Downhill Both Ways

A Man on 7th Street at 7 AM

Abraham Piper — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:33:59 +0000

He’s young, skinny, has several piercings and a coffee. He wears fitted jeans that drape over his yellow and orange canvas shoes with what I assume is perfection. His shirt is tight, but you already knew that.

His satchel hangs over his left shoulder and bounces off his right hip. It looks like a designer diaper bag, given its girth, tan-on-brown florals, and gold faux buckles that hide the bag’s inadequately magnetized clasps.

He walks quickly, which doesn’t generally lend a person an air of cordiality. His coffeeless hand pendulates him forward and holds a cigarette, which the air is smoking as he swings it by his side. He looks intently, almost nervously, down at the sidewalk ahead of him.

Clearly, he is neither a morning person nor too keen on the employment he’s heading toward. But, as George Carlin says—or maybe it’s Drew Carey, I don’t know—You hate your job? There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody and they meet at the bar.

This evening, with his support group, he’ll be happier. He’ll loosen up a bit, have a laugh or two, and probably take his eyes off the ground as he tips back a martini, slurping the Sobieski Cytron, but letting the blueberries fall back into the glass for later.

It’s too bad he’s unaware of what I’m thinking as he walks by, because if he knew how I described his tote, that would surely provide some fodder for his and his friends’ amusement tonight. A designer diaper bag, please. Anyone who’s anyone can tell it’s Louis Vuitton.

Sale in Alley

Abraham Piper — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:24:43 +0000

You never see the little sign soon enough to actually turn in. Unless you’re walking, I suppose. By the time you’ve laid eyes on it, and its magic-markered content registers in your brain, you’re already past it.

(Sharpies look plenty big in a cup on your desk next to Bic ballpoints. But garage sale advertisers, no-experience-necessary part-time job offerers, and folks who will pay you $50 for your junker seem to forget that size is relative, and that the Sharpie, while the master of its deskly domain, will cower in commercial defeat when posted on a telephone pole beneath a billboard slogan written in 4,000-point font telling passersby all about the new over-the-counter paternity DNA tests.)

Despite the inadequacy of the signage, you now know that there’s a sale in the alley back there. Next you must decide if you would’ve wanted to go this Sale in Alley if you’d seen the sign soon enough to turn where it told you to. After you answer Yes to that, you then need to ask yourself if the sale is worth backtracking for. Because, sure, you’d have gone to it if you saw the sign in time, but you didn’t. Now you’d have to go back to places you’ve already been in order to arrive at said sale.

Nobody likes to backtrack, but let’s say you decide it’s worth it…

So far in your decision-making, you’re still in your own brain. Now you have to bring your process into the more linear sphere—yes, linear sphere—of conversation with the other people in the car.

Hey, a sale in the alley.

Where?

Back there. We passed it already.

Oh. Yeah. Saw that.

Wanna go?

I mean, if you do. But, whatever.

It’s probably nothing.

Yeah.

But, still. Can’t hurt to check it out.

By the time you’ve pussyfooted your way to what passes for a decision in Minnesota, you’re already three blocks past. Nevertheless you take a right onto Blaisdell and come back around to the minimally advertised alley between Pleasant and Grand.

There, stuck in the ground, is the twin of the first sign you saw. Sale in Alley. This one, of course, is far more promotionally effective (as ads you want to see are wont to be) since you were looking for it.

You ease into the alley and begin your 10mph trek toward the sale, hoping against hope that this will be The One—the one sale that vindicates not only your current third-of-a-mile backtrack, but all the other thirds-of-a-mile that you’ve backtracked on Saturdays past only to discover that what passes for a garage sale these days is simply a proprietor-of-the-day and her neighbors chatting behind their houses like this is their ordinary block club tea-time…

…except at this social, strangers are invited to stop by and pay four bucks for a Cabbage Patch doll or 20 for a Chenille throw that the soon-to-be-former owner wants you to know “was $80 at Pottery Barn.” Your interior response, of course, is “What does you being duped in a mall have to do with the price of tea in China (or, in this case, the price of a used blanket in a South Minneapolis alley)?”

But you will not succumb to this defeatism. This could be the sale where prices are based (as the title of the event would have you believe is the idea) on sales, not sentiment. Because—really—you’re not gonna attack that lady’s kid or anything, but also you’re not gonna pretend that her precious baby’s bile stains make that old bouncy seat worth more than maybe $2.50—maybe.

There it is—the Sale in Alley—on your right a few houses further on. A garage door is open, letting your possible possessions overflow. Ah, the endless potential of used sofas, floor lamps, and boxes of books by the eminent likes of Doctor Phil and L. Ron Hubbard.

Two friendly-looking ladies and their happily indentured men stand beside four tables scooched together and bearing up under a burden of bric-a-brac none could hold alone. The two couples smile and chat pleasantly while taking money from the occasional customer.

