One Eyed Scuba Diving Bank Robber Magician

A one eyed scuba diver uses magic to rob banks.

                     Just as the clock struck 12 on new years, an 11 year old boy shot his gun to the sky. He got arrested and put into an adoption home. His name was Richie, and the cops knew him well. I did too, I was his teacher for four years.  In second grade, he asked a janitor at the school he was attending if he could run into class to grab a jacket he forgot.  After the janitor welcomed him in, he took off his shoes to enforce quiet footsteps and tip toed into his teacher's office and picked the lock open to a folder bin with a paper clip in his pocket. He grabbed the answers to the final exam and slipped them into his book. Leaving a folded paper in the lock, he ran around the corner of the building and jotted the answers to the test down on a piece of paper. As he opened the door to put the answers back, the alarm went off through out the whole school. Richie dropped the folded paper, walked around the corner and said thanks to the janitor. 

                         The next day the teacher passed out the test. Richie realized he grabbed the answers to the wrong test. He thought for 15 minutes and walked to the front of the class as if he was turning his exam in. Instead he pushed everyone else test off the table.  He bent over out of sight from the teacher, grabbed someone else and went back to his desk and copied all the answers onto his own.  He looked at the name of the test and realized instead of grabbing the smartest kid in the classes test, which he had planned to do in order to pass, he grabbed Belmont’s.  Belmont was a short young kid with the face of a sponge, he had a certain type of disease where he thought the whole world was after him. He acted as if flies were above him almost eternally.  His answers to the test surely would not do any good. 

                               The hour passed and the class was empty. He asked the teacher if he could stay after class to finish his test. The teacher accepted. “Just lock the door when you leave, Richie”.  As the teacher left Richie went onto Miss Brunswick’s computer and hacked into the students grades. He changed his grade from an F to a slight but barely believable A-.  This is how Richie made it through school.  A constant pressure of living like a car going back and forth over the side of a cliff.

                               When Richie went to a toy store with his parents, he would take the toy out of the box and walk out the front door acting as if it was his own and would cry if someone would try to take his toy.  He had new toy's in his room every week.  

One day, the teacher asked Richie what he wanted to be when he grew up. He replied “an orca whale”.  “An orca whale?'” the teacher asked.  “Yes, I am a scuba diver and I have always wanted to be an orca whale.” I later asked him after class and he said  “I actually want to be a bank robber, like Bonnie and Clyde, on the run at all times with a beautiful girl and traveling. I've always been able to think of ways to not get caught.  Fool proof plans completely mapped out to where it would be as if I just disappeared with 15, 000 dollars.  The cops would ask where I was and I’d be long gone in Texas with money flying out the passenger seat.  The girl staring at me the whole time while I laughed and drank bourbon with slicked back hair and cool shades.  I would turn to her and say “Money is worthless, wasting is spending, receiving is nothing less dear then a deer so sincere in perilous thought.” and then head down the coast to a brighter destination.  And it was true, If one was to glance over at Richie in the middle of class, one would most likely find Richie's head down, locked away in his folder discovering and making new blue prints for different ideas he had on a daily basis.

4:28 pm. April 6, 1968.  

I walked down 21rst street to grab a Philly cheese steak sandwich.  I went over ideas I had for restaurant names such as Pasta-billities or Dishin' in Pasta Bowl, an Italian joint where the waiter would come from the ceiling with an elevator chain to take your order.  The place was loosely based off my favorite movie Mission Impossible.  It was a sunny day, a bit windy.  I was right outside the aquarium pondering on my life.  As the trees blew a hot gaze hit me.  One of those undeniably hot heats that could only be found in Hawaii near the shore.  I just woke up from sleeping in my car and sat on a bench and watched the soccer game on the field down below.  Some nights i'll decide to wake up early and have the most absurd day ever and at the end of the day I tell myself “It'd better to sleep in tomorrow.”  The heat came and went.  I was tired from lack of sleep.  I took a girl to prom the night before and took her to a concert instead of prom.  I got too drunk.  Now I’m too hungover.  

I sparked up a cigarette and headed to i hop.  On the way I called my girl for the 4^th time.  Still no answer.  She must still be mad about last night.  I was suffering from call-back anxiety and OCD.  Recently I lost an uncle to pills, a friend to suicide, another friend to the waves and another one to falling off a building. I wont forget loosing one of my fellow scuba diving teachers.  My passion was scuba diving, I knew I would never see an alien in space but I might have a shot of seeing one in the ocean.  We were 70 feet under water in a cave,  he gave me no notice of his air tank being out.  He died right there petting a turtle.  Consider it an underwater suicide.  He said he always wanted to die with the fishes, never thought he’d take his own life for it.  He was completely in debt, but then again, so was I.  He couldn’t handle the pressures of his wife and kids, seeing them starve with no money.  Poor sucker never got to say said goodbye.

I sat down and ordered a coffee.  The waitress was cute so I asked her for her number.  The last 4 numbers were the same as my girlfriends, soon to be ex, what a coincidence I thought.  The waitress wrote on the bill to call her soon.  I thought of how anyone could get a phone number, it's what happens when you call is what matters.

ASSSS the day got old as it always does and always seems to do without my concern, I listened to the noise outside as the scarlet lit sun drifted under the line of the oceans long tide, a line that runs too long, so long its impossible to reach the end.  I realized it now that my life was not meant to be lived happily ever after.  Maybe happily ever f*****g p***y that I pay good money for, but not happily ever after. 

I went home and slept off the burden of feeling the way I did.

When I woke up I got a call the second I woke up, as if I woke up on time.  “He l-l-lllo” I said in a groggy morning tone voice.  “Son, got bad news for ya'” the voice said rather concerned.  “Alright, hold on one second”.  I figured if it was bad news I might as well get up and make a cup of black coffee.  I stretched and put a bagel in the toaster.  I then meditated for a couple minutes.  Then I took a 15 minute shower and combed my hair and brushed my teeth.  Then I watched the news for 30 minutes and laughed at all the stories.  I picked the phone up “alright...hit me” I said with an inward smirk unto my imagination.  I figured it couldn’t be too bad, heck, ive been through so much in the past, what could go wrong?

“Well boy...this is the state sheriff, i don’t know how to tell you this...”.

“Well?..”

“Last night, both of your parents were involved in a murder.” he said.

“Involved? Are they OK?” I asked.

“I'm afraid not.”

I sat in silence for a few seconds and pictured my house on fire.  All possessions torched and nothing I could do about it.  I realized how I've known these two loving figures my whole life and that this was the end of it.  I never cried before but this time a tear surfaced my cheek and I slapped it like a fly.  I hustled my organs together and asked “How?”.  I was very shook up.

He told me “Well, your pa was having sex with a hooker he ordered when your ma walked in on him.  Turns out your old man could never last long in the sack and shot out his slippery seed right out onto the ground.  As your ma walked into the bedroom about to look up at her husband married 24 years f*****g another woman, she slipped on the semen and hit her head on the ground.  She died right there. Your pa went to go help her but it was too late. It was at this time the hooker took the vase and smacked it over your pa's head.  Turned out she was looking to rob the old man.  She took the cash and split, leaving your parents side by side, dead right there on the ground. Dead cold, on the ground like Romeo and Juliet.  They did not catch the hooker...Bunny Rogers I think her name was.  Must of split to Mexico or something.”

I realized at this point that I was in charge now and was going to have to provide for my lonely self.  You see my dad was a gun roamer, an author and a liar.  He bought me my 76 mustang, white with an aqua bottom.  He let me drive it when I was 13.  I used to drive to the drive-in movies with it.

I took the the mustang to the scene of the crime where I must oblige, I was eerie to arrive.  As I arrived 4 young girls with fake bunny ears were playing with cylinder pipes in the middle of the street.  As I finished making the corner they all stared at me with open eyes.  They stopped the little game they were playing and they stared. Stared cold straight into my soul.  As if they saw my future and could save it.  I pressed on the brakes and stopped. Before I knew it they were gone.  Like rabbits, they dispersed, ears on their head, and ran into the bushes behind them.  In almost a second, all four of them were gone.

