultra in the girls body. Charlene let loose a stomach full of vomit which sprayed her long blonde hair and the whole right side of her shirt. NOW Cookie felt like she needed to do some damage control. "He can't see her like this" she shrieked and proceeded to pull off Charlene's Tee shirt. She ran over and unzipped the gym bag full of stripper costumes and stuffed the vomit soaked shirt into the mouth of a clear plastic pump.
I stammer screamed in disbelief
"WHAT...
ARE...
YOU...
THINKING??" still trying to process her logic and I heard the door click shut.

There he was. Dressed like a Soprano's extra with his eyes bugging and the veins visible in his head. We were all motionless and silent for a moment as he stood at the door looking down at his dear sweet fiance stripped to her underwear, laying on a dirty floor half out of an even dirtier restroom in a shitty south Philly bar covered in her own piss and vomit at 3 in the morning.

My palms began to sweat and I placed my fingers on the handle of the bat.

He looked up at Cookie. "What the fuck?" She backed up a couple of steps with her hands in the air surrendering.
He turned to me. "How'd she get like this?" he snapped thinking he might have a lucid culprit.
"Hey, they came in like this." I snapped back, half lying.
He paused and looked back at the body. "But like this? You gotta control 'em." He said with a slight air of frustration.
I wrapped my right hand around the handle of the bat.
"Can anyone control them?" I asked in a rhetorical tone that seemed logical to him for a second. He looked at the body again and his face turned red.
"Why the fuck is she half naked?" He shouted and both my hands were gripping the bat just out of sight behind the bar.
He took a step towards me and then noticed the gym bag with the stripper shoes popping out the top.
"What the..." he said as he stood over the bag pulling out a shoe.
Cookie stood quietly with her hands in the air and her ogre jaw wide open as he stared her down for a moment.

"Fuck this, lets go home." he said slinging the bag over his shoulder. And without another word, he and Cookie picked up the dead drunk body by the arms and legs and shuffled out the door without bothering to pull up the jeans. When the door closed I lunged over the bar and flipped the lock.
I lit a cigarette and poured myself some bourbon with shaking hands. There was 50 dollars worth of points still on the machine. I left the score up, filled out the record and put the winnings in my pocket.

Do I really need a punch line after that? The next day they were back in and didn't say a word. As if absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened. At my old 2 street bar, nothing had.



My Company