You park on their neighbor’s cement pad and get out. Without a modicum of discipline, all your pessimism is put aside. This is what weekends were made for. A new sale on a new Saturday. Who knows what treasures await you—and at what modest prices, too!

You look both ways and cross the alley, already eyeing that distressed kitchen table just inside the garage—“Hey, I could cut 9 inches off those legs and we could use it in the living room. We do need a coffee table…”

You make eye contact and smile a hello at the current owners of your future stuff.

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you considered sharing it with your friends in whatever way you like to do your internet sharing.

You may also want to subscribe to Downhill Both Ways. Thanks a lot for reading! -Abraham

Writing Is Like Eating Chips…or Maybe It’s Not.

Abraham Piper — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:38:17 +0000

I like writing the way I like eating potato chips. Namely, I’m utterly ambivalent until I’ve had a bite. Then I can’t stop. And, with writing, that “first bite” is a tasty first sentence—tasty to me, that is. (It may be entirely unsatisfactory to an audience, much like the lip-smacking, cavernous echo-crunch, and onion breath provided during the consumption of a chip is largely for the sake of the eater rather than his company.)

Then, of course, there are also a few differences between writing and eating a bag of Ruffles or a tube of Pringles. First, eating a chip is easy to do. They’re over there in the cupboard beside the fridge. Just go get one, put it in your mouth, and you’re off! Eat on, young gourmand! You can’t stop even if you wanted to, which you don’t. Cuz yum.

First sentences, though, are a bit more elusive than your ordinary flavor-laden munchable. Chips would be more like a writer’s inspiration if they had the power to displace themselves and reappear at will throughout the dark labyrinth of kitchen storage space. And the power, at some times, to disappear entirely.

Another key difference between writing and eating potato chips (since What are the key differences between writing and eating potato chips? is what you woke up asking yourself this morning) is that when you find that illusory First Sentence—the kind an entire book could grow out of—you don’t always know if it really is as invitingly fecund as it seems, whereas a chip is a chip and there’s not much variance between the top one that your fingers grab once your hand and your brain collude to subject your belly to that bag and the last one you scrape out of the bottom 10 minutes later as you hold the package up and see that the serving size is “9 Crisps.”

In fact, as I think about it more, typing that first line on a blank sheet is actually quite dissimilar to the snacking experience. So dissimilar, in fact, that mentioning the meager comparabilities has turned out to be somewhat futile. Except for one thing. I wanted to write 500 words this morning, which is exactly what I’m doing…all thanks to:

I like writing the way I like eating potato chips.

Thank you, First Sentence. Now I feel like a worthwhile human being who can happily go on about my worthwhile day. My essay (unnecessary and trite as it may be) is almost complete; my belly is full (albeit somewhat queasily); my keyboard is greasy (especially asdf, jkl, Shift, Enter, Space, and e); and what’s left on the kitchen table in front of me (besides my coffee cup and elbows) is a crinkly bag that formerly harbored LAY’S® Kettle Cooked Crinkle Cut Spice Rubbed BBQ Potato Chips and a near useless, logorrheal attempt at creativity shimmering here on my computer screen.

12 helpings of chips. I’m glad I did that.

Maybe what’s worth comparing isn’t so much a First Chip and a First Sentence, fraught as they may be with illusions of potential. No, maybe what’s worth comparing is this empty bag of salty, greasy foodstuff and any essay that results from a first sentence that has anything to do with potato chips.

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you considered sharing it with your friends in whatever way you like to do your internet sharing.

You may also want to subscribe to Downhill Both Ways. Thanks a lot for reading! -Abraham

Last Week’s Back Alley Hit and Run

Abraham Piper — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:56:42 +0000

The first apartment my wife and I lived in was the second floor of a duplex on 31^st and Cedar. Since this is a block off Lake Street and since Cedar is a main north-south thoroughfare, we lived amid a mishmash of revving motorcycles, wandering prostitutes, brown paper litter, liberals, and Lutherans.

We loved it. Except for the motorcycles.

One of the Lutherans was our landlord Old Man Todd. Now, we never referred to him as Old Man Todd, but I’m calling him that here because it gives a pretty good sense of what he was like without me having to describe him too much.

Let’s just say he was the kind of guy who kids are terrified of after they hit a baseball through his window, but then after finding the courage to take responsibility, that one brave kid (who didn’t run away in fear like all his friends) discovers that, really, the old man they’d been scared of all this time is actually remarkably noble and worth knowing. Henceforward said boy and old man strike up an ironic, yet natural and deep, friendship that is only ended by the old man’s death, leaving the boy terribly sad but significantly more emotionally mature.

I learned one main thing from Old Man Todd: Your neighborhood is your neighborhood—Own it. It doesn’t belong to anyone but those who live there and respect it. It doesn’t belong to the obnoxious HOGs gunning their engines at the red light on 31^st; it doesn’t belong to the gangbangers walking down the alley with spray paint leaving their futile marks of turf here and there like pissing dogs.

