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Austin In And Out
I must say the story of snorting coke off the ass of the daughter of a famous country and western singer did pique my interest but in the end I just grabbed my sleeping bag off the couch, by the craps table, and exited X street for the last time. Before that:
"Stay chief, be a man, help me get kicked out of here."
"No B, this place and you in it is an anomaly long past due for correction. You should feel blessed the neighborhood let you stay as long as it did. Fifteen years is a good run."
"Yeah it is, I've had a good run, but stay, it'll be fun." His tone revealed a doubt about whether it had been a good run and also if he really wanted me to stay. And he and I both knew that predicting fun is, well, excuse me, but like a crapshoot.
It was midnight and B was planning a warm up craps game before the big end of the year casino night. I'm still getting up early so I had been asleep on the couch when he knocked on the door, duffel bags full of close out merchandise at his feet. He wasn't going to look for another place in town; he was in the wee hours of each night meeting with former clients and disposing of excess baggage, and on the first day of the new year he would depart for places unknown and wait for unknown periods of time until final transactions could be made complete. Then he would leave the country to unite with his lifelong notion to grow cherries in New Zealand, which when he said it it was like he was meaning to leave the planet.
Over the years he had repainted the walls and ceilings throughout with abstract interpretations from the psychedelic recesses of his drug addled mind. Much of it was very pleasant to the eye. He wanted to cut out some sections but I was betting he wouldn't get around to it. It had taken multiple prodding's just to get him to go out in the street and play catch and that was something he liked to do.
He would need special powers to get everything done that needed doing but he doesn't have any he knows about so he would likely resort to his default special ability, procrastination. The ability to postpone what needing doing was really the only power he had most of the time and he made regular use of it.
His roommate was his ex-wife's ex-husband. Each of them had their own child by her and the children when visiting were delightful. The roommate's eight-year-old daughter made sock hats for all of us using B's dingy but clean ("they're clean chief, I promise") socks piled up in a corner of his room. Both men still loved the mother of their children but in equal measure to being afraid of her. "She's got 9-1-1 on speed dial."
B had explained the domestic abuse charge the previous night up on the top level of the Whole Foods parking garage while he smoked a fat joint and I drank an on sale six dollar bottle of Chimay. B is a gentle guy with occasional anger issues but in fairness he is sometimes on the right side of the issue. Besides the domestic abuse charge which he described as a reflexive push after ex-wife punched him in the face, there was a pending charge for threatening an ex-marine. The guy had told the eight-year-old daughter to tell B this very explicit detail regarding his so-called manhood and instructed her to repeat it word for word to B. When B called up threatening to kill the ex-marine the guy taped it and pressed charges. A real pussy. I'm sure the guy does not accurately portray any part of the Marine Corps.
B was already legendary as the gentle, go-easy, cloud-watcher, who twenty years previous had beaten a punk rocker nearly to death with a golf club in the parking lot of this 100 percent Slacker-occupied 20 unit complex near the University at which we all lived. "But I was tripping on acid chief, I'm not normally like that, it's just when I saw what he had done to Janice (at the time his not yet but soon to be first wife) I just lost it." The punk rocker had become angry with Janice for sleeping with B and had punched her in the face and blackened her eye. He had then come around underestimating and threatening B. B was recently returned from an around the world yearlong walkabout to Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Thailand and was thoroughly peaced-out. He was always talking about cloud formations. We imitated him, made fun, had fun. That guy never pressed charges though. And never ever came around again.
But that's all to explain how things can get out of hand. I was looking for my drawstring garbage bag of dirty clothes as B half-heartedly asked me to stay. But I was approaching socialization saturation and needed to flee. We had had a good talk the day before, had relived the "heist" in which we "rescued" and transported some property of B's that had been stolen from him. His recitation to the roommate and me reminded me that I had forgotten all about introducing him and Bodine to the idea of Goat Man. B had jokingly made a promise to Goat Man in exchange for having the van start at my remote property outside of Austin. I told B that Goat Man would hold him to that promise. The next turn of the key the van started and Bodine and B left out of there to meet again and again the strange power of Goat Man.
The new owner of the X Street property was probably not as oily as we made him out to be. On our way to the Whole Foods parking garage the previous night we had run into him in the parking lot and B had pitifully and unsuccessfully asked for an extension. I was standing back, in the street, daydreaming at night, not wanting to engage the guy we all knew was someday coming.
Ron introduced me as a former resident of X Street who could tell him some things about the property's history from 20 years ago. I told the guy quickly and politely about the sheep ("I thought it was a goat," B interrupted. "No, a sheep," I corrected) that had been kept penned up in the yard, had escaped one December to roam the downtown streets of Austin, was written up by Kelso in his column under the title Ba Ba Humbug to Development, and had been returned and eventually filmed by a local artist as my good pal and roommate rather ungraciously and inexpertly slit the sheep's throat. It wasn't ritualistic, my friend intended the sheep for a barbecue The sheep's name had been Che' but I didn't tell the guy that. "It was kind of an art piece, but that's probably not the type of history you were curious about. I believe a lot of ordinary stuff happened here too," I finished, while stepping back into the street, eager to get going to the Whole Foods for the beer I could not drink in front of the recovering alcoholic roommate. B continued to make a point for staying and the guy said B would be more than welcome after the renovation was complete but we all knew those words were disingenuous.
"Come on B," I pleaded, "let's go, this is what you get for being a renter."
"You're right chief, I was just…"
"…Dilly-dallying is the word."
That morning while everybody was sleeping I had roamed the old haunts. I had breakfast at the G&M Steakhouse where Gus says, "even the water here has cholesterol. You can eat over there (a derisive nod to the Whole Foods across the street) and live forever, or eat here, die, and go to heaven." I walked up Lamar Blvd. through Pease Park remembering every previous walk, and maybe an acid trip or two during Eyore's annual birthday party. I guess I already knew that my etched nickname and altered girlfriend's name in the cement curb at 24th and Rio Grande had long ago been replaced with an open curb for wheel-chair access. "Damn the needs of others getting in the way of your reveries," B had consoled me.
After returning from my walk B and I and the two kids had watched the battle scene from the Phantom Menace episode of Star Wars. At one point his three-year-old son had lost interest and was "reading" a picture book. B smirked and said, "Son, put that book away and watch TV." The son smiled and put the book away but I don't know if he got the joke.