9th Street Between B and C

Cold wind coaxes out sheets of rainwater collected in the trappings of perpetually present scaffolding, shielding work not being done on a dilapidated, boarded-up and futureless former elementary school. The water softens the paper and weakens the glue behind advertisements upon posters upon notices upon graffiti, all clinging to and dragging down the blue-painted particle board covering up the street’s modern ruins.

The framework provides a roof over said board, which meets the cold gray walls of the building where Iggy Pop once lived, after he became famous. Today, there is a toilet, unconnected to any pipe or sewer, mostly clean, and neatly deposited in the corner, along with a pair of women’s pumps, black, size 6, and several layers of cardboard as bedding. The best shelter available, apparently.

Across 9th street, the Lutheran church doles out plates of hot food on Styrofoam once a day to a line of people that forms in front, runs down the stairs and towards Avenue B, where it breaks at the curb, and picks up across the street in the park where the older folks can sit on the benches and relax.

Back in the corner, a man wakes up and stretches out of his dusty black sleeping bag, while the man next to him snores. The last three days’ rain has subsided for the moment and it’s a good time for a stroll.

He walks east on 9th street, past a brand new apartment building nearly completed and designed in a sleek, modern style. Farther down the block is Louis 649, a modest little bar with a piano near the front bay window, where regularly, the man watches as people stumble out after drinking their 12-dollar martinis. Today, another door east, a specialty wine shop has a grease paint sandwich board out front, with a quote written on it about wine giving cowards the courage to charge the battlefield. He isn’t sure if it’s supposed to be a virtue or a condemnation.

Sockman

In those days Sockman was just as much a part of Long Beach as the bus stop bench that he occupied. In a more endearing town, or place with a little more pride, or moxy, or whatever, he would have had a nickname, like the Mayor of Alamitos Beach, or the Pulpit Pauper or something. But nobody in Long Beach, California gave a fuck about much of anything in Long Beach, California.

Sockman, however, gave so much of a fuck that it all came gushing out of him all the time and at high volume. Sockman was a homeless guy, who called the bus stop bench across the street from my place home, who never wore shoes only, ever, socks. His wardrobe was a collection of white t-shirts (I’m not sure where he kept them), and a rotating series of sweatpants that changed color just about everyday (I’m not sure where he kept those either). He had, at least never worn shoes as long as I had been listening to him yell at the wind from my apartment, though one time I had the chance to ask him, “Hey man, why don’t you ever wear any shoes?”
He said, “I don’t like ‘em!”
“Fair enough,” I said, and then handed him a flask bottle of Jack Daniels, to which he said, “Fuck you,” twisted open, and took a swig from.

Sockman didn’t just talk about Long Beach, he talked about everything. He talked about politics, and hate, and love, and that malaise and teetering nothingness that I was feeling that was bad then, and worse now. He yelled and screamed and raged, but it never changed a damn thing. That morning it was:

“The people don’t want to fight and they won’t!” he screamed. “No blood on the faces of the new generation. There will be no hawk-eyed metrosexuals, friend! Beware the coming though, those space-suited tazer-ers! Body armored against Americans, locked and loaded, baby! Those cops got thin, blue balls and can’t wait to jizz all over ya’ll. All over everyone who ain’t silent. There is no lead, follow, or get outta the way, cause that time has come and gone. Your time came and went civilized bronco. That choice is gonzo. You voted, heiled, and slapped a sticker on your car. Now it’s follow, or they moved you outta the way. Pay no attention to the signs, work will not set you free. Them johns are about to bust, and then it’s gonna be brownshirt bukkae!”

If there is a way to be subtly kicked in the face, that was Sockman’s style. The bus stop bench was his pulpit and the street was his unconverted mass.

I had a front row seat from my apartment across the street. There was a big bay window on the street side of my bedroom with a desk pushed up against it. His sermons usually started up around the time the morning traffic did - drive by heathens, I guess – but he’d gotten a hair up his ass and started stoking the brimstone early that morning. Not a problem if you’re a fisherman. Devastating if you’re a drunk.