And as owners, Todd showed me, we ought to be confident in maintaining the quality of the neighborhood. Nowhere did Todd exhibit this more than in his response to cars racing down the alley.

Slow Down!

He’d yell it from wherever he was on his properties if he could hear a car accelerating past the prescribed 10 miles per hour. And if he was near to the offending vehicle, he’d step out and make a scene, raising his arms, hollering.

It worked, generally. People slowed down.

At the time, I thought to myself that I wanted to be that audacious when I become an old man. But, like it or not, old men are only made out of young ones, so after I moved out and lived along my own alley without Old Man Todd to watch over it for me, I realized that I couldn’t just wait. I needed to experiment with and practice a measure of chutzpah now, as a young man.

So I’ve regularly practiced authoritative alley-safeguarding in the five years since, every time remembering, admiring—perhaps even channeling—Old Man Todd.

On Friday, a shiny gold Audi whipped past me down our alley as I rearranged the car seats in our van. Before it passed, I had time to stand up straight, make eye contact with the driver, give my best crusty-old-man face, and tell him angrily to slow down, gesturing with both my hands. Usually I yell, too, but this time I didn’t.

I immediately thought to myself that, since no words attended my hand motions and since there’s no universal sign for “SLOW DOWN!” my gesticulations must have looked quite a bit like I was simply asking him and his passengers to stop. And not just stop, but also beat me up.

Two seconds later, just after I’d returned to my attention to the car seats, I heard a screech.

And in less time than it takes to notice what color a tree is, I looked up and saw the Audi stopping. I felt my kidneys, lungs, and heart drop pusillanimously down behind my bowels. Oh no—I’m about to get my ass kicked. So much for channeling Todd’s 6 and-a-half decades of righteous tenacity. I was about to die.

I’d overstepped my authority—which is none—telling them to ease up on the old gas pedal, and these guys were gonna make sure I knew it. And not just make sure I knew, but also offer a physical token or two of reminder to make sure I didn’t do it again.

But then I realized I’d heard a crunch. And as the car had slowed down, I’d seen a girl and a boy sprint-dive out of the way. It happened so fast, I couldn’t tell if I’d seen the crash or if my brain had pieced together what happened out of the information it gathered after arriving on the scene a nanosecond after the fact.

A kid had been hit.

All thoughts of this car’s stopping being motivated by me instantly ceased. I started running toward the accident, two houses down, only to notice the offending car start to leave.

My initial Oh-Lord-I-hope-he’s-alright jog turned into a Get-back-here-you-bastards sprint. As I passed the terrified and injured boy, I saw several adults coming to his aid and felt free to continue after the perpetrators.

Me against the Audi. That’s a fair race. I was a property’s width behind the car, just trying to get near enough to read the plate number. Then the car accelerated even more. Apparently, they’d just noticed that some dude was chasing after them.

The distance between us increased and I hadn’t gotten the plate numbers yet. I kept running, though, because I knew they’d have to stop at the end of the alley. 24^th Street is relatively busy and the parked cars along it create a blind turn out of the alley. There’s no way to turn out of it without stopping first. This ought to give me time to catch up, I figured. And kept sprinting.

I was about a quarter of a block back. If I’d been standing still, I could’ve read the plate. But no matter how I strained my eyes as I ran, my brain wouldn’t make sense of the blue numbers and letters through the fog of adrenaline and onsetting fatigue. I had to get closer, and this was my chance. The Audi reached the end of the alley.

But they didn’t stop. They darted sight unseen into traffic, causing the car they should’ve yielded to to brake and swerve. And that was that; there was nothing more to do. I coasted stompingly to a stop in the parking lot on the corner, breathing heavily. Already, I couldn’t see the car anymore. It must’ve turned up 10^th.

In the aftermath, the police came, also an ambulance and a fire truck. I told my version of the story to the cops and the EMTs. A gold Audi, I kept saying. No, I didn’t get the plates, but there can’t be too many of those around. A Gold Audi. Must’ve been going 25 miles an hour.

I thought of Carl Sandburg’s poem about Anna Imroth burning to death. “It is the hand of God and the lack of fire escapes,” the story ends. Here in our alley on Friday evening, the hand of God didn’t kill a child, so that’s good, (just some cuts and bruises, as they say) but no thanks to the shortage of fire escapes, or, in this case, speed bumps.

Minneapolis charges neighborhoods $500 per alley for speed bumps. Yeah.—That’s not gonna happen. I told this to an officer as he sat in his car. He shook his head bitterly. “You’re telling the wrong guy. There are six of us on the street right now. Only six. You can thank the mayor for that. But, hey, he’s buying you some shiny new water fountains.”

“I know you can’t do anything about it,” I said empathetically, almost apologetically. “I just needed to get that off my chest. I mean, it’s costing Minneapolis more to have you guys out here and these emergency teams than it would to just give us some speed bumps.”

“I know. I know,” he rejoined tiredly. “Talk to your councilman.”

