Index / Exploits

I held my shirt to my thigh, trying to keep the bleeding confined, unwilling to let any of it get on the rest of my clothes. My left hand gripped the railing like a crutch. My right side felt more than useless, my foot a leaden weight threatening to drag my down to the bottom of the stairs I was so painstakingly climbing one at a time. I rested for a moment halfway to the next landing. The sensation was like needles on my skin, being pounded in by hand sledges. The feeling was returning to my body with the force of every drunk during Dia de Muertos. My resolve weakend, I watched the stairs extend before my eyes, some sort of horror movie. My eternal hell, always walking...never getting anywhere. I sat myself down and waited for death...or daylight.

Greg and I could have a worse relationship, we're the respective icing on the Duncan Hines cake of one another's foolishness. If we didn't push each other to the outer limits of sanity on a daily basis then were would our little museum of "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" be? Basketeering showed up late in our lives like the penning of The Requiem Mass. When you hit the top of your creative mountain you start missing the bottom, that's when you break out and go. "Ring A Ding Ditch" was the Seinfeld of our teenage lives, we hit our peak and cut in a few more episodes before we called it quits. We saved ourselves from the fire-in-the-eyes gazes of the audience by getting going when the going was good. Greg and I were entertainment con-artists and we both knew it. We held our finger on the pulse of the laughter, and when the mark turned south we packed our bags like Vaudeville and got the hell out of town. Basketeering was our "Dawn Of The Dead", our Napleonic Code, our "Lucky Star". Basketeering was painstakingly removing ore like a grizzled old prospector. Greg and I put our hats to our heads and said "Holee shit". There was no vein that could compare to what we did that night, our metaphorical miner's pics slid back into our 49ers packs and we wrangled back to O Town.

Let me preface the event with the first time. Good things come in twos as someone once said, regardless of the fact that they were probably talking about group sex, I can't argue with it. Ten O'Clock sang out like a sparrow and the grey Toyota Camary was an emphesymic panther, belching and gulping its way out of the parking spot. Greg sidled low into his seat as I practiced my surgeon-like skills on the radio dial, the incessent static was much akin to an ice cream headache gone on too long. Minutes later we were in the target spot, it was all planned out like Mission Impossible, in and out in fifteen seconds. We threaded the orange extension cord through the bumper, set the safety towel in the laundry basket, and took our positions. With perfect sympatico I slapped Greg's hand after I rang the bell, passing the proverbial ball to him as I sat myself down, gripped the cord, and prepared for the ride of my life. Greg slid over the hood like Starsky, slamming the driver's door. I thumbed up in affirmation and we were zero to twenty in what couldn't have been more than three seconds, it was the shakedown time.

The plan was just to goto the end of the block, but I got ballsy when the cut-off came near. I swung my hand in the air in true hustling style and the state-of-the-art piece of Japanese manufacturing executed a left turn not much off 90 degrees. The basket skittered across the trolley tracks and Greg screeched to a stop at the end of the second block of our excellent adventure. I extended my feet as I continued to roar towards the bumper of the car, stopped myself, and dismounted. The laundry basket looked like it had served a term in Saigon. We grinned knowingly, this was insanity, this was life. I wanted a slurpee, the cherry kind that 7-11 never seemed to had. Iced Coca-cola tastes like warmed over cow patties. Life was a box of chocolates, and in my hands I held the Whitman's sampler key. I'd made my selection, and the felty carress of the shotgun seat was butter cream melting in my mouth. It was time to go home.

We stepped out onto the sidewalk at ten o'clock exactly six days later. The night sky was a gaping chasm above the earth, full of imaginary colors. The kind that only exist in the minds of those who can draw the perfect circle. Marshmellow tufts of clouds danced endlessly as they threatened to unleash again the fury that had left the sidewalks slick, the street a veritable swampland of rainwater and dead leaves. The rounded form of the moon winked its foreboding like the oracle at Delphi. Five minutes later, I clasped Andrew on the shoulders, looking him in the eye with the steely gaze of Dolittle on his famous strike. I told him one thing, the common sense bearing the gravest expression to me. Hold on to the camera.

The person who said your life flashes before your eyes was probably the mayor of Liartown. What I saw before hitting the ground was the strip of iron trolley track between ashphalt and cobblestone. As if borrowing from the demonic momentum of my once horizontal journey, time sped up and left me duly deposited on the ground.

The black surface of the road was a shotgun blast through my back, bits of hardened tar purged from the street proper were lead pellets, My spine crunched and rolled its impained lumbar screamed at me like a doped up LSD fiend. Each vertebrae lighting up like the cataracts on the Nile. My future was mashed potatoes, the ones with the lumps.

I hear the rushing of air suddenly stop as time stood still just for me. For what felt like an eternity and a half I rested on my stomach. The slick street soaking my jacket just as the new gash in my side began to form. I was at peace, and there were no angels to carry me to my eternal rest. I watched the ground through darkened eyes, somehow my sunglasses had remain perched on my nose throughout all this.

To add insult to injury, the basket fell on my back and tiped snapped back into reality. I surfaced for air from the abyss, the inferno dragging me down. My mouth was filled with the taste of Abe Lincoln's profile and I spat again and again trying to remove it. With the same rush of air the world returned to reality and I felt myself assailed by the blaring of a car horn. I gripped the basket with the hand I was still sure was attached and pulled myself forward with my knees. The sidewalk was a foxhole I had to reach, for fear of German snipers gunning me down.

The touch of concrete was the soothing of velvet. My gloved hand set down the basket and clung to the bolt of a firehydrant. After a moment I found myself back on my feet, able to hold the basket in my formerly impaired hand, the car had stopped a block away, the thunder clouds above rumbled again, ominously. The storm had yet to return from its uncomfortable slumber. Something started sounding out above the ringing. "Are you okay?" is most of what I remember. What couldn't have been more than a minute seemed like an hour, but I threw myself into the back seat.

It was over. We were done and with grim finality the heavens opened, the rain that had threatened so long pouring from the sky as whatever god in heaven cursed their luck, their lack of responsiveness. If nothing else, the car was dry. I'd won this round. I smiled and closed my eyes, exhaustion overtaking me like the silken feeling of unconciousness on the three minute ride home.