I always started out as highbrow as possible, whatever the drink, whatever fine selection of spirits was available at the Rite-Aid, I was all about it. Yes sir, nothing in plastic for me. Just a bottle of Wild Turkey and we’ll call it an evening alone in my apartment.
I was living in this shithole place. The second story of some building thrown up 90 years prior. It was the kind of place where you cut a check for the deposit, and then sign the asbestos waiver before you get the key. Sure, your apartment is full of the nastiest shit ever to cover millions of ceilings wall to wall, but just sign on the line, and it’s your problem. I would come home late at night and get to work on whatever bottle, or series of bottles I had brought home, sit at the desk and write the first sentence of a novel:

- I told her I loved her. She said she didn’t care.
- He was a looter in a riot, but I was just a common thief.
- Like chalk we are brushed away into great clouds of oh, what the fuck, this is total trash!

And then I would trash the pad of yellow paper and grab some fresh ice. The work had just begun. Kerouac was my hero, and if that miserable drunk could inspire millions then I could be a miserable drunk and at least inspire thousands. I was only 25. Plenty of time to get that masterpiece going.

9th Street Between C and D

On the west end of the 9th Street Block hangs the thin, elegant branches of a giant Weeping Willow tree that scarcely seems to notice what’s going on around it. Follow the spiny fingers back to the truck, and you’ll find yourself in a community garden. Rows of little projects wind throughout, without much of a master plan. It’s quiet, and fragrant in the warmer months, and open on the weekends for people to stroll though. Sometimes the walk along the chain link fence that separates it from the concrete is a pleasant scene, and sometimes it’s a reminder of what the rest of city isn’t.

It’s the last frontier of the gentrifying East Village, or maybe the high water mark, if you prefer. Avenue C and Avenue D are worlds apart, with different feels, different smells, different people, different products available, both within stores, and without. Shitty Chinese food on D, along with confrontations at the bodega, where middle-aged men buy scratchers in the evening, and women buy single cans of beer in the early afternoon. Avenue C is where the restaurant from Rent is located.

But on west end of the 9th Street block, no one in the buildings is aged above 30, or paid less than 30 grand. Except for the unemployed, or the coffee shop employees, or the folks taking food stamps, and the supers who salt the sidewalks. Everyone is upwardly mobile, or spiraling downward. There are the alcoholics, and the not-yet-alcoholics, who have four bars, and four liquor stores within the same distance. Halfway down the block, a black, metal snake serves as the handrail for the steps to an apartment building, letting people know that that’a way is the hot, new hood – just ask your broker. That’a way is Section 8.

It is along this street where people stop being so self-congratulatory, and the cowards walk with their hands in the pockets, occasionally looking over their shoulders, until they can get back to the pleasant bustle. Back to plasma-screened bars, and cheap pizza. Back to antique furniture and independently owned clothing stores. Just make it to the Willow tree, and you’ll be alright.

On the east end of the 9th Street Block is a rehab center.

The S.S. America

The SS. America sat a hundred yards offshore, motionlessly drifting, wearing, and salt-rotting-away with each wave the rolled across its decrepit, ancient body.

It was a headstone, a grave marker, slowly wasting away in the foreground while wisps of clouds swirled behind it. It was American in origin but had struck out into the world, been painted and repainted, de- and recommisioned, patriated and repatriated. The tub had served in war and in peace, had renamed, and reflagged, and dragged along through seas that swelled up and finally took her to where she finally rests, slowly dying, like an aging grandmother, forgotten and dissolving into the ocean.

On its last legs, a Greek man bought the rig, with the intention of turning it into a five-star luxury cruiser. He wanted to take this ancient horse of a boat, and make it haul rich folks through the park. It wasn't enough that it had served for decades in war and transport, serious work that had left it above the waterline, battered and flaky. It would now lead a life of service. Like a former soldier who buys a bar, and pours the drinks himself.

