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Misery Can Be Fun
By
Jon Alan Carroll
It was already getting dark when Bolzano got off the stinking Muni train and started walking home. A guy in greasy jeans was passed out in a doorway.
Litigation Technician, Bolzano thought, the job that dare not speak its
name. After three months at the insurance company, Bolzano felt he'd paid his debt to society.
He headed down Market and turned right on Sixth Street. Two homeless guys sat on the sidewalk and passed a bag between them. "He's in jail?" one brown-bagger said. "What name's he under?"
Bolzano walked down Sixth, passing the Royale Hotel and two Vietnamese restaurants and four beat-up guys with cups and signs.
Half a block up, Thelma was rearranging her bags on her usual place on the pavement. "Wash and pray, wash and pray," she said, "that is all I have to say."
Thelma glared at Bolzano as he passed, just like she did every day. "You're one of those dirty little Catholics, aren't you," she said.
Bolzano's eyes stayed the sidewalk and its prison riot of strange stains and multicolored puddles of mystery. The used condoms in the gutter were changing to green from gold and brown.
It's springtime, Bolzano thought, for the leaves on the tree of
love.
The traffic on Mission was grid locked, so he cut between two cars stuck in the crosswalk. He passed Cambodian Noodles and XX Videos and the Hoot-Owl and the Blood of Jesus storefront.
Several citizens were loitering in front of Superette Liquors. One guy in a wheelchair took off his plastic leg and stuck a cup in it.
Tundras and Dakotas and Yukons were headed into the City and traffic plodded and crawled like a lazy two-year-old.
Right in front of his building, a utility truck was double-parked and the driver was conducting some business with a sex worker. A Tahoe driver leaned on his horn.
Bolzano opened the front door with his key and walked up to his room. The landlord had painted over the tags again and scraped off another Mr. Neck poster.
Apartment 2C had a blanket-curtain and this weird shut-in smell that never went away, but Bolzano was OK with his dumb little room. It beat sleeping in his old truck, and maybe it was where he would thaw back to life.
He dumped his work gear and reheated some Vietnamese soup and walked back down to the street. This time he was careful not to forget the iPod.
Bolzano stuck in his earbuds and headed over to Folsom. A certain smell hit his nostrils and he watched his feet for the next half-block.
Bright lights, Big shitty, he thought.
A guy with a shopping cart full of bottles was rummaging through a trashcan.
Unauthorized hearts will be towed away, Blunt Object sang, as the money spins around and
around.
There was another condobox under construction near Eighth, right where the old aluminum factory used to be. Somebody had painted a giant
Robo-Boho over the sign promising Luxury Living with Urban Sizzle.
The streets were jammed, lots of people on the street on Friday night. Two guys in uniforms were having sex in the back of a brown Lincoln.
You think I'm paranoid, sang Big Helmet, but I know I'm Jesse
James. Bolzano passed Starbucks and Dildo Depot and Starbucks and the Languid Langoor Lounge.
Standing in front of the Leatherman store, a one of the Folsom regulars was preaching to an invisible choir. "Goddamn holes, bullet holes, telephone pole holes," the man shouted at the traffic. "The Army was there. Where was the Air Force?"
Bolzano passed the nihilist boutique and the angry messenger bike shop and turned right on Eleventh. The old Iron Cross was gone, replaced by some neo-posh club called Populuxe. The new club stunk of $20 drinks and rampant Suburban Guyism.
It's sad when a dream dies, Bolzano thought.
Mikey Greene was smoking Chesterfields and leaning against a wall near Weltschmerz. He hadn't seen Greene since their night in jail. "Bolzano-man," Greene said.
Bolzano pulled out the earbuds and said hello. Greene looked better since he got some meth dentures and lost the facial scabs, but his eyeballs looked like the grand prize winner on
America's Funniest Suicide Videos. He was still as muscular as a paperclip.
"Shit, Bolzano," Greene said. "It's like I'm my own fucking Renaissance." Greene said he'd already filled two discs with a screenplay called
Dark Oval, which if Bolzano understood correctly was about vampires on the NASCAR circuit.