I carried on and saw the investigators truck ahead at the end of the cold a sac.  They told me both were dead when they arrived and if they found Bunny Rogers they would tell me immediately.  I paused and took a deep breathe and my eyes became teary and weary then dry.  That was it.  From the time I was born these two people I was staring in the eyes raised me from as far back as I can remember were gone.  That was all the time they were gonna have in my life, that was the end of them raising me.  Yet, it did not feel as if they were gone.  A certain kind of denial that would prosper in my memory, curl up in my brain and make it home like a chinchilla in the dirt.  Like a mongoose bringing a snake back to its family after it murdered it and teared it apart for its kids to feed on, like a sinking boat after a ship wreck when the boat lays on the bottom of the sea floor and stays there for the rest of eternity.  

As I walked back to the car, all four girls were in the car.  I must have left keys in the ignition and my eyes in the sky.  They all looked at me at once with those sullen, sunken, swollen, stinking, blood clotted, demon eyes.  I tried to catch them but they floored the engine and a blink later, they drove off and were gone.  I took a taxi home.

The radio was talking about how the zodiac killer had similarities with Bukowski.  How after both of them were done with their work they would disappear after.  Then they explained how Bob Dylan crashed a motorcycle and lived in the woods for 4 years.  I listened to the radio carefully as I always did as it soothed the tension of the drive through the city.  Empty city with the homeless scaring me to the point where I cant walk into Denny's.  Not with them standing out front mad on life watching every car drive by like the minute hand on a watch.  I watch as we drove by and I paid the taxi and hopped out at Yum Yum's for coffee and then walked 2 miles to the Magic Castle. 

I had a show to do on the second floor, past the organ that can play itself, through the eerie, dark hallways filled with pictures of dead magicians.  I walked around the trick door and noticed as I walked up stairs it got quiet with the door open at the end of the hallway.  Through the long dead noise hallway with at least 30 to 40 pictures on the wall.  The light from the door shun out and was gazing at the walls.  I walked on stage and peaked through the curtain to see a full audience waiting for my show. 

The announcer called my name and I walked out onto stage.  I waited for the audience to stop applauding.

“It's hard to divorce your wife after you've made her disappear, she always shows up in court.”  No one laughed...except me.  I laughed harder and it created more awkwardness amongst the crowd.  I felt I was scaring everyone so I accidentally hurried the set with this audience filled with tourist from Montana and Vegas.  A crowd of gamblers, hustlers, couples both happy and sad, parents, kids, grandparents and a couple of birds.  I always noticed the birds checking me out on stage.  I've only gotten a few numbers but no serious relationships.  I was not the talker.  Jimmy Walkley came on the speakers to introduce me and I came on stage and recited my speech and asked “May I have a member from the audience?”  More then half the audience raised their hands.  I skimmed the audience and found a beautiful bird dressed in blue.  I called her on stage in chance I could marry her later.  

“What is your name dear and where are you from my lady?”

She laughed and said “Eva and I’m from Hawaii.” 

“what do you do Eva?”

“I work for my father in Venice near the beach at a thrift store and at a crab shack off sunset.” she answered timidly.

“A crab shack huh? Well then I guess you wouldn’t mind if I pinched you.” I joked.

A few people laughed.  Many did not get it.

She paused and said “Um, go for it.”  The audience busted out in laughter, the girl had won them over.  I started to sweat.  “Eva, would you mind stepping into this beautiful hand crafted burgundy chamber so I can lock you in it...sound good, don't it?” The audience was silent.

“Um, sure I guess, as long as you let me out.” she says.  The audience once again laughed hysterically at her joke and not at mine.  In fact they laughed erratically and twice as hard as last time.  Their drunk laughter filled my ears.  She hopped in the box and I locked the door.  “This is what my wife keeps me in at home.”  No one laughed.  I then stuck 3 swords carefully placing them through the box.  The audience clapped and I took the swords out.  When I opened the box I bowed and noticed the girl had gone.  I thought fast for this was not part of the trick.  I nervously made them think it was part of the show and proceeded with a couple card tricks which consisted of simple memory recall and guesstimating.  I wrapped up the show nervously and ended by saying “Goodnight everyone, may your illusions be strong.”

I hurried backstage in a panic.  I searched the floor, the ceiling, the closets, the cracks.  I gave a look around the corner, around the back and I checked the liquor store in a heart attack.  All of a sudden, out of the damn blue, I got pushed against the wall.  I thought another mugging.  A woman's voice said “there you are.”  I looked in front of me and said “Eva?”

“Yes, it's me baby, I WANT you, I know why you called me on stage.”  she said. 

                                     “But you are not visible...” I said.  

                     She ignored me and repeated “I want you, you picked me cus you love me, right?” I was befuddled.  “I picked you because you have seen the show before, I do love you too Eva.”  

“Too bad Richie, you blew it, you wont see this gal for a long time.” 

I immediately replied “Well, you're invisible.”  Once again she ignored me and said “I'm seeing someone Rich.”

“Are they seeing you?  Cus I can't see you.”  I said half-wittingly.  She mocked “What? You're invisible, no one listens to you on stage.” Her rebuttal was true .  I disappointingly agreed. I remembered this dame from a long night in Venice.  I heard music from down the street so I walked in that direction.  I walked by her while she was on the corner of a road with one street light on her.  I turned around 2 minutes after and decided to go talk to her.  She said she was a psychic from Texas and she was 27 years old.  I brought her around to the hostel and drank with her on the beach.  She was a crazy gal with a crazy smile.  She would ask homeless people on the side of the street for weed and became friends with all of them.  They all knew her by her first name.  It seemed like they were helping out this small Texan lady cus of her sweetness and innocent humor.  We smoked weed in my car and she started to cry, she heard noises and thought ghost were talking to her.  She would whisper in the corner to herself.  I was scared but I wanted to help the poor girl.  Although I did try ditching her a couple times.  She needed a place to crash so I drove her 30 minutes to my parents house and we kissed all night.  As we were kissing she started to cry and I laid next to her and she told me she was raped by her ex boyfriend and that he used to hit her.  I told her he was thousands of miles away and that she was safe with me.  She said thanks and she knew she'd meet a nice California boy like me.  We woke up the next morning and she read my palms.  She said my favorite food was chicken, my favorite color was red, I was going to be a construction worker when I grew up and that I would have two wives when I grew up.  Either I could keep the first wife or divorce her for another, it was my choice.  She also told me the devil thought I was the s**t.  I wasn't sure where she was getting all this from but I did make chicken nuggets that morning and the color of my car was red.  I went shopping with her and went to get her car fixed.  She was getting ripped off so I left her at the car dealer so I didn't have to deal with it anymore.  The last thing I knew about her was that she lived in the same house Jim Morrison lived in.  I'll miss her as I miss every girl I encounter.

                         I took a very deep breath at that moment.  I heard her voice say “Goodbye Rich,  and may all your travels prove you a man and shall you swimmingly find me at the end of your journeys and I will appear at your wedding if you seem worthy. Goodbye Richie, goodbye.”  I felt her hands leave me chest.  “So you know you're invisible? Eva?” She was gone.  That was the last time I would see her, and I did not even see her.  It was like she was gone before she even left.

I got straight on the bus and headed home on Sunset.  I closed my eyes and went straight into a dream.  In the dream my father was looking out the back window gazing at the tranquil back yard that seemed brighter then usual. Although he wasn’t bright.  He was just a silhouette.  It seemed early in the morning as if he was gazing and pondering “How old am I?”, “How did I get here?”, “How many more years do I have to live?”.  I wondered if I too were gonna have these same thoughts when I grew older.  I quickly veered left through a vortex as if I got pushed.  Suddenly I was a fish in the middle of the ocean, no one to talk to, all by myself.  The brain was mine, the body's a fish.  Then I became a bird floating out of the water and drifting over the sea.  As free as can be.  After that I became a dog, a pet in a family, watching the family have dinner.  Sunken face I knew something was missing. What was it? 

I woke up and went to sleep inside my apartment.

