Bill wanted to start building synthesizers but wasn’t quite sure where to start.
“I just don’t know where to start,” said Bill in distress. He had been attempting to build synthesizers for thirteen minutes and he still didn’t know where to start.
“It’s been thirteen minutes! What have I been doing??” Bill said as he questioned what he was doing.
“Not much, I guess.” Answering his own question. He hadn’t really been doing anything, most just staring at a whatever was on his computer screen. Coincidentally, what was going on just under the thin sheet of whatever it is that protects the important part of the computer screen from mindless fingers and prints, which was the part presenting this thing, was some new age-y Mandelbrot fractal zoom, made by a strangely flamboyant and determined middle-twenties aged, long-haired, black-glasses’d, scruff-ball, who also happens to sit, staring at whatever was on his computer screen, but, unlike Bill, was often forced by his work on the computer to never really not do anything.
“Man, I wish I could take a break from this lame ass computer work,” complained Tim after about thirteen hours of complicated html and javascript coding. The coding he was involved in was for a strange job presented by an even stranger human, who was the resident window and exterior car washer whom he met dropping off his car at a drive-thru touch-free hand-washed Car Wash business. Alphonso Crunket, of northern New Orleans, had made his way around the States, attempting to make a name for himself as a unique and personable door to door handyman and electrician, sometimes targeting the emerging and freshly built apartments and houses of upper classes areas, owned by families who had recently moved in but still had various kinks to work out in both the architectural as well as interior designs, and also to potentially add a few more outlets here and there. A more subversive and secret reason also existed, being that the drawers of the (mostly white) women’s undergarments smelled better than any of the other underwear garment drawers he had ever smelled before. Alphonso was a very diligent worker, and had a great attitude, which lead to many job opportunities. The only thing keeping Alphonso from being settled in one place is his uncontrollable urge, from time to time, to touch the supple and perfectly round butts of white women, or to stick his nose where it shouldn’t belong, in the drawers of said ladies undergarments, especially those between twenty-five and fifty. This same issue is what got him kicked out of a grocery store in Memphis, a liquor store in Salt Lake, a steak and ribs restaurant in Reno, a thrift store in Portland which now landed him at this drive-thru touch-free hand-washed Car Wash.
“Maybe I should get my car washed.” Tim’s voice sauntered about a week or so ago, before he took his car in for a carwash. Tim was poor, and electricity was no loaf of bread, and so began the ritual of leaving the house. First: assess the thirteen tabs open on the internet browser, mostly pertaining to black magick, hacking (both domestic hacking and government hacking), big black booty, the history of the early 20th century elections of American presidents, and different recipes on how to make ones own ice cream, more specifically the ones that involve strawberries. Tim loved strawberries. He sometimes dreamed about big bootied black babes feeding him strawberries. Next came all the programs open on the few computers he had on and working together, which all usually needed to be saved, or to be “saved as...,” dated, described, and finally closed. Once all the programs were closed, the computers, all five of them, could be shut down. Everything in Tim’s room was powered off one single high-grade, personally-designed-and-built AC power conditioner, which made it easy to cut the power to everything in the apartment quickly, both to save money and monitor his wattage draw, but also in case anybody or any organization caught onto any of his criminal activities and he needed a speedy get away. This high-grade, personally-designed-and-built AC power conditioner could in some ways been seen as Tim’s most valuable piece of equipment.
“This piece of equipment is so valuable.” Tim murmured to himself, after all the computers were shut down and he was finally able to flip its switch. Tim is often reminded of the strange experience tossed upon him in downtown during a thrift store trip with his buddy Joe, the guitar player from a local avant-guard jazz group. An obviously high and obviously homeless man, taking his stand near an old abandoned lot in between two newly constructed high rises used for the corporate headquarters of either a bank, a fast food restaurant, or a law-firm, was preaching, drunkenly, paper bagged bottle in hand, begging behind his action for just somebody to talk to.
“Hey you fucks! You ‘eard of that fucker who ate a airplane?!”
Joe and I staggered for a second not realizing we were “the fucks.” We had just stepped out of our high-grade medical-marijuana smoke-filled blue volvo station-wagon and the effects of the “dreamwreck” that I had brought to the table and the “purple thunderfuck wonder” that Joe had procured from a dispensary with a fairly outstanding underground reputation were still at its highest.
“Umm... how long did it take him?” Joe passed quickly.
“Well I don’t fuckin’ know! All I know is that ‘e probly needed fuckin’ gallon of whiskey to wash it down wit’” He sputtered and spat while he spoke.
“Would you eat an airplane?” I asked, mildly afraid of what the answer might be.
“Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Where the fuck would I find an airplane? Now, see, fuck. I been thinkin’ more and more ‘bout this. They say yer possessions own ya, right? And isn’t there some sayin’ you are what ya eat? Well if thats the fuckin’ case, then it seems like the only way to know and be yerself is to eat the shit ya got! But then I been thinkin’, why would I fuckin’ do that shit for free? How much more money could I get if I ate the most valuable thing I owned, fer entertainent, compared to how much I’d get if I sold it! I decided that I’d make sure I got about ten times more than I think I could sell it for.”
There was a bit of a pause as we tried to figure out what to ask next.
“What is the most valuable thing you own?”
“Ah! My pride and joy. My signed 1940’s Joe DiMaggio baseball card.” He held up a card, which looked like it may have been a baseball card at some point, but was now creased, crinkled, and covered in pen markings and sharpie doodles.
“‘Signed’ is one way of thinking about it,” I whispered, chuckling to Joe.
“How much do you think that’s worth these days?” Joe asked.
“These babies go fer ‘bout two-hundy on the good ol’ introweb... which means I’d ‘spect ‘bout... les see here, two-hundy but ten of ‘em...uh... two grand! Yeah! Two grand, that’d be nice.” His expressions reminded me of some kind of bird, like a smaller kind of bird.
“I’ve got twenty bucks. Would you do it for that?” I decided this experience called for the full immersion of my attention (and wallet) at the time.
“Lemme see the money ferst...” He eyed us with that weak left-eyed squint and that wide open right-eyed gaze that most people drunk get, but varies depending on their dominant eyes. I took the twenty dollars and tossed it on the ground over near where he was sitting in his shopping cart wrapped in raver-like beads. He promptly devoured the card without question and stared at us, this time with one of the calmest looks I had seen on anybody in the past five years. We left before we even watched him pick up the twenty dollars.
Joe and I walked on laughing about the experience.
“Well fuck, now I don’t have any money for the thrift store.”
“It’s cool I got you ‘cause that was worth it. I thought it was funny that he wanted more money for eating his favorite thing than for selling it. It almost seems like eating it would give you this insane connection that wouldn’t exist if you sold it. I mean, it’s selfish, not allowing anybody else to use it or whatever, but he might be right, somewhere in that philosophical jumble.”
“Are you saying you would eat your guitar for less money than you would sell it?” there was a goofy and well timed pause.
“Maybe? I guess it depends on whether I look at it from its actual value now or from my personal evaluation of it, which would obviously be much higher than its actual list price online. So what I guess I’m saying is that it would be much easier to eat a new guitar I haven’t played much than a guitar I’ve become close friends with.” They bought a few old records and Tim bought a rayon button-down, the only kind of shirt he wears, from a very kind older black man, who was obviously staring at the ass of some hot mom-like lady with tight black pants on, his eyes twitching back and forth from the computer and cash register to the roaming behind of this Holy Grail. We left, walking slowly, laughing, like stoned people do, when they walk, after this kind of shit.
As Tim continued to ponder the experience later, he figured the most valuable thing he owned would definitely be that power conditioner, and in the thought of eating it came the ideas of immanent death, mainly because lots of the components involved were fairly toxic to humans. But the look on that homeless mans face, after he ate what definitely still could have been his most valuable possession, whether or not it was actually a 1940’s Joe DiMaggio baseball card, which actually go for about $400 on Ebay in early 2014, was too impressionable to Tim that all he could think, for some time, was that there was a secret to happiness, something lacking in his life, in eating ones most valued possessions.
Tim stepped out the door, passing his mildly attractive middle-aged roommate, Martha, who obviously doesn’t get the attention she tries to attract, with clothes that outline every detail of her body, let it be emphasized: every detail, along with perfume that if applied lightly might be a bit attractive but in the drenched cloud that lingers around her all day, theres almost nothing to do but let out a cough.
“Hey Tom...” she said almost too seductively, enough to send thoughts that were mildly strange and erotic through Tim’s brain.
“Hi Martha.” He said hurriedly as he fiddled with getting the key in the door to lock it. She pranced up the stairs, showing off her nicely shaped ass in such a tight pair of yoga pants that they were basically see-though. Tim would never really try anything with Martha. She wasn’t black, and therefore didn’t have a big black booty. Tim only got boners from black girls with big booties. He hopped down the stairs and landed in front of his classic 1989 steel-blue Volvo 740 GL station-wagon, that had morphed slightly to the color brownish steel-blue due to extensive neglect in the cosmetic department.