Perhaps I will. Until then, I’ll continue manically waving my arms and shouting at speeding cars. I’ll continue watchdogging with imaginary authority. I’ll continue chasing cars and calling the cops. And one day—I can only hope—as I grow and gray, it will turn out that my block has its very own Old Man Todd.

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you considered sharing it with your friends in whatever way you like to do your internet sharing.

You may also want to subscribe to Downhill Both Ways. Thanks a lot for reading! -Abraham

The Cops and Two Angry Women

Abraham Piper — Tue, 11 May 2010 11:56:35 +0000

At first, it sounded like a warble, then from nearer by, it sounded more like a toddler’s eager post-naptime babble from inside her crib. Right before I came to where I could see the noise’s source, I realized what it was. It was screaming—unfiltered, unfettered feminine scorn.

How, just before, I could’ve mistaken it for a birdsong or a baby, I have no idea. Just like Rocky Mountain Oysters taste like liver until someone tells you they’re testicles.

All I could hear now was rage. I couldn’t yet make out any words. If anger is an overflow of pain, she was full of pain. But to my relief, I could tell by her timbre that she was not in imminent danger. The pain she expressed in her screaming was years in the bottling, and was not in response to a current attack of any sort.

That this relieved me, I realize now, is somewhat selfish: Whew! She’s not being attacked. She’s simply lived a life full of pain and anger up till now. What a relief. I was glad I wouldn’t have to play the hero. I was glad that if I called cops, it would be to report a disturbance, not a kidnapping or a rape. Still, I should probably call the cops, I figured.

Then she came into view. At a distance, I saw her waving her arms. She tantrumed like a caged cat getting stuck by sadistic teenagers with sharp sticks. But—and, again, to my selfish relief—I realized that I wouldn’t need to call the cops. That’s who she was yelling at.

She paced back and forth (if one step this way and then a step back can be called pacing). The squad car was behind her and she faced—or at least directed her unceasing vitriol at—a burly officer who stood with emotionless patience, waiting for her to quiet down like she was a wind-up toy.

The cop and his car created an invisible pen around the shrieking lady. She could’ve made a break for it to the right or left. And maybe even made it. But she remained in her six-foot circle, her indignation toward the authorities clearly not able to overpower her fear of them.

On the hood of the cruiser were two hands, palm-down, and connected to these hands, as one would expect, was a man. He leaned forward over the hood and received his patting down from a second officer. He was—in contrast to his partner-in-innocence-(till-proven-guilty)—quiet.

I still couldn’t hear what the detained lady was screaming, only that she was. But this scant intelligibility was no longer for lack of volume (I was now just across the street.) but for lack of enunciation, and, at points, for lack of any language at all. Her dialect, her fuming rage, and her strident bawling cacophonized into a primal noise. Violent, yet pitiable and animal.

A lady two doors down came out of her house and approached this scene of captive and captor.

“What are you doing?” She was already reproaching the police with her tone of voice, despite having no answer to her question yet.

The officer keeping the screaming lady penned snapped to. He snatched his flashlight out and pointed it into the neighbor’s eyes.

“What’re you doing?” he asked gruffly, letting her attitude and the evening’s stress determine the tone of this conversation.

“What am I doing?—I live here.” She pointed behind her to the door she’d just come out of.

“Then go back in your house.”

She ignored his blunt demand. “What’s going on?”

“Go back in your house.”

They increased in forcefulness together, hand in hand.

“I live here. What are you doing?” There was a full stop between each word in her question. She was standing her ground but not without shaking. Why she quavered was lost in the distance between her and me. Anger or fear? I couldn’t tell, but both seems like a reasonable guess.

The policeman’s vehemence increased, but his voice quieted to answer her: “We’re doing what we do. Now go back in your house.” He matched her halting, unyielding tone and had again reached his former volume by the end of his imperative.

“What you do? What you do?” Her volume one-upped his. And kept going. “I live here. And when you’re done ‘doing what you do,’”—She was mocking him now—“you’ll leave, and I’ll still be here. You don’t—”

“Go back in your house.”

—live here. You don’t live here. You don’t live here. What are you doing? I have a right—”

“Go back in your house. Now.”

She seemed to catch the officer’s unspoken threat and stopped talking. She stood still for a moment to exert the fading power of her final breath of outward rebellion. Then she turned around and stalked into her home. The beam of the officer’s flashlight followed her in, until she shut her door and pushed it back out.

Only then did the cop seem to remember his charge, the screaming lady. She hadn’t stopped. And now this brief exchange with the demandingly curious neighbor seemed to have alerted him to the fact that a lady hollering at the top of her lungs might cause some concern among the townsfolk. He stuffed her unceremoniously in the back of the car and slammed the door.

And it was quiet.

Eerily quiet. I’d gotten used to her shrieks as if they were white noise, as if the technician engineering the neighborhood’s audio had blended her part right into the mix, so it harmonized perfectly with the rest of Ventura Village’s late-night soundscape.