The next morning I woke up and said bye to my friend on the couch.  The room smelled of old socks and cheese.  I played a quick game of Jenga by me lonely.  I took  a tab of acid in my pocket and figured out the key to Jenga.  Mathematically, the game was like anything else.  Take the one piece that will leave the rest balanced.  I figured out a lot this way.  Thinking about it first. Not hard, not long.  Just wait and let it work itself out.  It was 5 in the morning and so was I.  I turned off Texas Chainsaw Massacre playing on the TV.  Gosh I thought to myself.  I looked at a poster of my favorite actress., Faye Dunaway has the face of an angel.  She must be the prettiest thing I have ever seen.  An a*s I could fill so hard and penetrate hard till...early...early morning.  I went across the street, to a hotel, and sneaked by the lobby and went in the jacuzzi.  All I had to do was wave to the lobbyist as if I was staying there. I took an apple and a coffee from the front desk.  I couldn’t feel the temperature of the pool or jacuzzi but it felt nice.  It was a good sign that the acid had kicked in.  The bubbles felt like kitty paws.  I hopped in the pool and started doing front flips and laughing.  When I got out the trees started transforming, performing and moving in swift motion. I saw the trees moving right in front of me.  As I sat in he jacuzzi I watched the early 5 o clock morning traffic and thought of the human race as monkeys.  Monkeys go “ooh, ooh, hah, ooh, ooh, hah.  Ooh, ooh ahhhh. Ooh...Ooh, ooh ahh.”  Where humans go “Oh, oh...ah...ooh, eh? hm...mmmm...oh.”  

                   There's bad monkeys and good monkeys.  I got out and walked into a warehouse.  It was loud and dark.  I got to the top and entered a large party with a band playing.  A girl hugged me and told me “you have a purpose.”  She was nice looking so I had to believe her.  “I do.”  

                          She slipped me ecstasy and poured me a glass of whiskey.  I walked by two gay men in clown outfits kissing passionately.  She told me “they get tired of vagina.”  I replied “Oh, they are not tired of the penis they were born with? whats wrong with them.”  She laughed and went away.  She got her friend and they both started questioning me.  She wanted me to repeat what I said.  I had to piss so I pulled my jacket over the cup and pissed in the cup without them knowing.  The cup started overflowing so I excused myself to the bathroom.  I pissed and s**t in the toilet a terrible, rancid smell.  The whiskey, acid and ecstasy were not mixing well in my stomach.  I finished and the toilet started overflowing.  I ran out and saw the water creep out onto the floor in the warehouse.  Everyone started pacing back and forth in front of my eyes.  Their hurrying bodies trailed across my pupils which were big at the time.  The amps and wires all bolted electricity and the bassist went into shock.  I ran out into the streets.  Passed the carousel and went home.

I smoked a cigarette on the balcony and started laughing.  It started getting late so I went to sleep.

I will surely never miss another chance to swim in mystery.

                9/6/70 I woke up in Malibu and I read a page of Rimbaud and thought what beheld my future.  I was outside on a cliff halfway leaning on a broken cot.  I pushed burning amber from the fire the night before under the cot for warmth.  How the warmth of the amber retreats all worries.  I ended up staying up and watching the rest of the sunrise 2 hours before but I could slightly remember what happened after.  I walked down to broad beach.  It felt as if I was in Hawaii again with the crystal clear water.  I stopped by the Trancas market to steal some chicken.  Sean William Scott was behind me in line with a tribal tattoo.  I went outside to smoke a cigarette.  The week before I had slept in a graveyard, rode the rails and hitch hiked to Arizona.  I picked up the newspaper and I felt the press was compulsive and obsessive and that anything popular and easily accessible was not good for me, that’s why I reached out for something more.

Anger falls in the water, wets its wing, cant fly for awhile, one of those things.  Leaves me spending my downtime singing.  What I needed was much bigger then the benevolent, ignorant, embellished, shambled public that surrounded my very keen open sense of of youth and engagement with the imperial world that surrounded me.

I should have listened to my woman a long time ago.  A man should not act desperate though, it is illogical and does no good for himself or anyone else.  I demanded a new respect, for respect was the most important aspect I could consider.  Giving to the world.  Everyday was going to start as good as it ends.  Any bad I was going to go through is going to be caused by myself.  I need to travel alone.  I drove by the Beverly Hills hotel at 6 am., stole some wine and fell asleep in a massage parlor.  I drank tea and listened to Tom Waits.  I drew a picture and talked to a nice Thailand lady and an English model.  She told me she slept with the actor on the wall.  I nodded and listened to her sad sappy story of her getting old.  She said she used to go to the guys house every week and she was one of his many girlfriends.  Being inside was nothing compared to being outside.  All the beauty was behind me.  If I was to stay inside id surely go crazy, I ran out of the building.  Too much energy, engines eventually blow up.  So did I.

“Sleep, all the pain will be gone, sleep” I kept saying to myself.  I was in dire need of a power nap.  Instead I met with my friend Happy Walter on Lincoln.  We walked to Venice and he taught me yoga on the beach.  I thought it would help my condition and it kind of did.  He told me “the moon is the pacific ocean, in space its night all the time.” 

“Thanks Happy, I love astronomy.  Something in me needs to get out.”

He said “eventually it will Richie  Try seeing things as they truly are.  Live the first half of your life, throw the rest away.  When something good and memorable happens, try closing your eyes and being enthusiastic about it.  These are the moments we live for.  Those special ones, you know them.  Discipline is a sign of intelligence.” I listened but told him about my parents.  “When my parents died, my discipline went straight out the door.”

“Be alive Richie, go travel somewhere because you want to.  Get angry once and all your karma is gone. Do not get angry at your feelings Rich”  I agreed and nodded and stared out at the river.  The sun was setting.  I was not sure what I was feeling but I need to pin point it.  As I stared I saw a steamboat come out from the distant.  There was a trumpet playing that sounded like God's voice.  It drifted by slowly and I could not believe the noise I was hearing.  I listened attentively.  I wanted to be on the boat with its bright New Orleans lights.

“Be the leader of the pack Richie, be willing to emote. LIVE.  I learned Life is more important then show business.  Don't let people bother you from whats really important.” he said.

“Ya, people bug every bone in my body from collar to toe, from cellar to door.”

“Abilene, Abilene, woman from there don’t treat you mean, in poor old town Abilene.”  Happy said.  

             I turned on some Balinese folk dance, then some Smithsonian of negro field hollers on my speakers and walked to sit in a cafe.  I watched the fire crackle and smoked a cigarette.  I remember driving home as drunk as an upside down cow listening to Tex Ritter watching the sun rise.  I my 1960 Cadillac.  “Whatever you bring home is what we will live off of.” my girl would say to me before hours upon getting lost in LA.  Beauty, brightness, bravery and brains.  She had it all, all four of the necessary B's.  Who needs security when you have freedom?  Drunk fools, little children and dogs while i'd read the local newspaper and cut out weird stories while shed cook spaghetti.  We had sex in every corner of the room.  I loved her to death.  “Where have you been?” she'd always ask when I got back to our ram shack apartment in Santa Monica.  Id always reply “stuck in traffic.”  Shed never reply.

The sins of the father will be visited upon the son I remembered.  It sure seemed like that after pa died.

I'm not fighting for justice, I ain’t fighting for freedom, I'm fighting for my life.  It was all up to me to support myself.  Living in my car didn’t seem so bad.  My girl would always ask me “Why don’t you stay home now that you’re safe?”  

“Because I've got buddies over there, and they need me.”  I would reply talking about the other side of town. 

                        In the end, its you, your buddies, and your rifle.  That's what life was all about for me.  I turned up the music,  it was like electric sugar.  I felt in the moment, with nothing botherin'.  I loved the sound of blues music.  It feels like everyone’s either going or gone.  I wanted to believe in the mercy of the world.  There's a battle between light and dark and I wondered sometimes if the dark has one more spear, when the next time I get the ride of the dark creeping up on me like a black widow in the dark hanging from its web.  When you do something good, it goes into account  and other folks can write checks against it.  It was time to stop crying and go out there and do some good.

Carnivals, Mariachis, mystics and music, buried treasure, it was all out there waiting for me.  It was that or life in jail, and I could not handle that at the moment.

I head into the Wash House.  One of the oldest Inn's in CA.  The crazy homeless man outside was preaching.  “Horse face Ethel!  One-eyed Myra in her Roy Orbison T-shirt bottle-feeding an orangutang named Tripod.  Yodeling Elaine, the queen of the air with the tiny buddy of spittle around her nostril a little rusty tear, over by the frozen tractor.  Poodle Murphy, the girl from Funeral Wells knife act who was strapped to the spinning board.  Damn good address for a rat.  Let me live. Let me stay alive. Let me eat.  No woman, that’s fine God.  Just let me live.  Ill do anything! I'm on my knees!”

I walked into the lobby and called her room.  She said I couldn’t come in but I told her I was outside her room.  She came out and hopped in the car.  We headed down on a Tuesday warm evening to the Manhattan Club in Tijuana.  “Listen Rosie....you know I love you.  Both of my parents are dead and I need a place to stay.”  I told her the news earlier on the phone.