Unable to operate under its own power at this point, the new owner attempted to tow the America to another harbor where it was to be repaired just enough to make it float, and then put back to work. The pair of vessels sailed into a terrible storm where the swells proved too much for the meager ropes lashed around the masthead, and they snapped, allowing the America to bob into the distance, floating, and again forgotten.

It drifted to its current spot; the rocky coasts of the Canary Islands situated between the northern African shore, and southern Spain. Once it settled there, it was left. Occasionally people made it to the shore, where the hull had nestled up against the rocky outcroppings in the breakers, and gawked at it, or snapped a photo. But then they said their goodbyes, as if assuring the dying vessel that they would be back, but then never showed.

I stay after the others have gone, and tears welling, I feel betrayed by them all. I am the ship's only witness. The gawkers leave importance behind and shuck all their oaths like dirty clothes, and they laugh at me for remaining. Rage rises with the tide, and now I am seething through gritted teeth.

I will tow the dock ropes. Wrap them around my forearms and yank them taught, pull all the floundering ships that only need a hull patch and a compass, up and onto the soft, mossy, slick shore, where we will lay down roots. And they will all breathe because of me, they will all draw air into their lungs because I simply did what no one else would and hauled them up above the water line into the bright blue day, into the oxygen and into the air so that they may live, and breathe, and laugh, and create, and I will be the grandfather to all their wares.

Gone Cultin'

I'm a secular person, by nature, I guess. My grandmother was a lifelong Catholic, and despite years of neglect and punishment from the church, she was loyal to her final hours. I was raised Catholic, basically at her insistence, but it just didn't take; somewhere between figuring out that Santa Claus was a sham, and when I started getting laid on a somewhat regular basis.

But all the news of hot teen girls in gingham, Intelligent Design debates in Florida, Papal visits from an ex-Nazi - and let's not forget those wacky Muslims! – it's enough to make a secular guy like myself feel a bit left out. I want some red shoes too.

Bottom line is, I've gotta start my own thing. No other holy pants have seemed to fit quite right, so I'm breaking out the sewing machine, and slapping together some slacks for myself – plenty of room in the crotch.

I'm laying out some basic rules for my own cult, and by all means, feel free to offer suggestions, just remember that as the cult founder and requisite leader, all suggestions are to be either rejected by me, or approved, and then promptly taken credit for – by me.

Rule #1
I need all your money. This is your standard cult boilerplate, but it's important to get everything in writing. Look, it's not like you won't see a piece of it, I'm just going to hold it for you, and distribute it as I see fit. Compounds don't pay for themselves, and spaceship parts are super expensive.

Rule #2
No kids. Sorry, no kids. Nothing brings in the tanks and tear gas faster than little kids around holy, aroused prophets holed up in compounds. Warren Jeffs probably had a good thing going down there in Texas with his little Joseph Smith Rodeo, until somebody started knocking up teenagers. That guy had a temple with a bed at the altar. I'll tell ya, I might be able to get to that service on Sunday. And then somebody fucks it up by tossing an underage girl in there, eyebrows get raised, one guy's doing it, then pretty much everybody's doing it. We all have that friend who's a little too interested in young girls, it looks like in this case, Warren was that guy, and managed to get a hold of the reins. I'm nipping this one in the bud. Nothing but trouble. Catholic Church….I'm looking in your direction….

In my cult, bottom line is no kids. If want to have kids, you gotta leave. Have them already? Don't bring them. Feel free to go visit them, just make sure you endorse that paycheck before you leave (see rule #1).

Rule #3
LSD Fridays. Just saying.

Rule #4
You must have a job. First, see rule number one. Second, who wants to fucking farm? This is not a commune; it's a cult, okay? Nobody wants to do any real work, least of all me – I'm the cult leader for Conor's sake! Get a job, hippie.

Rule #5
Orgy Saturdays. Also, just saying.

