Under a southern California morning cloud canopy, Frank and me
are following Nina and her boyfriend Joe up the 605 freeway to Alhambra to
score some acid.
Joe whips a ’64 Rambler American in and out of lanes like a fucking
maniac. I do my best to keep up as he races onwards. Sometimes he’s five or six
car-lengths ahead. It’s almost like he’s trying to lose us.
“Shit that thing sure goes fast for a six banger,” I mumble
as I slip into the fast lane passing a family in a late model Ford. I get held
up for a moment tailgating a station wagon. The family catches up and cruises
along directly beside us with dad at the wheel and what looks to be grandma in
the passenger seat. An attractive mother whose attention we’ve caught sits in
the back with two adolescent girls to her right. The woman stares directly at
Frank, the surfer, with his long blonde tangled dreadlocks and all for a
prolonged period of time.
Frank pulls his fore and middle finger to his mouth making a
“V” shape. He sticks his tongue out wagging it simulating oral sex. The woman
stops looking at Frank pulls a necklace up from her chest and examines it
closely.
We race on towards the freeway’s end in Alhambra still
barely keeping up with Nina and Joe. We manage to not lose sight of the
Rambler. I pull up behind it as Joe parks outside of a trailer park.
*
“I heard this guy is some old dude that just hangs out in
his trailer makin’ acid trippin’ on the Discovery Channel all the time,” Frank
remarks sitting on the fender of the Cutlass.
“Sounds like my dream life,” I laugh.
We endure a little paranoia. Time stretches as we wait for
the acid. Stare into the maze of trailers.
Finally Joe and Nina emerge from the park and we quickly
make the transaction.
“Maybe see you guys there,” Nina yells out the passenger
window as the two speed away.
Frank and I get in the Cutlass. We slowly make our way
towards downtown Los Angeles to the L.A. Street Scene.
*
We park a good fifteen minute walk from the event pausing
for a few seconds to eat the acid. The sun finally starts to show itself
peeking out through the burn-off.
As we make our way through the Street Scene crowd a black
woman spots Frank.
“Ooohh…, nice buns…!
I like that stuff,” the lady coos.
Frank smiles, walks along underwear-less, with big holes in
the back of his 501 jeans.
*
A girl more than a little attractive carrying a tray struts
towards us. The acid has begun to hit. The tray’s full of half-sized free Camel
cigarette packs.
“Are you a smoker?” the cigarette girl asks
looking me in the eye with plenty of inflection and innuendo. Her expression infers
that if I am a smoker, I might have a
real good chance at getting what she’s got between her legs. I shake my head
‘no,’ as with the acid in my head I just can’t fathom the idea of smoking.
Soon the drug is in full gear. We just wander around frying
our asses off for a couple hours.
We run into to more and more cigarette girls. Each one sends
Frank into a frenzy of mock repetition. He voices the question with every kind
of intonation possible, “Are you
a…, smoker? ARE…, you a smoker?
Are you a smoker? ARE
YOU A SMOKER?”
We wander around L.A. streets through the crowd past families
out for the festivities. Panhandlers with pleading distraught expressions. Staring
Latino gang members. And some tough looking punkers with creased angry faces.
A skid row drunk on the corner with a brown, bagged Schlitz
Malt Liquor in hand mumbles, “Cal Tjader…yeah man…Cal Tjader. Usedta drink with
him at my place ... Jus’ ‘cross the street from where they come and took Billy
Holiday away.”
“Fuckin-fryin-so-hard-dude,” Frank talks a little fast.
“That dog’s mouth got so big when it just yawned dude. Like as big as the whole
fuckin’ world. Then it closed and went back to normal.”
The both of us sit on a park bench. A blues band plays on a
stage set up in the street nearby. We decide to get some alcohol in us to take
the edge off the acid and head off looking for a liquor store.
“Let’s drink it over here,” I point to a parking structure.
I’ve got a pint of Popov vodka stuffed half down my jeans concealed by my
t-shirt. We climb a flight of stairs then sit on the steps between floors.
“Fuck…, nobody’s here, should be alright,” I place my hand
on the cap of the bottle. At that instant two cops walk down the stairs.