The drive over to the closest carwash Tim could find was soundtracked by an intermittent radio struggling to receive The Gap Band’s 1982 track “Outstanding,” which is great even when the radio keeps cutting to a commercial about a some special radio-only offer involving a multiple CD set of George Benson’s greatest hits. As he pulled up, another car, also a Volvo, and also a station-wagon, but just a few years younger and painted perfect white, was rolling out from the carwash, with a late-30s early-40s looking bearded driver who looked a little bit madder than most people should look on a bright, although hazy, (some would say smoggy,) and sunny day, in the east valley of L.A. His vanity license plate said BILLION, and he actually had bright blue foam dice hanging from his mirror.
Tim pulled up into the garage and parked his car. Taking one look into his right side view mirror, he noticed right away the curves of what looks like a deliciously large and well shaped black booty. As he turns and looks with his own eyes, he sees that his original impression still holds true, and he immediately begins having thoughts about being alone in office of the touch-free hand-washed carwash with this insanely attractive female.
“Hey there now!” Burst a voice, accompanied with a knock on the door, an older black man popped up out from the place where the black booty wasn’t, and scared the shit out of Tim, who quickly recovered.
“You can obviously see how dirty my car is,” Tim said timidly, “and I was hoping you could help me do something about that.”
*****
Bill had to get his car cleaned to make sure the date he was meeting that night, a nice girl whom he hadn’t actually met yet, named Denise Brown, was not unimpressed with the average, 1998, white Volvo station-wagon, which he so endearingly named Pearl, partially because of its shiny white and pearly exterior, (when cleaned as it is now,) but also because the first girl Bill had ever kissed had been named Pearl, and he has never really quite gotten over the fact that she has moved on and is now dating a professional football player. He is so hung up on this girl in fact, that his garage is now named “the clam,” again, partially because of the issue with Pearl but also because the garage-door’s electric motor that is supposed to open with the push of a button had been smashed and broken due to some carelessness involving his lawn-mower and a drunken night of solo croquet, leading to a very tough and athletic work out to pry open the garage-door every time he needs to take Pearl out for a ride, which happens just about everyday, seeing that his mediocre gas station job won’t work itself.
Bill was speeding, fast, down the highway after picking his Volvo up from the car wash, caught in his own negativity, as he realized how late for work he was going to be again. It was never really his fault, it just the combination of events that caused him to be late. He would always organize perfectly the order of events that would occur in his day when he woke up each morning, producing a schedule that in theory seemed to work, but in practice, was never quite fulfilled on time as Bill wished, which then seemed to drape a sheet of stress lightly over his entire demeanor. It was the same exact case today, involving the scheduling of trip to the local touch-free hand-washed Car Wash to remove the layer of dust caused by too many late night drives into the desert, but this car wash place, after the car was dropped off this morning, apparently had some issues with men in black suits, which prevented them from being able to clean the car by the time stated. This seemed like obvious bullshit to Bill, who knew for a fact that men in black suits don’t go around actually talking to people and intimidating them like that, which meant these guys made this shit up, which means these guys are liars, and Bill didn’t like to deal with liars, even though he was one a lot of the time or “when he needed to be.” Combined with the fact that he still had no idea where to start in the world of synthesizer building, the drive to work was a stressful endeavor to say the least. He pulled up to the Circle K he had been driving to for the past five years, and with his rushing speed, pulled the turn a bit too quickly and bumped the corner of his car on the piece of wood outlining a few of the sides of the parking lot.
“Fucking shit. Of course that’s what would happen right now.” He cursed himself as he pulled open the plexiglass door that was covered in various official stickers about tobacco sale or lottery tickets, chiming the christmas-like sleigh-bell that is so inappropriate in late March.
“Wow, you’re later than usual today Willy.” Bill’s co-worker, a scrawny middle eastern college student named Cameron, who was a bit too sarcastic for is own good, slumped over the counter in the prescribed red ‘Circle K’ polo shirt, mop in hand, rubbing his eye underneath his small wire-framed glasses. Bill told all of his co-workers that he goes by Willy. He doesn’t go by Willy anywhere else.
“Well you know...”
“Wait lemme guess, ‘it’s just the way God throws them out’?” It looks like Bill had been using that phrase a bit too often recently to explain all the stupid shit that happens to him. He thought quickly.
“Well, I was actually going to say that sometimes people are terrorized by strange government people these days, man. Those kinds of dudes dressed in black suits, with the dark sunglasses and shit. I mean, it could happen to anybody! It happened to the people at the car wash, and I know those guys pretty well, they wouldn’t be up to no weird shit that would call in dudes in black suits. I’m just sayin’ with all this government interference, how can we ever expect to do anything on time anymore?” Cameron was actually stumped of sarcastic things to say so he want straight for his backup backup choice of response - care hidden in insult.