But now her part was muted and somehow—subtly, subconsciously—the night became darker, more ominous, and unnaturally silent.

The man with his hands on the hood of the cruiser still stood waiting. He was no more a character in this tale than the tree to his left or the pavement behind him where the two officers stood in quiet conference.

Lifting their heads from their huddle, one cop led the detained man to get in the car, and the other opened the door on the lady’s side. Immediately, her shrieking filled the night again, accidentally unmuted. Without doing whatever he’d opened the door to do, the cop slammed the lid back on her.

The perturbed neighbor stood at her barred screen door and watched them drive off. When they were half a block away, she came outside into her yard in an impotent gesture of insurgence.

It turns out she was right, though: The cops did what they do, and now they were gone, just as she predicted. And she still lives here, just like she said she would—3 AM, hair a mess, in her bathrobe. Still angry, still afraid.

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you considered sharing it with your friends in whatever way you like to do your internet sharing.

You may also want to subscribe to Downhill Both Ways. Thanks a lot for reading! -Abraham

Sleeve-rolling and Solipsism

Abraham Piper — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:29:22 +0000

A blond kid, maybe 20, sat in the rear corner of the bus with his school bag seated beside him. He leaned back and put a foot up on the arm of the perpendicular seat in front of him almost casually, but not quite. He didn’t seem to be getting comfortable, so much as seating himself in the position that he believed onlookers would expect of him.

Nobody was paying any attention.

He looked out the window. Because that’s what you do on a bus, look out the window. He didn’t care what he saw, but he fit in and that was enough.

Again, nobody was paying any attention.

He didn’t care what he saw, that is, until his eyes fell briefly on to his own person and he realized, for shame, his sleeves were rolled up to different heights relative to his elbows. He pulled his foot down from its perch and scooted back in his seat. He leaned forward a bit and extended both arms, elbows locked, until his hands rested where his foot had been.

There he sat, head oscillating 15 degrees from right arm to left arm and back, like a stern father silently judging his two children for a only a single offense before resolutely spanking them both.

He sat back and unrolled both the sleeves of his red plaid button-down. They dangled limp at his wrists. From above his elbow down to his cuffs, they were hopelessly spider-web creased from only ever having been worn scrunched up around their timid owner’s biceps and upper arm fat.

Carefully, but with the ease and obstinacy of having done this hundreds of times and never considered an alternative, the kid tucked his left cuff inside itself, then folded it once more till it bunched just below his elbow. He stopped for a moment to scrutinize his work. He shook his arm slightly, straightening the stretch of sleeve that remained unfolded and testing the mettle of the portion he’d just gathered.

It passed muster and he completed his left sleeve with one more roll.

He held out his arm, slightly bent and wrapped carefully in its completed cuff, and looked down at the inside of his elbow like his blood pressure was being taken. Then he straightened it, swiveled his wrist in, and tucked his shoulder forward to get the best view as he could of the back of his punctiliously rumpled sleeve.

After this once-over, he seemed at ease with the bunched-uppedness of his left sleeve and turned his attention to his right arm where his shirt still hung in flaccid, fearful shame, like all kids who have to wait for their spankings do.

He began the same process there. Tuck, roll, appraise, roll, inspect.

Only now, two additional factors complicated his task. One, he must work with his left hand, which obviously didn’t feel as sufficient for the task as his right. And two, now, with his left sleeve already finished, there was more than just an unincarnated ideal cuff to compare his work to. The right sleeve must become the left sleeve’s identical twin—despite their having different fathers.

After finishing his second armroll. He again stuck his arms out straight—the way he had when he noticed the original discrepancy. This time his judgment fell solely on his right arm, which he re-unrolled, leaving his left, in its scrunched-up state of apparent adequacy.

Tuck. Roll. Appraise. Roll. Inspect.

Still not good enough. Unroll. Start over.

Tuck. Roll. Appraise. Roll. Inspect. Five times he did this. Tuck. Roll. Appraise. Roll. Inspect.—ad nauseam.

Finally, he seemed satisfied. But not happy-satisfied. Just that’ll-do-satisfied. The way a teacher feels when she marks “Satisfactory” on a report card. We wish little Jimmy did better, tried harder, learned faster, paid a little bit of attention, and could tell time on an analog clock at least to the quarter hour, but we don’t want to split him from his friends. He can move on to 4^thgrade, I suppose. But be sure to work with him on his spelling and timetables over the summer, keh?

That kind of satisfied—Oh, and here are some flash cards you can borrow and a paper clock he can practice with. Just bring them back to me in September, keh?—Which isn’t really satisfaction at all.

It’s a hard life when you require and expect order—not to mention, symmetry—from randomness…

Having shown his power to achieve near-adequacy with at least his shirt, the kid sat back and looked out the window again, the way he instinctively knew he was supposed to. Occasionally he glanced down to recheck his work, flexing his biceps to see how the roll of his cuffs felt against his arms at various girths.

