Off the Shores of the Cockroach Coastline – Big Eyes Cringe with Fear
Quisquous navigation tends to happen, out on the floating blackness of the gulf, perfect peril design, just the way the jaws of the universe are supposed to function. Right where you don’t want to be of suicidal engines.
Left for dead – on our own accord, brutal sting – and we were to blame.
Well…if I was a splittin-hair type of fellow – which isn’t my style, to fine in the tooth, and the big picture is too much of a hoot – you could point out the culpable vehemence, like line-ups & hand cuffs for the condemned, at Red.
We were out for the day…the day, I remind you…slicin’ and cruisin’ the open water on his slightly used boat that was brand-spankin’ new. He purchased it a few weeks ago.
We had the wide-eyed shock and swell of fear that wants to exclaim the quiddities of blame. A fun use of time that doesn’t get anything done, aside from the release of anger that feels good when the pejorative ridicule leaves you dry.
The very lives we could (and should) rescue were our own. So, we skipped otiose minutes of discussion to reach a conclusion we could all put together. Dark and fresh morning hours were comin,’ and our drift had the feeling of a direction we didn’t want to be when the jaws of night released and barfed up the sun.
Of course, Red’s gal did the thing that makes you want to sink the face of gripin’ lips with the knuckle-bunch of your fist. Sometimes, it’s time to shut the hell up, walk bold through the strife…some people have no panache for the dark and desperate plights.
“I thought you said you had the motor tuned up,” irritated hands of disbelief hips.
Which was really a cheap and sly jest, a manipulative chance to do some finger pointin,’ really make some smarter-than-you pellucid observations – accurate & useless. The hit-hard truth that’s hard to argue after-the-fact, and people who don’t notice the moment really enjoy talk like that.
She was scared, as we all were, multiplying thoughts of twisted ends type of terror, the insecure fears that are easier to express with cruel kick-you-while-your down composition. It’s a solid move, divert the self from coming to terms with its own reckless terror that it can’t control the countless ways our hearts don’t pump another day.
Keep calm – that horse shit is for grizzly bears, alligators, and Great White Sharks, the apex predators that are only here to feed the hunger of their needs and keep eco-systems in check. For the rest of us, it’s do your damn best, at the heart busting end, those terrifying moments when death breathes warm and close, down the back of your neck.
The Mass-hole (person from Massachusetts) looked like I did at Red – big eyes that cringed with fear.
Nightmares become true, out on the abyss. There are things under the dingy water that slithered up from hell and bide their time.
Red stared in forlorn silence…he had that look like overboard held better chances.
Fire Red Leaves Ride the Fall’s Wind
Deep night. Worn wood edges and the ambient glow of soft neon light. Outside the saloon door, flapping like swim fins on your feet, the darkness and sorrow wait for me like failure and tomorrow.
I put it off – snicker-a-huff, to myself, and order another beer, and wash it down with a scoff.
2 AM – it’s gettin’ tight. The bartender asks, “How we doin’? Ya had some b’fore ya got here, eh, you gonna make it home, alright?”
His blurry face in the bleary haze, and I was slippin’ farther down the tube. I felt born to lose, but I could handle these familiar, lone-lopin’ streets, full of people with mouths, only good for their own chew.
I had to thank God, for the idea-zang, he shot the man, who built the first cave-like-dive – that guy don’t get enough credit, and he’d be proud that it took off like a viral sensation – stools and the degree of neon that bounces off of decorations from the 80’s, explains the area of town where people drink the fire.
“Totally – long-shots are hard to navigate when you’re wobbly, but goals require discipline…that’s why perseverance is crucial,” I said.
His eyes looked confused – just what I aimed for. “Of course, blackouts increase difficulty, but, lil secret, between you and me, gals: the stiffer the rip, the mightier the grit, and the louder the hoots can get – we’re alive! So, let’s all raise a glass before we die.”
The barman’s glare indicated he concealed a tool to inflict brutality “Oh yeah, buddy, ya boozin’ through a marathon, huh?”
I killed the beer-bottle. Asked for another, “secrets ain’t free,” I murmured. He moved slow, reluctant to replace the Bud-heavy bottle, but he did: drunk wrecks aren’t eloquent, so this drunk is a wreck, but he’s got his spirit in check. I was loose as a goose, but I had control, and it seemed to placate my stool-end hassle.
I didn’t appreciate his pace, so, once he set the bottle down, I paid him and let him have it.
“Perseverance – grit to pursue hopes that you should quit.”
He got ugly – another blue-collar brain, burned and blundered. Stuck in ways that couldn’t learn anymore.
“Whatever, buddy! You got 10 minutes – then you gotta get a move on,” spat the mean & stern side of the booze hoarder.
