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