Are my rolled sleeves the same length? Do the rolls look the same as each other? Do they feel the same against my arms? How will they hold up to what today might bring? What will today bring…for my sleeves, I mean. What will people think?

Nobody was paying any attention.

His foot was back on the arm of the seat in front of him. He held his toe in position while his heel bounced up and down with the rest of his leg like he had to take a leak or perhaps something else was troubling him.

But nobody was paying any attention.

His eyes pointed aimlessly out into Minneapolis as the bus passed 4^th and pulled to a stop. I stepped out into the hazy blue-glass-glare of a downtown morning onto a wide, empty sidewalk where I would wait for the 22. As the 14 pulled away, I looked back up at the kid through the window, but he wasn’t looking out toward me. His head was down and his sleeve was unrolled.

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you considered sharing it with your friends in whatever way you like to do your internet sharing.

You may also want to subscribe to Downhill Both Ways. Thanks a lot for reading! -Abraham

My Recent Momentary Punk Rock Phase

Abraham Piper — Tue, 04 May 2010 12:19:09 +0000

The following essay describes my time at a Reckless Ones concert.

* * *

I paid 6 bucks to get in here, which didn’t feel very punk rock to me. I mean, I’ve never been punk rock, and I’ve only been to one punk show, as far as I can remember, but there’s an aura of punkrockishness that we on the outside perceive, whether accurately or not. And paying to see a show doesn’t fit.

A third of the money I gave the guy at the door was a 2-dollar bill, which I got a friendly nod and an “I like that” about. So while a cover charge may be a distinctly bourgeois practice, there are apparently more and less punk rock ways to participate. Maybe I’m pretty punk rock after all.

I should have brought a sockful of pennies, because that’s like money, weird, and a potential weapon all at the same time. Very punk rock, right? Of course, that might have annoyed the doorman and crossed the line. But, wait, isn’t crossing the line what being a punk is all about?

It’s confusing trying to be acceptably sociopathic. How does one go about being antisocial while maintaining the cordial society of other antisocialites. It must be stressful rocking the punkitude.

I sat down at a table in the middle of the bar while a band scratched and screamed and generally connipted through whatever electricity was made available to them onstage. When I closed my eyes, I could feel the outrageous noise in my chest, and I understood how, for some, that physical vibration could alchemize into emotion.

But it didn’t for me, because whenever I opened my eyes I saw the singer, who looked way too much like Michael Cera to lead me anywhere resembling angst or despair. Also, he wore a dress. Which isn’t too distracting in and of itself, but for the last song he pulled the straps off his shoulders and folded the top down so he was shirtless with a skirt, and I kept thinking to myself, “This guy has a day job…at a banana stand.”

They finished their set and the emcee overeagerly hopped on stage and started swearing at us while another band set up.

I wanted to be like, “Dude, saying fuck doesn’t make you punk rock. You work at Radio Shack and the last thing to make you really mad was a teller’s error at the Wells Fargo drive thru.”

Then, as if transporting us to a different show, the next band started, and I could feel the music telling me if I needed to be sardonic, I could just go home.

I obeyed. Not by going home, but by shutting off my inner commentary and just rattling along with the rock and roll. It was Reckless Ones up now, the band we were there to see.

“What have you got for us, gentlemen?” I challenged them silently, and then sat back for an answer.

Kevin stood back from the center-stage microphone and strangled his guitar by the neck while his other hand stabbed it in the body with a pick. Adam, to the left, twirled his bass and rapped his fingers against the strings in rapid-fire volleys of sixteenth and thirty-second notes. Dylan, to the right, stood over the cowering drumset, cudgeling it mercilessly.

Intimidated, I’m sure, by their attackers tattoos and unmoving coiffures, the instruments submitted hopelessly. They bawled in pain and anger, and their reverberating cries shot through the speakers in the ear-splitting, fear-splitting sounds of hypersonic psychobilly.

Man against music, the stage brawl continued to the delight of several dozen PBRed Minneapolitans wearing Salvation Army formalwear.

Ohhhh. Punk Rock Prom is what this was.

Considering that I was unusually dressed for the venue in my jeans and windbreaker, I hadn’t been entirely aware that most everyone else was dressed weird, too. Unlike me, though, they were being ironic—tats and beaters garbed in sheen and puff. This explained Michael Cera’s dress. Kind of. And now the décor made a modicum of sense also.

Red and white streamers draped aimlessly across the ceiling, hanging here, dangling there, like vacant cobwebs. The spiders who’d built these homes and traps must have left in a hurry: Edible prey remained, untouched in the web of streamers—balloons like stuck flies swaying in the breeze of the dark bar’s whirring HVAC.

Scurrying around below, over-dressed, under-groomed partiers scuttled and mobbed about, cheering the band’s dulcet abuse of its instruments.

This was punk rock. I could argue against it; I could point to the inconsistencies, the ridiculous posturing. But I didn’t. Because I could feel it. I could———

A girl in a wedding dress skanked out of the crowd past our table…and pulled out her iPhone.

