VME Poker Run

Somewhere on a Vashon highway
She rides a Royal Enfield
Her long hair flyin' in the wind
She's been running half her life
The chrome and steel she rides
Collidin' with the very air she breathes
The air she breathes

-Neil Young

Rude Awakening

Sunday morning, 5-something a.m.

The Cartel boss calls me on my cell phone, waking me before sunrise. He says in a booming voice, "Boy, ya betta get those fucking trucks outa Florida and back to New Orleans." His message is brief and I am rattled.

Hamsini is sleeping soundly by my side. I stumble into the kitchen naked. The house is cold. I turn on the computer and make some tea. I check Ike's track. The bastard Ike is ducking below Florida's foreskin. Ike is going into the Gulf. Nobody knows where Ike is going to hit land. Some are betting on Corpus Christi. The fundamentalists say Ike is going back to New Orleans to finish off the sinners.

I call Christopher in Boston. It is nearly 9 o'clock on the East Coast and he was sleeping, too. He is pissed. He hates guys like me giving him the third degree.

"Where are the trucks?" I ask.
"We finished unloading last night. The crackers are in a warehouse out by Homestead."
"Well, call the Teamsters again and get those snack foods loaded. We need that convey moving towards Baton Rouge."

Palin's Slice of Epiphany

Today I spent the morning playing doctor with the Doctor. You remember her? The good urologist.

After sex, we discussed politics. And ate waffles in bed.

Hamsini asked, did the Republicans resurrect the ancient rite of the Crown Cake to select Bush and now McCain's running mate?

You know, when things got really terrible the Christians baked a cake with a gold coin hidden inside. Whoever got the lucky slice was crowned king for a year (or 8 years in the case of King George W). The half-wit king could do whatever he wanted and nobody protested. The king behaved poorly, of course, as do most who inherit such immense power so suddenly.

The king mobilized the army and attacked other kingdoms just for the hell of it. The king had his way with the ladies (and the livestock, too). He feasted like a glutton and drank all the village wine. But in the old days, after a year of such nonsense, the villagers stoned the king and this made the crops grow tall and all was good again.

McCain and his fundamentalist handlers invited 13 potential vice presidents out to a hangar in Dayton. Everyone was served a big slice of epiphany. Lieberman was there. So was Tom Ridge, Tim Pawlenty, and Carly Fiorina. Guess who cracked a canine on the coin? The pitpull wearing lipstick...

I love Hamsini.

Today's buck went towards a three-pack of Japanese condoms.

Cracker Cartel

Episode 11

A confession: I am a reluctant member of the Cracker Cartel. Membership requires participation in nefarious cracker schemes.

Last week, I owned a warehouse full of rancid Triscuits in Yakima. I was planning to give the crackers away as hog food to a couple of farmers. But when the syndicate boss learned about my inventory, he approached me with a plan I could not refuse.

There were other cartel members in Boston, Chicago, and Milwaukee with similarly situated snacks. Cookies with stale cream filling, Bo weeviled biscuits, and blighted peanut butter bars.

With a parade of hurricanes marching across the Atlantic, the plan was to consolidate the snack foods, place our freight in harm’s way, and file an insurance claim for distressed inventory. The syndicate tapped me to run the operation and they expected results.

I told the boss that the math did not work. The plan was not profitable. The boss said, "Don’t forget to count your fingers. They’re priceless."

Then the boss smiled. He advised me to find some enthusiasm for the project and get started. The clock was running.

So I met a Teamster named Christopher in Boston. We met at the Dainty Dot Hosiery building. Outside the day was warm and bright with no hint of the tropical doom bearing down on the East Coast. Boston was crawling with women with bare legs.

Christopher and I got the convoy going. The trucks were headed for New Orleans, disguised as hurricane relief supplies. FEMA was paying for the haul, I learned. Now the scheme looked profitable.

We missed Gustav so the trucks turned towards Savannah. Then late today, after reading the forecasts, we re-routed the truck to Miami hoping for a date with Ike.