“Why don't you stay at your house?” She asked.

“If there’s love in the house, its a place for sure.  Without love...it ain’t nothing but a ram shack house where nobody lives.  I need companionship...Plus I cant afford it anymore.”  

She said “Richie, you have been whipped by the forces inside of you.  There ain’t nothing left to do but hold on.  Hold on baby.  Hold on.  Ill be right by your side.”  Yes, that was Rosie, shows you what you already know and makes you a believer.  “I think youre the most adorable, cute, funniest, nicest person put on earth.”  The way we see thing, also helps us hear things.

“I think I'm going to rob a bank Rosie.  Technique is important....emotional telegraphy and truth also.  How many notes or how fast you get there don’t matter.  You have to open up, receive, let it come to you.  Thinking too much?  Feel like it block in your head? I don’t let that happen.  Ill use the power of illusion and magic.  Quicker or slower or deeper, If I talk about it beforehand,m ill do what I've been talking about instead of letting it come to me.  The poor soldier gets those love sick proletarian blues.  Truck drivers get these open highway lonely middle of nowhere “potluck” blues.  I'm gonna get green paper and a reputation worth while that would take any normal man years to receive. 

“How? How are you gonna get away with this?” she screamed trying to make me come to my senses.

“Ill sleep in graveyards, sympathize with vets, become a dog,  hide in bars, dime stores, carnivals.  It'll be like a bunch of b-movie Hollywood movie scenarios.  Like Clint Eastwood out in the open.  Ill start with my body first, then let other things come to me.  If I get tossed into the tank by bored cops then ill escape.  I've got no self interest and nothing to loose.  Heck, there's no such thing as failure in my case and as I'm concerned.  I was taught to do things for others only. Ill buy  a house in New Orleans, just you and me.  Everything just takes 3 steps...3 steps, that's it.  You wont have to ever work again.”

Time is not my friend anymore, I must risk something that matters.  I must loose everything to gain anything.

Rosie let me into her apartment and I saw a room full of instruments. “My dads a musician.”  I looked around and saw gravitons, whirlies, pyrophones, optigans, chumbus, a dousengoti, calliopes, glass harmonica, metal oblongs, bow saws, a pump organ, mellotron, bass boo-bams, brake drums, parade drums.  She showed me my room which looked like a Mexican hotel room.  As I went to sleep I heard the chicken farm outside and the bathroom echo chamber with a drip every 10 seconds.  Tomorrow was going to be a big day I felt.  It was time to get busy living, or get busy dieing.  I wasn’t sure if I said that or my thought patterns.  I needed to be more generous to Rosie.  I also had to be ironic, mad, brave, humorous, imaginative and magnificent but I didn’t think about those too much.  I’ve never had any of these traits before.  I needed to float above reason.  Id need to get along with Rosie but vanish to other places if needed and especially...look others in the eyes now.  It is possible to walk through a crowd of peers at a party but have no one recognize you.  I needed to drift away into a land of nothingness.  The back of my eyes, where my dreams lie waiting for me.  I recited and repeated a poem I wrote and made to take me away from thought.  It goes, “I once knew a cow, who slept so long it didn’t know how, he slept so long he started to sink down.  When he woke up he was 6 feet underground.”

I heard a story once of Big Jack earl, the tallest man in the world.  He was with Barnum and Bailey.  If you see old Archival photos, they used to put him next to a guy who was a foot tall.  Big hat, big boots.  He used to stand in the middle of the road and cry.

I woke up to the creek of the sun across my eyelids.  I thought I'm bound to heaven because I already served my time in hell.  It was time to take action and take some chances to see at least some possibilities I had.  No wanting, just doing.

Rosie cooked me eggs sunny side up and sausage.  She allows me to be happy, that’s why I like her.  Rosie told me of her travels to Thailand.  “S**t holes for bathrooms, monkeys that steal, mopeds crashing into each other, high class low class food chains like McDonalds, frogs taste like chicken and there's a guy who lives in a Swiss family Robinson type hut in the woods where he comes out to town and everyone gives him food.”  I reminded Rosie of the time we ate pho, went to a party and slept in her car.  She couldn’t remember and I told her I biked from the freeway to my grandmas and smoked in the bathroom.  Then I continued to bike all the way to the restaurant Denny's to meet with her.  I bought her a grand slam.  She remembered.

I was calm, content, pure, peaceful, and she was beautiful.  Who am I? Whats my purpose? To live? This girls beautiful and I'm a nobody.  I felt as if I could do anything with her.  The world is my daily check up.  I created this world and I can destroy it.  I knew I couldn’t do anything without the right mind set so I grabbed a cup of coffee and a cigarette.  “Get in the car, I have something to show you.”

We stopped by my friend Sully Walker's house for equipment.  He answered the door in his boxers.  He handed me a gun.  “I'd love to sit and chat but I gotta make food for the kids and I don’t know how to cook.  Their mother left last night.  Left me a  note, two-sided.  I guess I fucked up. Anyways, here’s a gun.” Rosie gasped.  “Careful out there, Richie  Its a fucked up world with fucked up people.”

“Always am.” I replied.  Me and Rosie went to Paramount ranch to have a picnic and so I could try my gun out.  We walked under the bridge, walked to these cement slabs.  She taught me how to meditate.  Then we walked to a creek, the day felt good.  While sitting outside of her car, I shot some rounds then took some DXM.  I drove to Starbucks and everything went in slow motion on the way.  I talked to my friend Chris.  He wanted to show me a movie so I went to his house to watch Chris Field: the movie.  I excused myself halfway through the movie and sat outside.  I felt like I was in Thailand.  I stared at the setting until I turned into one with everything and realized we were all a bunch of actors on stage.  I was ready.  I told myself to remain fascinated through the whole trip.  I closed my eyes and saw my past life.  I was sitting on an old wooden boat in the inside of the hut built on top.  There was a man in the army on the other side sitting below the window.  As the boat swam downstream I could see long tall leaves of grass passing.  The man was dieing and I couldn’t save him.

I pulled up to the bank on Wilshire.  I told Rosie I was nervous but being nervous made me more careful.  Rosie headed into the bank for her part of the job.  I once heard a story of a man who robbed a bank with a water gun then locked his keys in the car.  I didn’t want to end up like that poor fellow.  I pulled into the parking lot with Little Eva playing on the radio.  It was a hot summer day.  I let everyone walk by me so I could scope out and access a vile situation.  I thought to myself this could be rough and started to sweat.  I pulled up into a spot and smoked a cigarette.  I turned the engine off with the windows down in case of an emergency.  I women walked by with groceries in her cart and a kids in the kids seat.  I was sweating hard for it was about 87 degrees outside.  I got out of the car and walked into the bank.  As I walked in I saw Rosie on the couch and gave her a wink, not too big of a wink, didn’t want cameras to see.  

“FREEZE! This is a stand up!, give me all your money!”  The place went wild and I shot a bullet to the ceiling.  “Get down on your stomach, God d****t!”  The whole place was on the floor and I was the only one standing.  Talk about a power trip, I never had so many people at my command.  I went up to the clerk, “Fill the god damn bag you filthy punk! Fill the god damn bag! The rest of you, stay on the ground til I tell you!”  Just then Rosie get up and starts to run for the door, I shoot a shot off and grab her by the arm.  “What do you think you’re doing? Come here!”  I take Rosie around the back.  The hostages were scared s**t less.  I put all the money in Rosie’s purse.  I come back out and tell her to get on the floor.  I run out with an empty bag.  I hopped in the car and drove on top of a hill.  I watched the cops come.  I see Rosie walk out through my binoculars.  A cop stopped her and asked her a couple questions but then she was let off.  I then picked her up down the street, “What did the cops ask you?”  I asked Rosie.  “They asked if I saw the robber's face.”

“what did you tell them?”

“I said yes but only for a second, but he was very handsome.”  Rosie said.  I drove home.

I grabbed a couple 32's and headed over to my friend Chiltsov's house.  I had a long talk with Rosie, discussing future plans.  Rosie had a tough background, I was always there to hear her out.  Her parents left her and her brother when she was 7.  Her brother got shot and died when she was 14, she quit school after that and got into drugs.  She would even deal a little on the side.  She told me she would deal through the drive through at McDonald’s when she worked there.  She eventually got fired for punching her manager in the face.  She flipped out and broke everything in the restaurant. 