Bolzano said good-bye and walked over to Weltschmerz. The club was dark and divey and the crowd was loud and drunk. A band called 1019 was setting up on the corner stage.
She was sitting alone at a table in the back. He'd met Veronica on the Weary Hamster site and they'd talked a bit before deciding to meet up. He'd felt a flash of grim hope when she'd insisted that imitation wasn't the sincerest form of flattery.
"Hello there," Veronica said. She was cool-pretty, with a June Cleever dress and a sly-shy smile. Sadly, she'd redone her hair into the Corporate Girl style, which was popular this season among psychos with office jobs.
Bolzano ordered a beer and Veronica rattled on about growing up in Fond du Lac. The waitress brought his beer and Bolzano asked Veronica what it was she was looking for.
"I'm a lost sole, looking for a new heel," Veronica said.
Bolzano nodded, but there seemed to be one small problem here. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Bolzano could see that Veronica had linebacker shoulders and thick hands with little nicks and cuts, like from working on cars.
Veronica was clearly a man, or used to be.
Dating was like the Cantonese news to Bolzano, he only understood little fragments as they whirled past, but now he realized in full sadness that he'd worn his lucky pants for nothing.
Bolzano sipped his beer as Veronica talked and tried to figure out how to extract himself from this situation. He could say he had to make a call and disappear, but he didn't want to be a complete jerk about it.
After all, it was a free country, or used to be.
Bolzano felt he'd grown a lot since Alicia broke up with him last month. She'd pulled him out of the pit and put him up in her place in Dogpatch and he'd ruined everything by acting like an asshole.
He'd been at least half an asshole, maybe as much as a 75% asshole. In matters of the heart, exact percentages were sometimes hard to calculate.
"I read Pride and Prejudice in college," Veronica said. "Some scars never heal."
The overhead lights in the club started flickering on and off.
"Could I have your attention please," a bartender said from halfway across the room. "The police have ordered all the bars to quit serving."
The crowd murmured murderously at the man who'd just cut off their booze.
"The bridge is down and the traffic's backed up onto the city streets," the bartender said. "Wait here or go home, but no more alcohol."
Bolzano and Veronica walked out of the bar with the rest of the crowd and stood on the sidewalk. People were pouring out of all the bars, including the gay biker bar up the street. On the next block, a Suburban was burning.
Now what, Bolzano thought.
Traffic was stopped in both directions. The stoplights went from red to green and nothing moved. Half the drivers had abandoned their cars in the middle of the street.
Glass shattered on Folsom and people ran into storefronts. Some guy in a Nissan leaned on his horn. The car alarms formed a glee club of screams and squawks.
Half a block down, two guys with black bandanas on their faces were pouring something on an abandoned SUV. One Black Bandana pulled out a lighter and they both ran off in opposite directions.
Now two SUVs were burning on the street. Some of the people on the sidewalk started cheering. A salesman pulled a handgun out of his Four-Runner.
"I knew this would happen someday," Veronica said. "They're all fucking insane."
Bolzano and Veronica stood and watched the looting and fistfights and SUVs burning on the street. There were shouts and sirens and gunshots. Bolzano felt a tingling in the back of his brain, like that feeling he got when his foot woke up.
The sidewalk crowd started wandering away. Bolzano heard an amplified voice coming out of the open doors of the club.
He elbowed Veronica and they walked back into Weltschmerz, where 1019 had just started their set.
"...and we've always wanted to play a riot," said the lead singer, a skinny deadboy with an ice-cream pallor. "This particular song is called
Freeworm."
Bolzano leaned down to Veronica and said, "I arranged all this, because I wanted our first date to be
special."
Veronica walked onto the dance floor and Bolzano followed her. Outside the club he could hear shouting and gunshots and the chorus of car alarms.
What the hell, Bolzano thought. If the world was insane, then the world was insane. Veronica was funny and a good little dancer, too bad about the whole extra penis thing.
They danced alone in the empty club. Bolzano had missed his life and it was nice to have it back.
Copyright © 2006 Jon Alan Carroll
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