“Well… Hah…! Looks like somebody’s havin’ a party here,” one
officer jeers.
“We didn’t open it yet… It’s not an open container,” I hold
the bottle out to the guy fearing an arrest or at least a hefty citation.
“Well…, let’s see…,” he examines the bottle then stares
seriously at the both of us. “Paper seal’s broken.”
“We didn’t even have a drink yet!” Frank implores.
The officer steps down several rungs to the second floor of
the parking lot. He unscrews the red plastic lid from the vodka then turns it
over spilling the entire contents onto concrete.
“We wouldn’t want you guys gettin’ all drunk and gettin’
inta some trouble… Then we might end up havin’da crack your fuckin’ heads in…
That wouldn’t be any fun would it?”
*
We stand for a while at the back of a crowd watching the mod
band the Untouchables play. It’s then that I notice Joe and Nina standing a
little ways up in the crowd.
After the band finishes, the four of us sit at the top of a
grassy bank bordering a small park. Nina suddenly rolls down the grass
embankment curled up in a little ball.
“Fuck…, just like an oompa loompa!” Frank laughs. “See
anybody else here?”
“No,” Nina brushes grass from her hair. “Gonna meet Lara
Stockton in Hollywood tonight.”
We walk around with Nina and Joe looking for anybody we might
recognize. After a good forty-five minutes we don’t see any friends. We do see
the angry punkers Frank and I had passed earlier. We don’t think anything of it,
but after moving on a ways it appears they are following us. We ignore this, deep
in our acid high for a while.
“Whatta those guys want?” Frank mutters when they get
closer.
“You guys Lads?” one of them approaches us.
“Lads…? What’s a fucking
Lad?” Frank answers then instantly realizes what a Lad is. “Oh…, no dude, we’re
not Lads.”
“Well we’re fuckin’ Suicidals... You guys at the Olympic
last night?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll our friend got killed by some Lads there.”
“We’re not Lads,” Frank calmly reiterates walking away from
the dude.
“We’re not in any fuckin’
lame-ass fuckin’ punker gang!” Frank snarls to himself as our group moves down
Sixth Street. We again, disregard the situation at hand. But I glance back and
notice the guys are still following us.
Then we spot Robbie Blount and Mark Cellini up ahead talking
to one of the cigarette girls. As we get closer we see that Mark is hitting on
the girl. He’s got his hand on her shoulder bragging about his manhood.
“Well at least give me your phone number baby,” Mark goes
and the girl complies.
We walk up to Mark and Robbie. The girl moves on with her Camels
and our gangster buddies soon catch up with us.
Our group moves along with the Suicidals not far behind. It
becomes obvious to us that these guys aim to fuck our shit up. For the most
part me, Frank and the others in our group, though not altogether against it,
are rarely looking for a fight. Mark, however, might take a more positive stance
towards a brawl. But with this situation, there is no way any of us want to get
into an altercation with these knife wielding fuck-ups.
We continue towards the main stage with the vengeance bent
gang members a mere ten feet or so behind. Noticing a group of police officers we
mosey in their direction, we stop standing behind them. Somehow the cops
realize what is going on.
“Get the fuck outta here now!” one of the officers yells.
“You guys Lads…? Are you a Lad?” one of our would-be
attackers, a few feet away addresses Mark after we move away from the peace
officers.
Mark stops and walks back towards the group. “Dude…, we’re
from Garden Grove,” he engages the guy casually motioning towards Robbie and
himself. “And they’re from Long Beach, and he’s from Huntington Beach.” He
points to Nina, Joe, Frank then me. “Everybody knows the Lads are from Lakewood
and Downey… I just got off a plane from Oregon this morning so there is no way
I could’ve been at the Olympic last night.”
“Where were you at in Oregon?” the Suicidal asks.
“Bend…, I was stayin’ with my brother up there.”
It turns out the guy is originally from the Bend, Oregon
area. Somehow, because of this situation, the guys stop following us.
Jose Gonzalez has been published in Cicada, Shotgun Solution, Born Too Loose, and Charlene Syndicate. His novella “Soup, Soup, Beautiful Soup” is coming out later this year from Ditch Witch Press.