We went in the jacuzzi naked at 4:30 am. We both slept with our eyes open on the floor that night looking up at the ceiling.

The next day we went to the beach, slept all day on the sand with margaritas.  Then we went to an art show, I stole a book and a couple drinks.  I managed to grab a wine bottle while the bartender had his back turned.  We ate fine vegetarian cuisine and plantains in chocolate for dinner.  Me and Rosie slept in the car.  I had a dream black people were sitting on the couch all around me singing “Ol' man River”.  One man came up to me and told me that sharing was the essence of life and to share all my earnings.  He said there is nothing such as luck, only preparation and opportunity.  No failure except failing to get back up and that I must react to each mood and feeling I have at that moment.

While sitting on the couch, the floor started rocking.  I looked out the window and the whole room was floating in the ocean.  I tried writing my name on the couch but someone erased it.  I then tried writing my name all over the ground but it kept getting erased by itself.  I left the room and started walking around some Mexican looking town.  I sat around the fire at a bar and had fish and chips.  My newly met friend came up and said he had gotten kicked in the stomach as hard as a leg can kick and that we need to get out of here.  I agreed and went to take a smoke break.  I took some acid.  I hear running, someones run off.  I started to panic and fled the scene.  I ran into the forest.  Some guy catches me in the woods, says he knows all about the robbery.  Tells me to wait for the police.  I run to a hallway with rooms.  The first ones locked, the second rooms filled with girls.

“Noses up Richie, noses up.”  

“who are you?” the girls ask.

“My names Richie, i'm extremely hilarious and I drive a red car.  I’m also a one eyed scuba diving magician bank robber.  May I crash on your?”  

The girls looked at each other, one said “I like him, hes cute.  Come lay with us Richie and all your problems will be gone.”  I laid with them and felt like I was at the bottom of a blue skyline but on top of the puffy clouds.  Just then, the bed turned into clouds and I felt as if I was a kid again.  I hear knocking on the door.  “I gotta go ladies, the hungrier the man, the tastier the meat.”  I ran out the window and floated down to the grass. That's when I woke up. 

                                          The next robbery was inspired by Indiana Jones.  I simply, walked in, told them to put money in the bag and when they were about to signal the cops, with my fore fingers I unleashed snakes throughout the building.  The people at the counter screamed for the snakes were by their ankles.  The whole places started to jump as the snakes slithered around.  The place was loud with hiss's and I could feel a great sense of fear as I held my arms out controlling the snakes.  Everyone ran out in one big crowd crushing through the doors together.  I was then alone in the building with all the money I could grab. 

While driving off I saw lights behind me, many lights.  I drove faster and faster.  I turned the corner into the bushes.  I turned to Rosie who was in the passenger seat the whole time putting on toe nail polish.  Quick Rosie put this on...I opened the trunk and handed her scuba diving equipment.

“I don’t know how to dive, Richie!” she said.

“Just swim down, whatever you do, don’t press the red button.” I said.

We hopped in the lake and dived to the bottom.  I could see the flashlights on the surface of the lake.  I motioned to Rosie not to move by putting my finger in front of my mouth. We sat at the bottom floating for a while.  It was quiet. A fish swam by my eyes.

Just then, she pressed the red button, as I told her not to.  The air in the tank went off and she flied to the surface of the lake.  Her head is bobbling out of the water while every cop in the region is searching for her.  I quickly swim up and pop my head out, I quietly say “Rosie, what did I say about the red button.”  I looked around and there were cops everywhere with dogs searching a muck.  Shining their lights on every tree and bush in range.  I pushed Rosie’s head back down and we swam back to the surface.  It was actually kind of romantic.  Me and Rosie at the bottom of a lake, scuba diving, with all the coral swaying with the brown, dim light.  She would never spend time like this with me and she would never come out with me despite me being a teacher and giving her free lessons.  She told me it was cute and she appreciated it but it was not her thing.  I never despised it, she was a teacher too, for young children.  If you ask me, dealing with those kids is a lot harder and more important then what I was doing, but I guess I had my part in the world.  We waited til the oxygen mask were done.  We swam once again to the surface.  The cops were gone and the sun was coming up.  I was bamboozled to see Rosie made it through the night.  There we were, floating in the middle of a lake at 6 am on an early misty morning.

Man must not betray his talents, it's a  very sad thing to do.

We fell asleep by the lake, she fell asleep on my legs.  I woke up an hour later.  I quickly smoked a bowl of marijuana and drank a flask of whiskey and headed to 8 hour traffic school.  I forgot my license and my wallet.

I got in the car with the instructor.  “Alright Richie..Back for more huh?  You didn't have enough torture the first time?  Ha, just giving you a hard time buddy.  Nice to meet you, my name is Thomas G. Diamond.  I've been doing this job for 12 years and my wife is 23 years old.  Don't ask me any questions you won't regret with a black eye later.  I'm sick and I'm tired so lets get this over with.  Lets start with  a left turn up the street.”  I drive up and hit the curb.  “Sorry” I said.

He looked at my with suspicious eyes.  “Hey, aren’t you the guy who robbed the bank?....”  I paused for a moment and realized I should of done this whole driving school thing earlier.  “You are! I’m calling the cops, man.  You're a fugitive, I cant let you get away with this.”  I grabbed his phone and through it out the window.  “Shh! You ain’t calling nobody mister nice guy to not so nice guy after all!  I understand you've got a family but you're heading with me!”  I floored the car and headed on the high way.  “What are you doing?! Give me your license!” he demanded.  “Sorry, I don’t got it.  Remember?” 

“Don't hurt me please, think of how much my family would miss me.  Little Joey wouldn't have anyone to tuck him in at night,  little Stacy wouldn't have anyone to drive her to school...” He pleaded for a good minute.  “I'm not going to hurt you.  Um....” I handed him some whiskey “...Here drink this.”

I went and picked up Rosie in the instructors car.  I stopped by the gas station and made Rosie get me some of that 3 dollar and 50 cent beef jerky.  We then went to Rosie’s house to hide out.  “C'mon Diamond! come inside!”  We walked in and watched Whitney Houston on the TV and foreigners dancing and got drunk.  Me and Rosie were rapping and quoting each other all night.  The instructor turned out to be a funny guy.  He had a couple good stories of kids driving on the wrong side of the road while he would be looking down eating Cheetoes.  Funny guy.

        We all got sushi and stared at the moon and stood on furniture and partied all night.  It was before Christmas so all the decorations were out.  Beautiful shiny lights filled the city making the town seem happy for once.  

                   I made the instructor and Rosie take the bus with me to SF, 6 hours north for the night.  We went on top of a building with white letters on top.  We sat on the H of Hotel and drank wine.  I turned to Rosie, “you've got a home as long as I’ve got arms baby.”  Down the ladder we went and drank heavily onward through the night.  “Great view up there” I told the instructor.  He nodded and mumbled “Eh.”  There was loud thunder that night.  We had more Chinese food then I could imagine and I headed to the bathroom downstairs to do cocaine.  I made the instructor do a couple lines.  The coke stinging my nose, I heard on the TV through the bathroom door “Richie Clemens, a 25 year old....scuba diving teacher and failed magician, robbed a bank in Paso.  He is armed and very dangerous and is a wanted man, if seen, please report to the police and there will be a cash reward.”  This was bad news because the instructor decided to change his mind and left the bathroom to call the police on the spot.  I rushed and freaked out in the stall.  I started to hear sirens from outside the door.  I hopped out the back window to head to the Golden gate park.  As I am running through the back alleyway I look up to see that they handcuffed Rosie and were putting her in the car.  I told myself to have no fear, no hope and not to hesitate.  I figured it out to keep running as hard as it was.  The cops found the instructor and he pointed my way.  I hopped over a tall bush and kept running with my feet hitting the very top of the bush, not enough to trip me.  I ran down the street and turned and walked into someones home.  There was a couple watching TV quietly with their arms around each other.  I paused and stared at their more than happy silhouettes, comfortable as the night.  The TV was playing an old black and white romance movie.  On the speakers came on “Blue  Moon” by Elvis.  They were talking quietly, laughing and kissing each other.  The man poured the girl a glass of wine.  They kissed again and the man said “Chares babe” and the woman said “Chares my love.”  They kissed gently.  My heart felt empty.  Tears began to fall down my face.  I could not help but burst out crying.  The man said “I'm a fool who cares, a lucky one at that too.  I am filthy rich my love.”  They laughed.  It was if no one in the world existed but them.  I stared and stared and I couldn’t bare for it to be Rosie and me alone in that chair.  I started to cry even more, as if I was a helpless boy in the middle of a crowd.  They heard me cry and turned around.  The girl started to yell and I got up and started to dance around crying.  I did a dance no one has seen before.  They had to chase me around the house.  The husband grabbed a bat.  I realized letting your mind get to you is pointless and ran out the house knocking the trash cans over on the way out.  What a fancy night it was in San Francisco in February.