What a week! Today’s buck went to a gallon-sized McLatte. Let me tell you, nobody should drink 80 ounces of McLatte. I won’t sleep for days. Now it’s back to the Pacific Coast for the VME poker run and (hopefully) some lovin’ with Hamsini.

I'll be back on the Isle of Vashon in search of Dalton.

Turnpike Dollar

Episode 10:

Today I spent my Charlie dollar at the Natick Plaza on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Four quarters in the bathroom vending machine.

Not a false French Tickler made in Lumberton, NC.

Not a pouch of strawberry-scented personal lubricant.

Two Tylenol capsules for a midnight headache.

Driving towards Boston, ahead of the hurricanes.

A Dollar for Jill

Episode 9:
The day starts early with a shared taxi ride to the airport. My accidental passenger is Jill who talks incessantly at 6:15 am. She is headed to a funeral in Dallas. She is chirpy and explains that her friend would have wanted it that way. No mourning allowed.

She is excited to see old friends. At 6:30 she is already talking about how the whiskey will flow. Her faced is pocked, heavy with foundation. She is generous with her personal history. Her family owns a chain of Sicilian pizza restaurants. She once bred Yorkshire terriers but the state suspended her license. She is unable to have children. She is allergic to wheat, diary, and egg yolks.

She speaks often of hurricanes. It is a busy week for hurricanes. Gustav, Hanna, Ike and Josephine. She tells me that she is a refugee from Katrina. She was airlifted from New Orleans to Seattle three years ago. She pops a red and white capsule.

Jill waves her hands a lot. The driver is watching her closely in the rear view mirror. She tells me that her flight from Seattle is not until 2 pm, but she could not sleep. She was scared that she would sleep through the alarm. I said, me too. My two words to her two thousand words.

There are vague references to an accident that required the total reconstruction of her face. I shrug in feigned sympathy. I am sorry that I am having trouble believing her. It just looks like bad teenage acne.

Halfway to the airport, she confesses that she is taking Dilantin. She is taking lithium, too, "to take the edge off." She tells us that the Dilantin makes her talk too much. She knows that she is annoying. She annoys herself, Jill says, with all her blither blather. Blither. Blather. She apologizes for jabbering.

She tells me that she lives in a yurt on Vashon Island. My ears perk up. It is a long shot, but I ask. Do you know Charlie Dalton?

Dalton? Oh yeah, he live in a trailer at the Eagles Lodge.

Suddenly, Jill turns an imaginary key that locks her lips. For the rest of the ride she is silent. I can tell it is really hard for her and she is concentrating. Steam seems to be rising from her. There is an odor.

At the end of the ride, I offer to pay the full fare. I’m working, I tell her. No worries. She surprises and thanks me with a sloppy kiss that smells darkly of cigarettes and Jim Beam.

Flight 23, Seat 14B

Episode 8:
Chicago to Seattle, Cattle Class, Middle Seat.

The woman on my left is using a seat belt extender. She is also blocking out all daylight from the tiny window. The man on my right is also obese and his massive love handle is flowing into my space. There is nothing he or I can do so we pretend he is not fat and everything is fine.

I can’t open a paperback. There is no room. I don't own an iPod. All I can do is lean forward and rest my head into the seatback in front of me. The space that I evacuated, behind my upper body, fills up suddenly by the chubbies on my left and right. Nature abhors a vacuum.

It feels like a crypt and I have been sealed up alive.

Hamsini has to work all weekend.

I try to breathe smoothly and meditate. The air is filled with germs.

Suddenly, the man in front of me drops his seat violently and buckles my neck. I squeeze back into the space that was my seat.

The booze cart comes by and with a buck from Charlie, and four of my own, I buy gin which I drink straight from the miniature bottle.

I miss my Hamsini.

The Losing Ticket

Episode 7:
At O’Hare International Airport, the people that line up to buy MegaMillions tickets at the state’s kiosk wear uniforms. They are not traveling to Vail or Burbank or Miami. They are buying tickets at the end of their shifts, or they are buying tickets during mandatory breaks from jobs that may involve removing gum from the airport’s many urinals.