The bubble popped. The fragile universe inside of which all these kids were legit and world was wonderful for all its horror—this fragile universe shattered for me. I wanted to stay there, but there was nowhere left to stay. This rebellion, this anger, this violent release was all a farce.

I could see being punk rock, but that’s not what this was. How can you give AT&T $60 a month and still think you’re sticking it to the man? You can’t is how.

I turned back to the music. It was still blazing; I was still impressed. But I was on the outside again. A distant observer. A critic. Hearing, not listening. Watching, not seeing. Present, but not living.

I wanted back in, but with all the bands on the bill, the sets were short. Reckless Ones were done. For a moment there I’d been punk, I think. But now I’m not anymore and I’m wondering—ruefully, perhaps—what should I be next?

* * * * *

Related:

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Reckless Ones

Abraham Piper — Mon, 03 May 2010 10:42:36 +0000

Reckless Ones on MySpace // Reckless Ones on Amazon

The Drunk Girl’s Ride Home

Abraham Piper — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:25:39 +0000

This concludes the serial story that I got myself into last week. Here are parts 1-3.

* * *

A limo idled by the Otter Saloon while the drunk girl stood on the corner holding her shoes and purse against her chest in a hug, shivering and plaintively staring at nothing. If I were a painter and this were the scene I chose to interpret onto some canvas, I think I’d entitle it “Concussed Hooker.”

Everyone would look at it and nod slowly the way people do when they look at art that they’re supposed to appreciate because everyone else is nodding slowly too. They’d discuss how the poor prostitute came to be in this forlorn state, not because they care, but because they don’t want anyone else to know that the really don’t care and they’re only at the gallery’s grand opening for the free wine.

All the while, I, the omniscient artist, would stand quietly in the corner, knowing she’s neither a prostitute nor has she recently sustained a head injury. All she is is cold and just plain drunk, lost and losing it at this point.

“I’m just gonna walk,” she muttered as she leaned and tumbled back against a column and slid her back down it till she was seated on the concrete. Her knees pointed up while her arms draped across them and her head sagged almost below her neck. She looked liked she’d just lost a soccer game.

“Uh-huh,” I answered more out of obligation than because I thought she was listening. “I doubt that would be your best option.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do?” She answered, picking her head up and letting it fall back with all the physical aptitude of a 2-month-old to be held by whatever might catch it—her backrest, the column, as it turns out. So apparently she was listening.

“You’d regret trying to walk home,” I told her.

“No I wouldn’t,” she argued, “Not till tomorrow.” She had a point.

I told her to just sit tight and I’d figure something out.

Now let me just push the bounds of acceptable narrative technique and step out of this tale to explain a couple things you might be wondering about. It’ll only take a moment. A little midstory FAQ, if you will:

Your Question: Why didn’t she just take a cab?

My Answer #1: I’ve neglected to mention so far that the reason she was walking home was to spite the friends she left at the bar. If I’d included that in my story, I would’ve needed to use more f-words and various other more creative sexual invectives than I’m comfortable writing down for a general audience.

Point being, she wanted to make a point, so her pride wouldn’t let her take a taxi. Don’t think I didn’t suggest it, oh, maybe twenty times.

Answer #2: Also, she didn’t have any money (at least that’s what she told me—I didn’t check her pocketbook or anything).

Question: Why didn’t you pay for her cab ride?

Answer: I had $9 on me, and unless I wanted to get home at about 3AM, I was gonna need my own ride home.

Question: Still, why didn’t you pay for her cab ride. You could’ve figured out a way home easier than she could.

Answer: Why didn’t you pay for her cab ride? Stop pressuring me.

Question: Why didn’t you just call someone for directions?

Answer: I don’t have a phone.

Question: Why didn’t you call someone on her phone, then?

Answer: Hmm. I didn’t think of that. That would have been a good idea…

Ennyhoooo…

I got the limo driver’s attention and waved my hand around in the universal sign for “Roll down yer window, please, woodjya?”

He complied, and I inquired of him with all the chutzpah of Oliver Twist asking please sir for more if he knew where 12— T—— Street was. I also explained why I needed to find out.

He said he didn’t know, but he would in a second, and pulled out his phone. Handy thing, those. “Oh, it’s not far. Just a couple miles.… Oh wait, that’s right. You guys are walking aren’t you?”

Yes, indeed we are.

He got out of his car and told me to hold on for a minute. His fares were tumbling out of the bar in ragged shirts and Converses. He opened the limo doors for them and they all ducked in laughing and making sure their Mohawks stayed in place and nobody banged against their nipple rings amid the ruckus.

After he’d shut this crowd into their incongruous luxury, he turned back toward me and looked over my shoulder at the girl who was now standing near us instead of slouching against the building.

“Listen,” he said, “I gotta drop these folks off and I’ll be back in 10 minutes.”

“OK,” I answered, not really believing him.