The second robbery went easier then planned.  The report read as fallowed: “Local El Paso bank was robbed today.  Cops said a mad man walked in screaming and grabbed all the money.  Then as the cops barged in, a gas smoke bomb went off that covered the whole building, when the smoke finally cleared out....the man had disappeared.  Cops don’t know much about the man but are calling him the magic bandit.  Sheriff Blake Dawn says 'he is one hell of a magician, what an illusion!  I didn’t know whether to be mad or applause.  Great show.  What a trick!'” 

When the smoke bomb went off what really happened was I stuffed my clothes into a bag and stuffed it under my shirt and laid down behind all the hostages.  After the smoke cleared out, the cops came in and nobody noticed.  Afterward I walked to the car and put the bag in the trunk.  Just then a cop car pulled up.  “Hey, did you happen to see the guy?” The cop asked me.  

I looked at him and said “No, but he can put one hell of a show.”  The cops laughed, “He sure can”, and drove away.  

I sat in the grass in Golden Gate park.  I called the police station from a blocked number.  They said I could not talk to Rosie.  I said “Well, can you please tell Rosie....well...um.....tell her that I love her...tell her that....I do....and when she falls asleep....at 12:30 p.m...right on the dot....I'll be sitting on a bench outside a restaurant by myself..... staring into the stars....squinting at em....with a gleam in my eye.....smiling greatly while staring up into the dark sky....waiting for her......and when she does fall asleep....there'll be a warm wave that'll fall down into my spine....and when there's an itch on my wrist....I know she'll be dreaming....and when there's a ladybug on my leg....I know it'll be me she's dreaming of.......and in that dream......we'll be sitting on this same bench that i'm sitting on right now....and she'll sitting right next to me....and as this night goes by....i'll be telling her things you only hear in dreams....sweet things that are not possible to say in real life....as if it was our last night on earth together......and as I drive home ...tell her i'll be counting the street lights knowing that at the end of my drive...there'll be more  street lights by the time I get home then the amount of days it will take....until I see her again....i wish her the best of sleep...and I love her with all my heart.”  I looked down at my phone and realized the cop on the other line had hung up and that I was just talking to myself.  A woman sitting next to me stared at me with the most serious stare I have ever seen...with a tear in her eye.   I heard music from someones apartment.  I drank green tea from the liquor store and stared at the stars.  I noticed all things I loved that night.  I was in love with Rosie.  I closed my eyes gently and calmly.  Einstein used to imagine himself riding on a beam of light.  I imagined myself riding a beam of light and getting off to enter a room with Einstein sitting at the end of the table with Socrates, Plato and Abraham Lincoln also there and asking what they would do in my situation.  I felt deviated from the norm at that moment....an outcast, far away from one's typical game.  I was in my own mind...alone at once.

                     I repeated “The swamp killed a ghost, the swamp killed a ghost, the swamp killed a ghost now the ghost is a swamp.”  This kept my mind from wandering and I also ended up with carved “swamp ghost” into my arm with a branch on the ground.  The blood dripped onto the grass but I could not feel a thing.  

I was stressed but I wasn’t one to loose my mind over a girl.  I knew if  I was patient, things would start coming my way.  Yet I had no friends, family, job or education.  I was young though.  Anything is possible when you are young.  I needed to keep my door open so the wind and the world could come in, right through the front door and make me feel comfortable again.  I wanted my eyes to sleep, like a tired homeless man.  Seems like nothing was gonna change 'cept me.  I was getting stronger every second like an ant on steroids.  I controlled my mind, emotions as well.  I had discipline and the power to change.  If you want something you have to reach out and grab it with a bare claw and with the fist, wrist and pull.

Since I realized my life was going in circles, and circles I figured it was in the going not the getting there.  I was not going to resist anything.  Just a step 1 and a step 2 and go.  I had a new approach to the way things were gonna go around here.  There once was a fat man in my pocket, now I have a fat grand.  I was to spend wisely.

“When is Christmas?” As I sat thinking and drinking more and more I realized the money was going to go fast.  So I was to think of a new idea already.  Maybe a new plan with a new blueprint.  I read somewhere, a long time ago “Picasso...knew...that  every time you look, there’s something different.  There is so much there but were not seeing it...that...is the problem.”  What I needed to do was to thinking beyond thought.  Think just in front of the edge without falling.  I was afraid of heights, so maybe behind the edge.  I was to create everlasting peace joy inside this frigid cruel rocky mind of mine and I was going to run with it.  Run with this motorized brain and see where it takes me.  This body is useless otherwise.  There simply was nobody there to tell me not to.  I trust Picasso, he was a Spaniard, a good head on top of his fat little round body of his.  I knew I was going to win.  “I am an individual, and I will prevail.”  I was to miss the repetition train I have been riding and beat it to its own station.  If I was going to kill the monsters in my head, I would have to be nice...and gentle.  I'd have to be as swift as a feather on a lake...or as delicate as a woman in red walking down a street in Memphis.  I was thinking completely good and that couldn’t be bad.  A lot of late night strolls and dark depressing missions of sweat and work were ahead. I was going to have to breath like a damn genius.  An honorable way to die in my head.  No self-identification here.  You could dig miles to find this fool-proof criminal artist wind up in jail or even worse, dead.  Everyone finds a couple good things that they’re good at.  Mine are diving, magic and robbing banks.  No more being lazy and sleeping in till noon.  I had to see the good in everything and anything not working would have to be fixable.  Who cares what people think or tremble on on a daily basis.  Their stupid incompetent minds filled with ego and jealousy.  With no future and past, what is there for me?

I got up to walk around, it was misty everywhere and I stumbled into a bush.  I walked down the street and saw a girl in front of the movie theater.  Usually id be afraid to talk to a beautiful girl but I made an exception for I was drunk.  I asked her if she wanted to catch a flick.  The movie was a violent crime film.  The movie was good but I couldn’t stand another happy ending.  I looked at this girl I had just met to the right of me. She was happy to be with me.  As if I was in high school again, I looked at her and imagined the past.  If only I was 16 again taking a girl out on a date and not running from the cops looking a long sentence of jail time in the eyes.  I asked her if she wanted popcorn.  She said “No thank you.”  

“Will you excuse me?” I went outside and smoked a cigarette.  There was a car going back and forth crashing into a pole on fire.  The car blew up.  Too much human collateral is no good I thought.  I headed back into the theater.  “Did you get popcorn?”

“No, I thought you said you didn’t want any.”
“Its OK.” she said.

“A car blew up outside.”

She laughed and kept watching the movie. 

After the movie we walked like slums down the lonely streets of the tenderloin.  Homeless people with their pants panting and screaming down asking me for a lighter.  When I give it to them they smoke crack in front of me and I thought since I was with a lovely girl I should ignore them this time.  Any other time I might consider them as decent people for trying to make it through their life, not in a good way, but at least they are trying.  I could be considered on the same page as them.  I felt pathetic.  There was blood and s**t on the streets.  A lady screaming at a man laying on the ground laughing.  A man with his pants down jacking off and crying.  A woman blowing a man for crack.  As the cops drove by all the homeless people in the alley mimicked the siren and laughed.  We walked into her place on Folsom.  When she closed the door she said “Just finger bang me.”  Too much human collateral, then f**k it.  She had a nice little room with pillows, green grass and a window ceiling, a very comfortable treat for being out drunk all night.  I took more acid and stayed up with her.