He returned to his neon routine and the quizzical regulars at the corner end of the bar. He gesticulated that there was a loon on the other end.
I drank swift with the allotted amount of constricted minutes – I didn’t like their smug stares at me, like I was an escaped zoo-creature. “Gutless!” I yelled, “none of ya got the guts to go nuts, and that’s why your faces are ugly cages of lassoed rage!
I despised their smugness that judged my brand of bizarre behavior. I smashed the remainder of my bottles’ guts, the exit near, and obstructively clear. I quick-flipped the bottle, so the drink-hole was down, and hurled it at the liquor brands lined up like a firing line in front of the walled mirror.
It shattered like fire red leaves ride the Fall’s wind.
I can’t say how they reacted. I was out the door in a hot flash of a get-somewhere-else dash. I haven’t been back. I wander the darkness on the flatlands of neon, like the invisibility of glass traps the wayward wiggles of a dazzling fish.
Brave Dreams & Dive-Bar Stew
Bar edge brutality in the depths of last night’s werewolf transformation into a new, ugly morning. I slow sip it, but not all the time, ya know, although tonight felt smoother than all those other ones that I can barely remember.
Reggie and Julio had slippin’ fingers and were losin’ to gravity on the stool cushions. I knew tomorrow was goin’ to feel rougher than it should. But gripin’ over bad decisions never serves a present mind, any good.
‘How ’bouts we call it, tonight, dudes, I’m tryin’ to make the line-up, in the AM, whaddaya say?’ Trey proposed, he’s a goofy-footer; not like surf style stance, but rather, he spent more time swimmin’ after his board than slidin’ the cruise-side of a wave face – just gettin’ out in the water, all gloss and glisten, beats the long stare from the surface of the sand, where the beach-bottoms are sittin’ and wishin’ they’d made tubular decisions.
Julio, yucked a few hiccups, shades on, and his moral compass ran true, so I sent him out, and pinned an arrival time note to the collar of his flamboyant shirt – he always makes it home to an angry and frantic girlfriend, but he swears she’s sweet – I bet, he’s got a zen-masters control on the long-side of bar-edge hours, and all the yappin’ he’s missin.’
I swung back into the deserted barroom like a Wednesday after a 3-day, & 3-stage, dj & beats, festival. It was completely devoid of a purpose to drink, but Reggie’s always thirstier than the amount of booze on hand.
Bar-Top obscene: Reggie was mutterin’ more drool than eloquence, and Trey started to pop knuckles trained to smash men with brave dreams.
After 4-hours, and a few extra minutes of snooze, I’d be carvin’ waves like Thanksgivin’ Americans do. However, at the brevity of the instant, I could barely see if it was one chair at a table or two…I heimliched my gut, lost my air, but kept the poo…our stupidity keeps the world from coming unglued.
I popped, surf-style, to my feet, and they babbled loudly. Reggie’s heels staggered, Trey laid in tersely; I side-stepped everything that wasn’t there and collided with every stationary thing that couldn’t move.
Finally, I got to where they were, and heard the point of their jabbering, their boil, the place & time where truth meets gumption: dive-bar stew.
‘You don’t know nothin,’ let me tell ya, that ain’t good; the color is glum…just like yu’re dumb…give me a drink, c’mon, be cooler than that painting, behind ya,’ Reggie slathered, X’s over eyes, and Trey had the look of a man making a decision between satisfaction, and the inconvenience of fist-skin, splintered by teeth.
‘Hey, hey, bro-migos…what are we talkin’ about…let’s not get all twisted and constricted like a man-eating jungle snake,’ I said, ‘Trey, hey, look at me; ole Reg-dawg is a live, drunken-wire, rambler, and Reggie, anybody can judge the quality of good in anything…take class for instance, Ima drunk who got’s-it, and you the kind that ain’t.’
They had perplexed stares, and I stumbled on a heavy piece of neon glare. ‘Shut the fuck up, Nico,’ Trey spat – I put my hands up, properly tripped into a chair and did just that.
‘Reggie!’ Trey shouted – it perked my eyes straight, ‘I suggest you move to the door, because if I come around this bar, your head will have a dent.’
Ole Reg-dawg had spectacular balance for a boogieboarding, dick-draggin’ son-of-a-gun, holdin’ his feet – I kept thinking: these seedy nights are gettin’ bleak.
I knew I needed to get up, get Reggie, but my legs were curled and bent, and, well, it was his face that would get a dent. So, I sat and watched the show. Trey made moves, and Reggie was braver than this moment required him too. ‘Stop!’ Reggie blurted like a loud fart that gets away from clenched cheeks.
We all froze. Then, Reggie said, ‘the freest painting is the literary word; because one sentence can elucidate a million images that are beautifully different.’