Rule #6
As a member of my cult, and full, monetary devotee to me, you will not be expected to go penniless. You will receive a monthly stipend. Since we're just starting out, it will be a small amount, but will grow along with our ranks. I will not, however, pay you in cash, but rather in one odd commodity or another that will vary from week to week. When the stipend reaches $1,000 a week, you receive $1,000 – worth of something. A $1,000 worth of, say, live bees. Or you will be paid in erasers, unprocessed cheese curd, or bat guano. Basically whatever I can get hands on that week. On payday, your task will be two-fold: first, if you want to actually collect the value of your pay in cash, you will need to find a buyer. Go ahead; find someone in the market for $1,000 in rotary telephones. Second, you will entertain me by doing so, and that's really what this cult thing is all about – me being entertained. Payday will be on Sundays to allow for LSD, and orgies (see rules three and five).

Rule #7
Red shoes for everyone! Hey when you're right, you're right. I'm not afraid to listen to a good idea, and I'll be damned if the Pope doesn't have this one spot on. $700 Italian, handmade loafers? In red?! I'm in. And so are you. Come on, Heaven's Gate, black Keds? When my comet comes, that's not how I'm going out.

Rule #8
No Mail. With very rare exceptions, nothing but bad news comes in the mail, and the remainder is usually stuff I have to throw away. There is a literally a man or woman, in blue shorts, who is paid to wheel a cart around my neighborhood, and deposit a handful of trash into my mail box, daily. And everyday, I open up the mailbox, and take the trash into my home, where I deposit it into a trashcan, until it is time to carry out to the recycling. Now that all bills can be paid online, we will be canceling the mail altogether, not out of an effort to cut you off from your family, but because its what-the-fuck factor has just become too great. No mail.

Rule #9
Nicolas Cage is the Devil. Every religion has its chief antagonist. Welcome to mine. NO films will be permitted that feature Nic Cage with the following exceptions: Coen Brothers films, and Charlie Kaufman films. This is a strict policy, as some of you already know, and will be strictly enforced. Violating this policy will result in the indefinite loss of your red loafers (see rule seven).

Rule #10
Lightning Round!
- Pro-spaceship.
- Dogs will be permitted to play all sports, as there is no rule specifically stating that they may not.
- No beer? Then no softball.
- Not now, honey, the playoffs are on.
- Battlestar Gallactica will be your new favorite show.
- Star Wars Episodes 1-3 are apocryphal, and will be considered heresy.
- No Kool-Aid.

All these rules are open to modification, and your input is of course, requested. What can my cult do for you? What odd commodity would you like to be paid in? What can I do to get you, in my cult, today?

Have Love, Will Travel

Today was Selection Sunday. It's the day in college basketball that will essentially dictate my schedule for the next three weeks, and the true beginning of March Madness. The kind of decisions laid down today by the NCAA selection committee have decided the fates of the 64 teams in the NCAA Tournament, deeming some worthy, and some not, some high-seeded, some low, and that's what most of the coverage is all about.

There are, however, a million stories that will never be reported on. How did the painted man, come to be so? What awful, awful things did that broke college student do to get court-side seats? How far, exactly, did a group of hardcore basketball fans drive just to watch a 40-minute basketball game? Really, really far. This is just one of those stories. And a majority of the details are left out. You won't read about the trips up and down High Street, the stolen beer, the self-made pizzas at Pizza Pan (Home of the Free Pizza), or the St. Patrick's Day when Ryan Kobane tried his good-God-damnedest to put the front door of a house off its hinges. The time ZumMallen and I swore up and down that we were rich businessmen who chartered a private jet in from Malibu didn't make the cut. Neither did the five Irish Car Bombs that Kobane and I drank in the space of 30 minutes courtesy of the cougar at the Library, Katie's speeding ticket, or the last major stop we made in Vegas where I collected ten dollars from everyone in our party, put it on black, won, and walked away. No Sock Mike, No Savage Jones, no Xerxes Brian. Obviously you have no idea what I'm talking about, and all of it has all but been lost to the ether. And that's my point. There are great stories that play out on the basketball court, of course, but the greatest stories are the ones you will never hear, and the people involved will never forget.