While we waited, I followed the girl around at a distance. In the bar; out the bar. Up the street; back to the corner. In the bar again. I stood back as she talked up a stranger. Out of the bar again. To everyone else I must have seemed like the sober friend stuck managing the partier in our posse. Or maybe I came across as some stupid dude who’d bought his first date too many drinks.

Of course, I wasn’t actually either of those things. I was a stalker. So really whatever impression I gave these people was an improvement on at least one interpretation of reality.

We saw a limo turn the wrong direction a block away. I thought for sure we’d missed her ride home because she’d taken too long going to the bathroom. But then, up to the red light, across the intersection, pulled what seemed like it could be the silhouette of her stretch limo savior. I couldn’t tell for sure, because I couldn’t see past the headlights.

Still, those look like limo headlights, I told myself. And they were.

He pulled up and got out. Without speaking, as if this was normal for her, the girl headed to get in.

“No,” the driver said, “you’re riding in the front.”

She obeyed. And without any ado or adieu they were off. I stood outside the Otter Saloon, 3 miles from home, and hoped like hell I hadn’t just guided her into the one situation that I was trying up till now to protect her from.

I didn’t know this guy driving her around at one in the morning. She didn’t know him. Not only that, not a person on the planet other than phoneless me knew she was with him. As soon as they turned the corner, I regretted not getting his name or company or car number.

I started walking north on First, comforting myself with this rationalization:

Sure she’s at risk, but before you came along, there were, I don’t know, like a million bad things that could’ve happened to her. Now that you’ve helped her, there’s only a couple bad things that might happen. So you really narrowed down her risks.

You minimized the potential of hurt in her life tonight. Keeping her out of a million harms’ ways by putting her in just one harm’s way. That’s gotta count for something. It’s not perfect protection, sure, but it’s at least some kind of protection.

You’re not a freaking superhero or guardian angel. You’re just dude out for a walk on Saturday night. You did your best and everything will be fine.

Everything will be fine. Everything will be fine.

I kept on preaching this pep talk to myself as I hailed a taxi and asked the driver if he’d take me to 11^th and Franklin for $9. He said, “Sure, if you give me the money now.” I did and 10 minutes later I was walking in my front gate, sneaking in my dark house, and whispering “I’m home” to my sleeping wife.

A half hour earlier, before the girl got in her surprising ride home, she’d reached out and tapped the notebook in my coat pocket with her knuckles like she was knocking on a door. “What’s that for?”

“Sometimes I write stuff down,” I told her with all the specificity my mood allowed.

“Well, maybe tomorrow you’ll write a poem or a song or whatever about the random drunk girl you met tonight. You should do that.”

“OK. Maybe I will.”

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you considered sharing it with your friends in whatever way you like to do your internet sharing.

You may also want to subscribe to Downhill Both Ways. Thanks a lot for reading! -Abraham

Convo with a Hotdog-Making Veterinarian’s Assistant

Abraham Piper — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:19:43 +0000

Are you my friend? I don’t have any friends. Will you be my friend?

What do you need?

All my friends died, man. I’m from around here, but got no friends, cuz they all died. Well sorta I’m from around this town—I’m from Texas.

All my friends died.

I’m sorry to hear that.

That guy keeps looking at me. The limo driver over there. He keeps looking at me like I’m no good. Like he’s better than me. But you’ll be my friend, right?

Sure. For a moment. What do you need?

Well, I…Why do I gotta need something? … I don’t think I need anything.

Do I?

Suppose not. If you say so.

So you’re gonna be like that then?

Like what?

Why you being a jerk all the sudden?

I am?

What. Is that your limo over there?

I’m at a bus stop.

That’s your limo over there, isn’t it?

Yes. Yes, it is. Go tell the driver I said you could have a ride.

No…Really?

Sure. Go tell him I said you could take a ride.

Listen. I’m good at what I do.

OK?

I am. I’m good at it.

What do you do?

I make hotdogs.

Sorry?

I said I make hotdogs.

Ahhh. Where do you do that.

Eden Prairie. And I make warming blankets for dogs that have been shot.

I don’t even know what that means.

Like if that guy there shot a dog, I’d make it a warming blanket.

Oh no. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I Shouldn’t talk about him shooting a dog. But seriously. He looks like he wants to shoot me.…

You should maybe chill out.

…or beat me up. Please don’t beat me up.

Seriously, dude.

I thought you said you were gonna be my friend.

I will be, but you’re in my face. Back up to talk to me and we’ll be just fine.

You sound just like Lydia.

Yes. Me and Lydia agree about you not being up in our face.

You know Lydia?

No.

You’re Lydia’s brother, aren’t you?…… No, you’re not. You don’t look at all like her. Nope. And also she doesn’t have any brothers.

* * * * *

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you considered sharing it with your friends in whatever way you like to do your internet sharing.

You may also want to subscribe to Downhill Both Ways. Thanks a lot for reading! -Abraham