“Are you fucking ok, Willy? You seem pretty fucked up right now.”
“Didn’t sleep much. Just been pissed recently.”
“Well, if you’re seeing dudes in black suits, you might wanna try to sleep a little bit more...”
“Fuck you, Cameron.”
“Here, you can mop this floor.” Cameron handed over the mop and went back behind the register as an older lady walked through the door. She looked about seventy and bought a bar of chocolate, a glass of orange juice, and a magazine with classic hot rod cars covered in scantily clad tattooed women. She looked at me and winked as Cameron rang her up.
“The secret to long life...” she said with a slightly humorous tone as she turned and waddled out the door. After Bill had finished mopping the floor, cleaning of some of the remaining vomit that was expelled in the store a few days earlier by a violent and ill heroin addict who was screaming helplessly about people, egyptian gods, pain and jalepeno-cheddar-bunned hot dogs, of which he was in the isle of, and decided that it was about time for a smoke break. Bill thought he was clever sometimes because of somethings. One of those things was how he was able to sneak a little bit of his weed, a nice home-closet-grown stash that he had begun growing about five months earlier and had recently cut, trimmed, and cured to perfection, into his daily hand-rolled cigarettes. The reason it’s mentioned that he thought he was clever and not that he was clever is because everybody he worked with knew. Bill thought he was so clever that if anybody did ask, which sometimes they did, his explanations were enough to convince that person that he actually did not mix weed into his rolling tobacco. They weren’t, but people saw how hard he was trying to hide it that they eventually gave up and just went on with their lives without telling Bill explicitly that they knew he smoked pot at work. This perpetuated the idea in Bill’s mind that he was clever, which, as of now, should probably be seen as a bad thing. Bill went to great lengths to try to hide his love for weed which included having two different but identical packs of tobacco, except for two tiny colored stickers on the tops of them, one red and one green, with one, (obviously the green stickered one,) topped off with a decent bit of ground up “Blue-Trane OG,” while the other remained a normal pack of tobacco. It also included having at all times an aerosol can of a scent that Bill could tolerate, which he would apply gratuitously, forming a cloud that drenched most spaces Bill entered. To most people, these types of things seemed to prove even more that Bill loved weed and was obsessed with trying to hide it. Nobody ever cared whether or not Bill smoked weed or not, but they all thought it was hilarious that Bill thought it was worth such incognito efforts. Maybe he was more in love with the spy-like aspect of life and it just so happens that he projected it on the first thing he had to keep secret.
“‘Ey Willy, lemme hit that spliff you got...” Cameron said poking his head out of the door.
“Sorry Cameron, I don’t smoke that stuff. All I got here is the good ol’ tobacco.” Bill said in a mockingly conservative accent.
“Well it fuckin’ smells like dank weed out here...”
“I mean, I can show you my tobacco bag, if you wanna see whats inside...,” he pushed, pulling out the red stickered tobacco bag from is backpack.
“Aight never mind, dude.” He closed the door. Bill assumed he had fooled Cameron, at least enough. He went back inside and took over on the register, which consisted of an extended period of bad radio music and strange customers buying things they don’t want anybody else knowing they buy, but have to encounter a clerk to be able to buy them, and therefore spitting out some of the strangest small talk Bill had encountered so far in his various odd jobs since childhood. Maybe it was just strange because he was kind of stoned. A nerdy white kid, who looked like he had spent the last few days stuck in a world of warcraft binge, stumbled in looking confused and excited. He quickly found the magazines and began scanning for a particular one. He walked away from the magazines without one, looking frustrated but made is way down the isle landing at the first aid section, across from the candy section, grabbing a container of petroleum jelly and a Kit-Kat bar before making his way to the register.
“You guys have any other magazine behind the counter? I couldn’t seem to find the one I was looking for...” The question was timid and taboo for him.
“You mean the porno magazines?” Bill asked flatly.
“Yeah...”
“Which one did you want?”
“All I remember was that there was a bunch of B’s in it...” He said in way that implied that he really did not want to say the actual title of the magazine. Bill reached down under the counter and pulled out a magazine that by glance had the profile of a bodacious black booty on the beach.
“Big Bodacious Black Booties Bouncin’ on the Beach Volume 69? A classic. That’s $19.99” Bill knew his magazines, whatever they were. The nerdy guy spilled twenty-five bucks out of his pocket and walked out in a hurry. Bill chuckled a little, not because he thought it was weird, but because he could totally relate. The whole time during their interaction though, while sometimes looking into that guys eyes, the thoughts of synthesizers: their circuit boards, their wires, their knobs, their simplicity, their complexity, kept popping up, teasing him.