I wrote this story about a year ago, and in retrospect, it leaves out so much. I didn't even get around to mentioning everyone who was on the trip. You know, maybe I should rewrite this. I may have left out the best parts. If any of the roadies would like to contribute to an appendix, I would gladly post it.

Anyway, this is the story of seven rabid Long Beach State basketball fans who one year ago, foolishly endeavored to support their team – even if the 49ers didn't stand a chance, even if the game was 2300 miles away. It’s not crazy, it’s just March Madness.

HAVE LOVE, WILL TRAVEL

“You’ll never make it.”
-Raphael Zepeda, CSULB English Professor.

We are traveling through Northern Texas at around hour 20 when Brian’s voice squelches over the radio: “I’ve got a little competition for us.”

Kobane asks, “Is that an individual or car competition?”

“That’s a car competition,” Brian returns.

“Go on,” responds Kobane.

“Here goes: Texas, is flatter, than blank. Whoever comes up with the best one wins.”

Kobane pauses, and then picks up the radio. “I’ve got one.”

“Go ahead.”

“Texas, is flatter, than, okay seriously, are we really driving 5000 miles for a 40-minute basketball game?”

Seriously. We are. So why the hell, would seven people travel a total of five thousand miles to watch a twelfth-seeded team in the first round of the 2007 NCAA tournament? You know that line from Animal House, when Eric Stratton is trying to talk the rest of Delta into action and he says, “I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.” We’re the guys to do it. That’s why.

“I think that it’s totally stupid and pointless. Did you expect me to be excited about this?”
-David Izzett, Conor’s Father.

The occupants of the two cars on this ill-conceived journey are a group of Long Beach State students who work on the weekly campus newspaper, the Union Weekly. At the beginning of the basketball season I was one of them but I graduated in December, so am officially no longer a staff member. Yes, I should be moving on and have a job by now, but since nothing else about this situation is well thought-out, why would my life be? Besides, I read a lot of Kerouac.

Four months earlier I was passing out fliers for the men’s basketball home opener in an attempt to give some sort of focal point for the students of LBSU’s notoriously scattered student body.

The team was picked to win the Big West, their division, which also included the Orange County teams from Irvine and Fullerton. The stands have been sparse over the last few years, partly because students at LBSU like to stay home and watch Lost on Saturday nights, partly because the team hasn’t been decent for about a decade. You pick why.

This year’s roster had eight seniors on it, including all five starters, so it was definitely all or nothing for these guys from the Big West, a mid-major division at best. The NBA invitations are rare.

Support picked up greatly after league MVP Aaron Nixon’s Irvine-defeating buzzer-beater in the 2006 Big West tournament. Fellow guard, Kejuan Johnson, who would be the number one man on any other Big West team, a sharp shooter from the three-point line, backed him up. They and the six other seniors ripped through the Big West, winning all home games, save one, and skated into the Big West tournament. Finishing first in the division earned them first and second round byes. The faced Irvine first, dispensing with them easily, and then faced Cal Poly, who gave Long Beach quite a run, but ultimately fell. The packed Long Beach student section rushed the court. People and equipment were trampled. It was thrilling if, admittedly, typical. This left only the tournament selection to be held the following day, before we knew for sure where they would be playing.

The team, boosters and fans gathered in the on-campus pub to watch the selection and the place was shoulder to shoulder. Everyone was still buzzing about the previous night’s tumultuous victory, and speculation was everywhere concerning the team’s assignment in the tournament. It was a foregone conclusion that we would be following the team wherever they ended up going, but no one wanted to go tearing across the country. Everyone was pulling for Sacramento, and failing that, Spokane. And then the announcement came down.

Ohio. Columbus, goddamn, Ohio.

The upside was that they were an unexpected twelve seed, sparing them from a first round demolition at the hands of a pseudo-NBA squad like Ohio State. Great for the team. Columbus is 2300 miles from Long Beach. Bad for us. But like I said, it was a foregone conclusion. Why would we be in the front row of every home game only to forego the first tournament appearance in a dozen years? Secretly we all took a little credit for the season’s success, and we weren’t about to choke in the big dance. Stupid and pointless was our specialty.