My brain barely worked. However, Reggie was poignant, for what I thought was, at least, worth one more beer and a shot – the cool side of humanity would prevail.
Trey got loose because any drunk talkin’ like that must have his conscience semi or pretty close to intact. I figured the same and got my slatternly skull, up on top of goopy feet. Took my hands and banged on my cheeks, got equilibrium steady, and slid like shaky ice-skates to the door – I’d probably give my return, at least a week.
Trey, assumed Reggie would do the same, as did I, and I turned and said, ‘Reggie…where we goin’?’
He stared at Trey, and sputtered, ‘too bad…ya only think ’bout stupid things…stupider than your mother.’ I cringed in the light flap of the saloon’s seedy door.
Reggie wore an eye-patch for a week, he’s got vertigo, and his wife tells me his left nostril whistles when he snores, and he doesn’t like the beach-side dive scene anymore.
Exhausted Legs & Churned Crazed
Glitz, glamour and ruffled madness…things get congested and detested under the smog laced cloak of drowned starlight over L.A. It gets soaked in sunshine and stalked with the grimmest grins on the coastal side of the livin-grind.
Those wide limits make vehicles seem slow in a fast city – wide shoots deep, feet need sleep and seeing the scenes that mean anything to hearts that beat at the speed of inches, get crinkled and confused, burned skin and rattled minds, across the city of angels with an axe to grind. Human brains don’t react well to the trapped turtle pace of heavy traffic.
After your first run through L.A., you learn that ya don’t need to venture far from the spot you stay at when you visit. It’s one of those things you won’t get until you learn it the hard way: the parties start too late, and the bars close too early.
The frenzy reverberates the span of the spine, molecules of pumped insanity, and everybody is tryin’ to get nowhere in a hot rush of a hurry. Always busy, always grid-locked, and the grit gets melted by the sun – one of those rarely true, seaside cities: where you can barely see the beach.
One of them places that thrives on contradictions. All cities have a cadence, and L.A. ain’t no different – it’s a dart-game city, portrayed as bulls-eye precision, like the boasted skills of a bar-edge burn-out, who omits the caveat of better days – he’ll talk slick, overly confident, and he’ll wager beers on dart-board aimed throws, but the shakes from his dry booze crazed bones can’t hold his dick straight enough to nail the water in the bowl.
You’ll find a sheen vapid dazzle on the streets, every form of light, twinkles pretty. It shines bright, it shimmers from a balcony view – radiant paloma straw, sippin’ kind of city. I’ve been on rooftops in Hollywood and drained beer bottles, all the way to last call, at the Frolic Room –cave style holes of the neon grime, a stool fight against the weight of humanity.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m haunted by that major motion city. One year, when I was more beast than bro-migo, the November snows came cold to the deep north state, and these chill-stricken bones evolved from iguana skin – I need warm, sunny air or I get nasty like wakin’ up from hibernation, ya don’t fuck with a hungry grizzly bear.
I didn’t wanna drive a vehicle south, and blow past everything worth gawkin’ at – been there, done that. I had just spent a 6-months of labor, out in the wilderness, for the Forest Service; learnin’ how to live like a bear with the caveat of carrying tools and a house on my back.
When I arrived at a solution to peel off my furry hide and get back to flesh that stands upright – hell, I might even start to feel human, again…I swung up on a steel-frame and cruised the golden lanes.
I was teratosis man meat on the downhill slide of my twenties and the only logical move was to pedal a velocipede all the way down, out of the Sacramento flatland valley, over the East Bay Hills, and make the finish line, at some point – exhausted legs & churned crazed – which was on the sand of a border town beach in America’s Finest city.
You guessed it: a task that would be tough on my taint.
I thought gettin’ to the coast, just south of Santa Cruz, would be an easy two-day roll, which turned into a rough lesson in navigational judgment – it took a week and a half, and lots of tire-tubes.
At last, I hit Highway 1 South, and the view off the handlebars looked like the warped beauty you see after ingesting a heavy dose of magic mushrooms. The jagged cliffs of the golden state, shrouded by ancient, red bark trees like organic skyscrapers.
Hot damn, it’s sublime, and makes the transition from wildland, trail-freak to urbane stud that fits the function of the societal mold.
I was gettin’ cave-man trim on the sweat fueled ramble – sleeping bags are good for the soul. I was suckin a beer-bottle, and chompin’ on a gas-station burrito, and anybody that caught a glimpse of me would have mistaken me for a man from a different time-period in Encino – sportin’ a damn fine, and drive your eyes blind, Hawaiian shirt.
Curbside chillin’ in Guadalupe, CA, a trio of bro-migos from Oregon crossed my path. They invited me to ride with them, but they’d be done in L.A.
“Let’s cruise,” shootin’ a shaka hand signal.