I told her of my earliest memories of when I was just a little boy.  Sliding down the hill behind my friends house and calling it a theme park.  I did some of my first skateboarding there.  I also remember his birthdays with the moon bounce.  I was exceptionally good at going down hill on the driveway.  I remembered riding the train ride at the mall.  I remember being at my friend David's house playing with little Power Ranger action figures and looking up at his mom wondering what mothers talked about.  Being at my friend Brian's house playing games with a toy bear.  I would bring the stuffed animal everywhere I went. I would bring it to my friend Willie's house and pretend it was real.  I would even set up an empty bucket and pretend it was his class room.   His brother's computer was the first one I ever saw.  When Willie switched rooms we would stay up and watch Dragon Ball Z and eat Bobile pizza.  I would sneak chips from the kitchen when his parents weren’t looking.   We would play charades at night and I would sleep under a model plane that I always would fly around the room as I went to sleep.  I was afraid to fall asleep for I thought it was going to crash on me as soon as I closed my eyes.  I was never homesick there but I was everywhere else.  I was even afraid to go to school on my first day.  His brother Johnny, would have a light table in his closet that he would draw in all day.  I remembered my aunt teaching me to drive a stick shift car when I was 4.  She gave me a stuffed animal penguin.  I named it Tommy and gave up the bear.  She called me “alien baby”.  I remembered the excitement of waking up in the morning to go to Knott's Berry Farm with my brother.  Riding all the scariest rides first.  I spent most my days skateboarding in front of my house trying the craziest airs I could do.  When I was 7 I told my brother's friend to lie in front of the ramp.  I tried to jump over him with my bike but landed on top of him.  I would have dinner at my grandma Tootsie's house.  Everything in her house looked big.  I remember seeing a cop for the first time when my cousin got pulled over for speeding.  I didn’t know what happened but I knew cops meant trouble.  While the family would be talking and eating I would turn the TV onto porn and hide the remote.  I remember peaking onto my grandpa's TV and watching scary movies I was not allowed to see.  I even remember being in a cradle and going to my first petting zoo.  I remember my first girlfriend and giving my friend a tatoo of a lizard and having him bleed everywhere in his parents closet.

I left and hopped on the subway.  As the doors closed I looked and saw Bunny Rogers, the woman who killed my father, outside with Earl Gray...The manager of the bank and father of Etta Gray, a girl I once dated.  I got up to try to stop the subway but it kept going.  She looked me straight in the eyes.  I lost her and I kinda lost my mind.  “C'mon Richie, get yourself together.”  The subway was going faster and faster.  I looked out the window and the subway was going into a beehive.  Buzz, buzz, sting.  Time warped into a guy on the subway with my grandpa who passed a long time ago, god bless his soul.  The acid was strong.  Hes staring at me, my dead grandpa is staring at me from the other side of the subway.  Should I go talk to him?  He gets up and walks over to me,  “What!?”  just then I looked down and I transformed into a girls body, a Bernbach, and he says to me “One of yous was here the whole time.”  I was a beautiful girl but then it disappeared, as girls seem to do.  “What are you doing here grandpa?  You’re dead?”

He looked at me with devil eyes, laughed and said “Ha, I wasn’t dead, I’ve just been playing poker in Vegas living the rest of my life doing heroin and f*****g hookers.  You’re parents didn’t want you knowing what happened to your gramps.” 

I got off and immediately sat near Golden Gate Park again with a 6 pack I purchased off Market.  I sneaked onto a guys boat on the dock and drank.  He had some wine in his fridge...i fell asleep right next to the Oakland bridge out of exhaustion on the mans boat.  Slept for a good 7.  I woke up with a bunch of tourist around me.  “Hey buddy, get up...there’s people around.”  It seemed like they were talking s**t to feel good about their egos.

I walked into a market and stole a 30 pack.  I grabbed two, left one in the aisle and went back to grab the second.  Then I went back and stole a wine bottle.  I went back for the corkscrew.  Then I went back for a large bottle of Maker's Mark which almost fell right through my shorts I was wearing.  The lady outside the market was preaching about Christ and wanted to start a christian rock n' roll band.

10:00 am February 6, 2009.  I went on a hike and drank everything I stole with the girl from the movies, her name was Jamie.  “You know they made Vans shoes for people in jail?” she said.  I was wearing Vans.  We started smoking Marijuana.  Walked down and back and talked about life on Jones Street. I used to live in the Mission.  Her friend Connor was supposed to pick us up.  Instead, a cop pulled over and started questioning us “what are you guys doing?”

“Whats your favorite thing to do during summer?” I interrupted.

“The ATV's...wait, I got calls from the market that fits your description of a shoplifter.”
“Couldn’t be me, I've been sitting here this whole time drinking this booze, sir.” I told him cheerfully.

“Wait, you’re the bank robber! You’re coming with me son.”  I said goodbye to Jamie.  He chased me in circles around the car and I did my dance on top of his car.  I let him take me in.

On the way he was asking me questions “How does it feel to be going to jail at such a young age?” I paused and answered “F*****g great!” I was on a lot of xanox.  In the waiting room I called a close friend to tell him I was in jail.  

                     As I got into the jail, everyone applauded.  Like they heard of me as if a mongoose caught a special large rattle snake for the whole family.  Like I was the last snake on earth.  I killed a rattle snake before, maybe this was karma.  I made friends with the bailiff while giving me my thumb prints and he agreed to give me a book.  The book he gave me was a Tom Clancy about how to escape out of jail.  I read the whole thing in 7 days.  I also mastered yoga, and received new meditative values.  I set up a toilet paper roll in the corner so I could toss my carrots into it as a basketball game.  I wanted to be like Scotty Pippen.  I also came up with new ways to rob a bank.  The guy in the cell next to me was screaming the whole night.  I couldn’t imagine why.  I stayed up writing Arabic on the notebook they gave me.

That night, I planned an escape just like in the book I read. One of the biggest thrills in America is running away from the police I knew Rosie was somewhere in the building so I was going to find her too if I could.  Just as that thought I was thinking was thought up of I heard Rosie scream.  “Come here you little twat b***h!”  I heard one of the sergeants scream.  She screamed again and I got up out of my seat.  They came into view right in front of my glass door and Rosie was crying in handcuffs getting dragged in by the sergeant.  She was bleeding a little from the nose as the sergeant smacked her.  “Check it out Richie I got your girl.”  The cops around him started chuckling like pigs on fire in the mud.  The bailiff came in and the cops pushed him out and locked the door. 
“You want your little girl back Richie! You’re gonna have to pry her from my c**k.”  The cops laughed some more.  “What the f**k do you think you’re doing sir?” I screamed.  “I’m f*****g your girlfriend Richie  “Don't touch her!”

“Its either you or her Richie Which one do you want?”  He asked.  “take me you f*****g b*****d a*s basketball head f*g.”  He opened the door and took out a knife.  Rosie screamed.  The other cops grabbed my arms and the sergeant slowly cut my right eye out with the knife laughing.  They closed the door and I screamed like I never had before.  The sergeant pulled Rosie’s pants down and bent her over right in front of me.  Her crying face smacked against the window.  She was crying for help.  He put his c**k in her a*s and started f*****g her and laughing in front of me.  The other cops were laughing hysterically.  I started smacking the door “Get off her you pig fagots.”  I started punching so hard my fist started bleeding.  Rosie was crying harder and harder and I started to try kicking.  “Anyone want a turn on her?” The cop says.  “Ill give her a try!” another cop says.  Just then I blew a punch that as I punched the gods of the world couldn’t stop if all were grabbing by my arm. 

“Duck Rosie!”

She ducked and I blew the window right open.  I picked up a piece of glass from the ground and stabbed the cop as I reached for his gun.  I grabbed his gun  and shot the cops dick off.  I shot each cop in the knee cap which dropped them all to their knees.   All four were surrounding me as I took the piece of glass and proceeded to cut the sergeants ear off slowly.  “Anymore of you want to be an a*****e!”  I pulled my dick out and started peeing on the cop.  I grabbed the keys and put on a cop outfit. I ran out with Rosie and the cell mates applauded once again.  I hopped into the cop car outside and started the engine with the keys that were in the uniform. I headed to Mexico and stopped In Santa Barbara for some whiskey.  I pissed into a cup in the car.  The car broke down.  I pulled over to the side of the road.  I put the cup of piss on the top of the car.  A homeless man came up and said he used to be a mechanic.  I gave him 5 minutes with the thing and he went under the car to look at it.  The wind blew the cup of piss right onto him without him noticing.  I didn’t say anything.  All of a sudden he hit something and the engine started.  “There you go boss.”  He said.  I headed to an office building to steal money.  There was lightning so the lights went out.  Me and Rosie went up to the third floor and opened the door with a credit card.  We got inside a dark office room and stole enough money for the amount of time needed.  

“Richie? You better look outside.”  Rosie said in an eerie, concerned tone.