Round trip plane tickets were $700 a piece. We were driving. It was a 40-hour, nine state, 5000-mile round trip to Ohio. Shit.

“A basketball game? 5000 miles for a basketball game?”
-Trish O’Malley.

We leave Long Beach at 4p.m. in a blaze of glory, which is promptly doused by the LA traffic that really should have been foreseen.

The further East we travel the more alien the people look. It’s not just hairstyles and clothing, nothing obvious, it’s something in their general nature that seems off, as if they are all perpetually 15 years behind the outer edges of the country. It could be 15 years ahead for all I know. Being a West-Coaster, and admittedly kind of a snob about it, it’s easy to forget that little 2,800-mile strip of land in the middle of the country, but I’m trying to change that. This is my first foray into the nation’s interior and I am soaking it all in with wide eyes.

I take over driving in Holbrook, New Mexico. I stop at a gas station where three Indians are in down jackets and vests reading the Native Times. A white woman with nicotine skin and peroxide hair is behind the counter selling a lotto ticket. I buy an energy drink to keep myself from drifting of the road in a fiery blaze and killing three of my friends. She says, “That’ll keep you awake.” It is 3 O’clock in the morning. Something is off.

An hour later the headlights of oncoming traffic are dancing around like moths, and I’m having trouble focusing on the road. No one in the car is aware that they are in serious danger. The energy drink is working in the sense that my stomach hurts so bad from whatever that shit is made of that I couldn’t possibly fall asleep. Even this balance is a precarious one.

It is predawn, when the sky is that soothing and sickly color of black lavender that makes you regret whatever it is that caused you to be awake to see it in the first place. I am desperately tired. On the verge of tears, tired. We pull into Albuquerque, and I resign the driver’s seat. I’ve managed only 150 miles. We are one quarter of the way to Columbus.


“Be careful of those people in the Midwest. Son. They hate us.”
-David Izzett.

I wake up in Texas, after the best sleep in a cramped, loaded car on a cross-country road trip I’ve ever had. Texas is flat. Brutally flat. G Dub approval rating flat. The horizon all around us is at 90 degrees, punctuated exclusively by telephone poles and cows. We decide to stop in Amarillo, Texas for a good old-fashioned beer and indoor cigarette. We are not carded. There are peanut shells on the floor. There are no imported cars in the parking lot. There is a pair of shitty underpants in the stall of the men’s bathroom. A very pretty hostess says in a devastatingly attractive Texas twang, “Hello, how ya’ll doin’ today?” Wonderful. On the horizon is a 250-foot, white, fiberglass cross planted 25 feet into the ground next to the highway. This is America.


When we hit Oklahoma City I’m determined to prove myself in light of my last meager driving demonstration, eager to show that if tomorrow I decided to become a pro rally driver, I’d be a champ. I order a sandwich from the gas station Subway, and the gummy woman who makes it pours on about a half-gallon of mayo, otherwise known as an “Oklahoma-style sandwich.” It later stains my pants.


This Midwest feels like another country, not the America I’m used too. I’m feeling increasingly eye-balled wherever I go, and very suspect. Maybe I’m, being paranoid, maybe I’ve just been pulled over too many times for being Californian. Not sure yet. Maybe it’s the startlingly old white woman working the cash register at a gas station, maybe the startlingly old and fat white man working the toll road booth laughing at me for being from California and driving to Ohio, either way I’m uneasy, and very weary. I decide to get in the driver’s seat, stomp the pedal, and put at least a half-a-thousand miles of this land beneath me. I am on a mission through red state central. There is at least a thousand miles of Bush Country between me and sanity, and all I want is to get to Ohio, which was at least stolen away from reasonability.

While driving through the land of the moral majority there is something oddly unsettling, even to me, a blue state sodomite: 24 Hour Adult Video Arcade. There are dozens of them all along the moral Missouri highway, surely packed with overweight, truck stop hussies who vote red, and service Ted Haggart (yes, hussies can be male too). There must be a very intense trucker network all along the backwoods highways of the South and Midwest because there are a lot of 24 Hour Adult Video Arcades. Highway 44: The San Fernando Valley of the Midwest?