Rides cruise as they do, and on the move, you eventually get where you need to. We hit the slitherin’ sidewalk, on the shine side of a sunny day, and floated the sand on the cement pathway in Venice beach.
We stopped to have a boardwalk beer and celebrate miles that chapped our rears – a woman operating a segue, mesmerized by the ocean’s hypnotic beauty, drove straight on a turn, and to this day, she still eats sand.
We sat on the wall of the boardwalk and basked in the last sips of proud sorrow that follows the end of any crew’s journey.
“Alright, Nico, enjoy the rest of the miles on your way to San Diego, we’re off,” Kyle, the leader of the Oregonian pack, said to me.
We exchanged hugs, numbers, and we’ve never communicated since, and I think some moments are best left where they were – just a reflective fragment in frozen time.
So, on those dead days in your lost mind, when the sky is gray and the sun won’t shine, and everything seems like it’s fallin’ behind, and you find yourself confused on the losin’ end of the livin-grind, you know you had (probably still do) the guts to go nuts, cut the cord loose, and fall free on the wild-side of the abyss; brave face mania on a wild roam learns the secret truths for celestial heart-beats and the prescient trickle in the sands of time.
I straggled the difficult maze of the jam-packed streets in L.A. – even avoided the coroners scrape of becoming a man-meat pancake. On the roll to destiny, you lose the fear that plagues the average grade of humanity, and the risk-it-all mentality becomes the only way to survive and endure reality.
The bike-lanes were slim, or non-existent; nails, spikes, hunks of debris – I felt like I was riding through a landfill. I slid into Long Beach and POP!
Imploded spokes and another fuckin’ flat – hadn’t had one since the first day when I had 9, consecutively, now how ‘bout that. I hunted down a bike shop near Long-Beach State.
It took three hours, and the sunset was about to tip the fade, so I called Sheezer, down in Daygo. “Hola, chill-migo,” he said to me, “when ya cruisin’ into town?”
“Well, I’m delayed, another flat, do we know anybody in the upper recesses of the So-Cal zone…somebody that could lend me a floor to snooze on, I’m so close, I’m almost at the homestretch,” I said.
“Yeah, bro, here’s Rugo’s number – give him a call, he should be able to help ya out, he’s in the O.C.,” Sheezer said, and hung up.
I hit the buttons, and the phone started to ring – I hadn’t seen the chud in a handful of years.
“Hola, Skuzz-migo,” Rugo growled, we chatted, and I explained my predicament, and he said, “sure thing, you can crash with me at Grand-ma’s house.”
“I’m on the roll,” I said, and blasted into the bike shop to inspect the repairs. The fire-apple red Fuji looked as if she could roll the whole Baja Lane to Cabo San Lucas.
“Thanks,” I said to the repair man, “also, how far is Huntington Beach?”
“Ehhh,” his cranium made calculations, “probably like an hour, or like, eh, 45 minutes, if ya pedal fast.”
“Copy that – full speed and God’s got a handle on the rest of what I need,” I said, and ripped off into the blast of a fluorescent pink haze of another day’s dying sun.
The wind wasn’t on my side, but I wasn’t lettin’ that stop my glide. I cruised into Surf City, straight-shootin’ to the location that Rugo had sent me. A bar in a strip mall, across from the pier, where men slid the tubes that changed with the tidal drag by the moon.
I walked in with my bike, saddle bags attached, and a week of stink like a cowboy on a cattle drive. Rugo sat in the patio section with a group of SoCal brutes & babes – 7 empty bottles of champagne, the tepid boil of a blackout night became clear in the dark descended beach-town, illuminated by streetlights
“El-Rugo!” I hollered and hit a chill skid of a break stop – which, admittedly, would’ve been cooler if I was twelve on BMX wheels; the saddlebags are heavy, and mistakes made on cement take ankle skin clean off.
He beamed a solid jaw-bone smile, like Gaston if he surfed; his shoulders were as big as my head, and I think he subsisted off creatine burritos.
“Oh, Skuzz-a-rito! You made it brah…welcome to the beach-side mayhem, do we gotta night for you,” he said in that way that immediately amped my wild-hair voltage like a fiend that finds a fresh gram-bag on a stroll.
We crushed some drinks, disassembled my bike, and crammed it into his SUV like a storage locker. We lightened our plight with rips from a few jazz-cigarettes, and the whole scene sparkled like neon dreams.
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About
Nicholas Viglietti is a writer from Sacramento, CA. After Katrina ravaged the gulf coast, he rebuilt homes there for 2 years. Up in Mon-tucky, he cut trails in the wilderness. He pedaled from Sac-town to S.D. He’s a seventh-life party-hack, attempting to rip chill lines in the madness.
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