Their uniforms divulge their first names because it is their employer's policy, while I possess my anonymity from them. Their names include Hector, Celeste, Svetlana, and Manny. They wear navy blue and brown uniforms as not to show grime so easily. I am wearing French cuffs and cuff links. The cracker convention went very well for me.

If you are 59 years old and limping around the airport in steel-toed boots, you cannot afford to miss your chance at the mega millions. This week’s pot is worth $95 million.

On the other hand, I can afford not to play MegaMillions because I am young and beautiful and supremely cocky. I am certain that when I am 90 years old, my piss will flow freely through my donut-shaped prostate and I will be making love to women half my age at a resort on the Big Island.

I have never played lotto. Lotto is for the hopeless. Blackjack and Craps in Vegas, yes. And I have always walked away richer because I have options.

There is plenty of money to be made in the cracker business. Everyone eats crackers. The poor eat saltines and I sell those, too. The rich appear to eat a lot of Waterford wafers. On the Waterford box, the makers depict wafers with lox and a frilly herb that could be dill. On the saltine box, they depict no such accoutrements. I suspect the poor eat their saltines with butter, or they crumble them into condensed soup.

Charlie Ray plays lotto. I know this because he carries a losing ticket in his wallet. Charlie’s (un)lucky numbers are 3-9-12-18-and 23.

Today, I am going to play MegaMillions in honor of Charlie Ray Dalton. I use one of Charlie’s dollars and four of my own. I use Charlie’s lucky numbers and four random sets. I am arrogant today, but not so egotistical to portend to understand that which is arbitrary in the universe.



Speaking of a Losing Ticket, how about McCain and Palin?

Eddie Vedder

Episode 6:

I watched the convention last night on the bar TV in the Congress Plaza Hotel. I didn't know it, but Eddie Vedder was on the stool next to me. I bought him ($#4) a drink.

After he left, the bartender asked me if I knew who that was. I said, no. The bartender said, that was Eddie Vedder. I asked, who is Eddie Vedder. The bartenders said, have you heard of Pearl Jam?

When Barack Obama kissed Jill Biden (on the lips!), Mr. Vedder said, we've come a long way. I said, I'll drink to that. I was drinking a rum and coke. Mr. Vedder was drinking wine. We clinked our glasses.

Off to the Cracker Convention.

Episode 5:

I must leave my beloved Hamsini.

There is a cracker convention in Chicago. It is the same week as the Democratic Convention in Denver. Coincidence? I think not.

The real cracker convention starts next week in St Paul, if you catch my drift. I wonder if McCaine will select Darth Lieberman as his Veep?

It is not just crackers. It is all manners of snacks, cookies and confections salty and sweet. We have a booth with lasers. And bikini-clad models who pass out sample whole-grain crackers with various spreads. I picked the models last month from a catalogue.

Hamsini must go back to work, too. Rebuilding the urethras of soldiers at the VA. I don't take pissing upright lightly. I am grateful for my plumbing. Just wish the Sith didn't occupy the White House.

Charlie’s wallet travels with me.

On Tuesday, I spent a dollar ($#2) at Starbucks tasting their new Vivanno. Watch out Jamba Juice. Howard Schultz aims to take you out.

On Wednesday morning, I bought ($#3) an egg sandwich at SeaTac. Thank you, Charlie.

Soft Flesh Pressing the Leaning Tree

Episode 4:
There are many gin and tonics. We are sloppy. We hatch identify schemes and knock on the fish tank at the ugly algae sucker. There is much laughter and the agrarians are starring at us. Hamsini makes me happy. I would like to marry her someday. I would like our photograph to appear in the New York Times with the other beautiful, interesting people who attended the finest schools. Her family and I have never met. They are hoping for a Hindu son-in-law, I think. Her family hails from Pittsburgh. Her father is an optometrist. Her mother is a retired math teacher.