Even as sheeting rain begins to fall, I gas it up Interstate 44 towards St. Louis, Indianapolis, and beyond that, Columbus. The last thousand miles of our 2300-mile (one way) journey is covered only between JJ, Union Weekly sports editor, and myself – there is no time for stopping. Gas, coffee, road. Gas, coffee, road. I have no patience for anything else, and briefly consider picking up a pack of adult diapers to cut down on downtime at the gas stations.

In the closing miles we decide to stop at what will surely secure our arrival in the region: The Waffle House. I embrace its down-home, folksy atmosphere the moment that Dot, out waitress arrives and asks, “Now what can I get for you hun’?” She reminds me of my grandmother and she’s bringing me waffles.


Thirty minutes later I fall into bed in my smoking room at Motel 6, and pass into oblivion for several hours. It has taken just under 40 hours to get here, and it’s all seeming very stupid, and pointless. Where have I heard that before?


“Ya’ll shoulda flew here.”
-Young Aaron Nixon Relative.

So the buzzer sounds and backboard glows red. The ball falls along with the players’ heads, and the long, slow stroll back to the locker room begins. The janitors clear trash from the stands, the clock is reset, and the season is over.

Long Beach lost. It was their first true national exposure since their last trip to the NCAA Tournament in 1995 and it was a total trounce. The University of Tennessee murdered Long Beach State by 35 points, even hitting a long ball three with about three seconds left, just for good measure.

The commentators were right. Long Beach was probably over-seeded. Tennessee covered the spread, and the over/under was severely overed. I sit in the stands of Nationwide Arena, thanking the bevy of Aaron Nixon relatives as they file out, and they thank me in return; little children, middle-aged men, women who could be his sister, a woman who is most definitely his mother – she’s wearing a shirt with Nixon’s picture on it. The Johnsons leave, reluctantly. Kejuan’s mother looks very upset but I can picture her wrapping her arms around her son, assuring him that everything is okay, and that she is so proud, and he will undoubtedly believe her.

The adjectives that my friends, family and peers have used to describe their impressions of this road trip: pointless, stupid, doomed, idiotic, retarded, and at first I think they might be right. Why the fuck did I drive to Ohio for a 40-minute basketball game? Like Long Beach stood a chance anyway right? Everyone knows that upsets don’t happen, and yet we all hope for them incessantly.

I didn’t expect LBSU to do anything all that remarkable, I just don’t want the season to be over. The thing is, everyone said that the Beach would fail, with few exceptions, and they did. They played hard, and beat a few odds, only to have their season abruptly axed by a superior team, and for a split second the whole thing does seems pointless. But there is really no escaping the fact that it all seems worth it in the end. After we found out the team was going to Ohio, most people thought we were crazy to drive so far, and we were. But all we could think was, “how could we not?” We had collectively followed the team for the whole season, been to every home game and a few away games. I’d listened to some of the road games on Internet radio, which isn’t exactly a high quality broadcast, and there are no high quality broadcasters. Over the course of the season, I, and I know that the others felt the same, had started to feel that I was the sixth man on the court. Like I was somehow supporting the team, inching them over the hump on the hard games, giving them that extra boost in the second half. This was the championship tournament. This is when they needed me more than ever.

I already miss being a fan. There’s nothing quite like heckling a young man playing for the opposing team until he’s so shaken that he needs to be benched. Now that’s a sixth man. I’ve taken to thinking in four syllable chants, and shaking my keys in the air right before somebody leaves. What’s worse is that this is the final game for the players that I’ve grown to love over the season. No more Nixon, no more Ricks or Kejuan. I’ll have to start heckling volleyball players I guess.

I am told to leave by an usher at the arena, and I realize the worst part of this early defeat. I have to drive back to California. I really shoulda flew here.

“God bless you.”
-A CSULB Alumnus living in Columbus, Ohio

Lollipop

I saw another one today. I can't drive anymore, and I damn sure won't ride in a car. It's just that I can't stand it, really, and not in the way you can't stand it when the mail comes late, or when your debit card won't scan at the coffee shop and the cashier gives you shit about having to type in the number. I'm jittery, my teeth rattle, and my hands shake. I can't grip the steering wheel, can't make a fist, I – piss myself. As far as car accidents go, I've seen just about everything over the last six months, because I've seen at least one car accident everyday for the last six months. Everyday.

You know when you hear some astounding figure, like, "a car accident occurs once every six seconds," or something? Well I have become the black hole of vehicular carnage. They are all drawn to me, and seem to be so at an ever increasing rate. Car accident are beginning to circle around me, skimming my event horizon, until all laws of likelihood and chance are null and meaningless, and any measure that drivers take to prevent an accident is as useless as trying to escape a worm hole in a canoe.

I saw this kid, 16 tops, rear-end a minivan right in front of the high school. The fenders of his shitty teenager starter-car were completely jammed into his two front tires, so when he tried to pull to the shoulder, the fiberglass just dug farther into the rubber, and the car made a chirp every time the wheel revolved, and the whole thing stuttered, and jumped like a spasmodic limper until the tires got so hot that they started pouring white, vulcanized smoke. This was all about five minutes after school let out, and was therefore, a reverse parade of jeering, pitiless teenagers, a group of people who humiliate their own with unrelenting brutality.

That was funny.

Another time I saw a big rig blow a few tires and swerve into oncoming traffic and plow into a 90s-something Geo Metro. The Metro driver's body was ripped away from just under his armpits, his white vertebrae somehow still poking out through his remaining upper torso like the spine of an orange after you tear away the fruit. He looked like a lollipop with arms, and not so many teeth.

That was funny in a much different way.

Perhaps we've all just been on one, lengthy run of good luck. Maybe it's a goddamned miracle that millions of cars charge at opposite and perpendicular directions everyday at dozens of miles and hour, carrying thousands upon thousands of pounds of force, and don't smash headlong into each other all the time. Maybe the streak is just beginning to run cold, and I'm the first one to bear witness to the imminent pulling of short straws. I see nothing but death, now, standing inches away from where we walk, and sit, and breathe. Walk on the sidewalk. Death is waiting just a few feet to your left in the middle of the street. Gas pours up a pipe that snakes through the wall that your couch is pushed up against. It's like his bony little fingers are fucking rapping on the wall, looking for a weak spot, waiting to eek out of a tiny little neglected crevice in the piece of steel tubing. Do you know how many meteors make it through the atmosphere everyday? Isn't ONE bound to smash someone into the ground like a thumbtack?

Today's was a simple one, nothing big. I was walking to the liquor store, something I've done often over the course of the last few months, when I stopped at a crosswalk. A pickup made a left hand turn through a yield into oncoming traffic, and of course, a the driver of a Jetta crammed his front end right into the wheel well of the truck, driving in backwards into a sedan waiting in the left turn lane behind it. Metal crunched, and shattered cracked and popped across the black top, settling at my feet. There weren't any representatives of the Lollipop Guild this time. I used to stick around for these things, now I run.

The people involved will feel sore tomorrow, even though they aren't seriously injured. And the way that they are left breathless and disoriented in the moments following impact is normal. They felt disoriented, and will later remark about how, "everything really did seem to slow down, just like they always say it does." But it will fade. My anxiety does not. It's constant now, as I fear a Dodge Ram will burst through my living room door shortly after airing its custom La Cucaracha horn. So really, I can't run. All I can do it wait for the day that doesn't bring a car accident. I cannot fucking wait for the one day that I don't see an SUV flip, or a truck hydroplane, or, you know, a little old lady back into something, or over someone. Maybe it won't come. Or maybe the day will finally come where I will be that innocent bystander, calmly observant as I am plastered all over the sidewalk by a runaway Karmann Ghia.

A Karmann Ghia? That would just be humiliating.