Should we track down Charlie Dalton? How would this be accomplished? We ask the waitress if she knows a man named Charlie Dalton. She does not. We sidle up to the bartender, Ben. He does not know this Charlie. We ask for a Vashon telephone book. After another gin and tonic, the telephone book appears seemingly from nowhere. There is, apparently, no Charles Dalton residing on Vashon Island. There is no Dalton clan living way up Shingle Mill Creek.

Before leaving Vashon, under a gravid moon, I make love to Hamsini as her soft flesh presses into a steeply leaning madrone tree.

I whisper to Hamsini, "We shall spend the money one dollar a day for the next year in honor of Charlie Ray Dalton."

She trembles. "Whatever," she says.

The first dollar has been spent already. Pocketed in the form of a tip to Ben and a waitress named Magdalena.

Gin & Tonic on Vashon

Episode 3:

This is the wallet of Charles Ray Dalton. It is the shittiest wallet I’ve laid eyes on. It must be at least 20 years old. It may be older than I am. The leather has worn paper-thin. It is torn and can no longer hold its contents properly. Does a man resemble his wallet? Mine happens to be eel skin.

On the wallet is a dull impression of a camel. I think Charlie got his wallet free by sending in the tabs from fifty cartoons of Camel cigarettes. Charlie must be a smoker.

Hamsini actually smells the wallet for smoke and nicotine. I scan the room to see if anyone notices. Then I search for anyone resembling the wallet. There are no scruffy, faded fellows suddenly short of cash in this tony bistro. There is no Charles Dalton here.

It takes fortification to go through the wallet of Charles Ray Dalton. In fact, it takes six gin and tonics between us. First, we count out the cash. It is a wad of $366. Then we lay out the rest of the contents. Remarkably, the owner of the wallet has no address or telephone number. There is no driver’s license. There is no picture ID. The wallet is full of odd, impractical things.

Warm Leather

Episode 2:

The wallet is still warm. We wonder together, how did this happen? Was the wallet’s owner riding a motorcycle, too? I check my back pocket and feel the auspicious mass of my own wallet.

We do not linger on the road. We gather up the bills and the wallet quickly. We do not examine the contents of the wallet. For me, there is some self-reproach in finding a stranger’s wallet. I hand the wallet to Hamsini and we get back on the bike. She hugs my waist tightly. I already said, I am the luckiest guy in the world. Hamsini is a resident urologist. She is smart and beautiful and funny.

We decide to stay on the bramble covered island a bit longer. We head to the island’s commercial center and enter a dark place called the Go-Go Girls. It turns out to be a restaurant full of lesbians wearing gum boots. This is not a scene to be affronted by; it is simply a fact. Everyone is fully clothed. If there are pasties worn, they are obscured by Carharts and flannel. I find this odd on such a warm evening.

We order gin and tonics and sushi. We sit next to an aquarium full of African cichlids raking the gravel bottom.

The Exhilaration of Found Money

Episode 1:

This is all true. And it is happening now. Or just a little before now.

There is something exhilarating about finding money on the ground. It is like discovering a cheerleader splayed in the dry grass on the side of the tracks. At first, her warped body is so beautiful. Then you realize what has happened. Some kind of horrible accident, initially, you hardly recognized the train wreck.

It was dusk, at the end of the hottest day of the year. A sultry day that is rare on the edge of the Puget Sound.

I was cruising across Vashon Island, taking the long way to Tacoma. Hamsini was on the back of my Enfield. She is so amazing. I am the luckiest guy on the planet. Found money, my girl, the smell of blackberries ripening on the cane.

The bills were blowing across the country road like leaves. We passed through them before it hit me. Money, littering the land.

We parked on the shoulder. Below us, sheep in a meadow overlooking the Colvos Passage. We scrambled for the loose bills blowing across the dividing line. Hamsini found the wallet. I scanned for onlookers, excitement laced with guilt, I suppose.

Nobody was watching but the sheep, idle as lawn ornaments.