“What is it? I cant look right now my busy.  There's more money in the other desk. Now help me look.”

“No Richie, look outside.” She repeated.  Lightning struck and I took a glance out the window.  There were four cop cars with their lights on pointing at the building.  I heard doors open from the bottom floor.  I pried open the roof ceiling and helped Rosie up.  Then I stepped on the table and entered the roof.  A cop walked in and searched the room.  He checked everywhere, under the tables and behind the desk.  Right as he left I told Rosie “If you fallow me and not make a sound, we can get out of here safe. Do you trust me?” I asked.  “Yes, of course I do Richie.”  I started to walk down the long hallway ducking and keeping my back to the wall as the cop lights shined through the window.  I hopped down a flight of stairs across another hallway and hid in a room for a second.  Rosie fallowed.  A cop opened the door from down the hall and I told Rosie to hide behind a desk.  The cop walked into the room and I had my back turned to him as if I were searching the room.  “Anything in here boss?” The cop asked me.

“Not that I can see. Keep searching.”  It was a good thing I still had the cop uniform on from the prison.  “You got it boss,” The cop said and dashed away. I waited for the coast to be clear and we hopped in the elevator.  I stopped the elevator halfway.  I pried the door open a little to see both floors.  We hopped out, ran across another hallway, down the stairs and into the parking lot.  We made it.

                        Although I am here, my mind is elsewhere.  How I strive everyday to be put in a situation that could be caught in a movie.  Either a romance scene with rain in Paris,  or traveling across the country blasting music with the pals I've known my whole life.  How I wanted to sing like Elvis or become something better then just normal.  Nothing was good enough.  I wanted more.  Every night I wanted a different situation where I would be up passed 3 in the morning in the woods outside a party drunk near a fire whispering words to a beautiful woman on my side, drinking champagne out of tall glasses and laughing at the scene below of a carnival in the 20s.  I have to get out of my little bungalow and out into the world.  Life is too short to sit around and ponder.  There is a world out there whether I like it or not.  It is to be traveled.  Otherwise, it is pointless.  To wait on a woman with no potential is illogical.  One must move out to travel and wait for one to fallow.  A leader in your own time is the only way to live a comfortable life to me.  Everyday has to be a magnificent glorious event or else you are not living the possibilities your life has to offer.  Just getting out there opens new doors and can take you more progressively inward toward life itself.  When you’re standing outside and you’re somewhere you’ve never been or perhaps have been, maybe the beach or in nature, or an odd scene at a restaurant where you feel left out, or a bar talking to a girl while you’re friends are playing pool and you get to have a smoke with your friend for a second.  That interaction, that feeling of life is not comparable because it is what it is in itself and there is nothing like it.  There is living like everyone else, or there is living knowing that every moment is recorded history and one should take control of it.  To sit and wonder is a mistake.  To move and take advantage of is a gift.  Leave right now.  Every opportunity should be seized.  

I decided to do one more bank before my business was done.  That night I sat in my new red ford escort and thought how all my friends had jobs and how I got so far behind.  I started the engine and drove to Paso.  Back in the day, Paso was the hardest bank to rob.  Now its even got an underwater vault.  The highway was dark and lonely.  So lonely I could barely contain.  Eddie Noack “Psycho” was playing quietly in the back.  I pulled into the drive way and drove slowly across the parking lot on the other side of the bank.  I pulled out of the lot and parked on the other side of the street.  I waited til the last janitor left.  It was about 2 am.  As the lights turned off I walked across the street with a bag of scuba gear and quickly changed in a tall bush.  To get passed the front door I used a credit card.  It didn’t work so I used a drill.  I looked behind me both ways.  A car drove by and I laid down.  I quickly then hopped up and headed in as the car drove by.  I ran through the floor and hopped the counter.  I opened the door with keys I got from the cabinet.  I used a paper clip to unlock it.  As I opened the door to the safe there we lasers in front of it.  I felt stupid and defeated.  Then, I had an idea.

I placed the key on the floor and placed both hands above it.  I proceeded to sway my hands upward until the key levitated to my chest.  Carefully, I levitated the key through the lasers barely missing each one.  I guided the key through the lasers and into the key lock to turn them off.  There was sweat on my face like a heated tea pot.

I ran across, grabbed the key and opened the next door to a staircase that headed under water.  I geared up and went under.  It was lighted up blue so it was easy to dive through.  As I swam it got smaller and smaller.  As I got to the end, I saw a huge door with a huge knob on it.  I made it.

I turned the knob and opened the underwater valve.  It was hard work but I managed to get it open in under 5 minutes.  I swam to the other side and walked up the stairs.  As I reached above surface, there it was.  Walls of money stacked to the ceiling.  It was all mine. I grabbed as much as I could and put it into the bag.  I was dripping wet and some of the dollars were getting a bit soggy.  Just then the alarm went off and I swam back with the money in the bag.  As I ran out I saw a security guard at the other end.  He looked me dead in the eye.  I dropped the Scuba gear and ran behind the counter and leaped out towards the door.  I slipped for a second but caught my balance.  I got out of the door and hopped over the bushes.  I ran for a minute and turned around.  It was quiet, too quiet.  All of a sudden, I heard an engine and saw the lights of a golf cart driving around the corner.  I turned around and continued to run.  He chased me on the golf cart and went straight through each bush I leaped over.  I ran a corner to an empty underground lot.  He pulled around the corner on the other side.  I stood there panting.  We stared at each other like a stand off in an old western.  His lights were shining in my eyes.  He floored the engine and sped to my side.  I jolted to the right and ran into the street.  Just then Rosie pulled up in the car and I hopped in.  As we pulled off cops drove by with their sirens on.  I ducked to let them pass.  As we got on the freeway, Rosie handed me a beer and a pack of cigarettes.  I got up, wet and tired.  I cracked the beer, rolled down the window and lit a cigarette.  She turned the radio up as loud as she could and started to dance.  I laughed a little and sapped my beer.

                                     The emotional structure is simple.  I learned it in school.  There pleasure or displeasure, tension or relaxation, excitement or depression.  I myself,  enjoy chaos in my life and it has brought me where I am today.  It has also brought me many joys such as recalling stories at the tip of my tongue.  These psychogenic are mostly functional on the unconscious level, but play a major role in our personality, based on motives, presses and needs.  There's affiliation, spending time with others, nurturing, taking care of another person.  Play, having fun with others.  Rejection, rejecting other people.  Being secure,  being helped or protected by others.  The heart is accelerated by pleasant and retarded by unpleasant.  My heart is alive, I know this for sure, this has been in my chest for a while now.  Affectionate behavior might evolve from parental nurturing cus of hormonal rewards, can be positive or threatening to ones well being.  Affectionate behavior in positively balanced relationships may be associated with numerous health benefits.  More loving type gestures of affectionate behavior include obvious signs of liking a person.  Affection has been reduced to sensation.  So all emotion has been and is regarded as reducible to simple mental affection, the element of which all emotional manifestations are composed ultimately.  Every sensation has it specific affective quality.  For me the road of excess has lead me to wisdom.

To every question Rosie gives me, I answer her, give her an opinion or tell her or a story or else the question is nothing,  For the last couple years I was to find peace in myself and everything I do.  I mine as well start enjoying my life.  I never did think of what I could be doing.  I always begun each day with the right attitude.  You see, everyday we are closer to death, so everyday should start as good as it ends.  You must become adapted enough to love every second to have maintain more opportunities.  Remembering that life is very short.  On your death bed you do not think “I have had enough time”, with your loved one in front of you. You wish for more time.  Everyone must go through it though so we may as well be happy for the happiest one wins always.  Every man goes through death, I myself am honored to have even gotten the chance to live.  Charles Darwin once said “Species evolve over time through the process of natural selection.  Organisms most suited to their environment survive and reproduce.  Passing on their advantageous traits to their offspring.  Organisms that cannot survive go extinct.”  Cultures differ on what is erotic and views of homos.  I think a man must become the most manly he can be to become content...in other words, a beast.  His machismo must be able to lead a patriarchy.  The main key is getting into it.  Become insane with passion.  Do anything.  Watch a movie, read a chapter in a Hemingway novel, drink coffee, meditate, stretch, exorcize, paint, eat cottage cheese...its good for your muscles before sleep.  Do something.  If you have trouble sleeping, you are doing too much, which is good.  If you really cant sleep though, listen to the sounds of nature and drink as much beer as you can.

Sneak into a movie, ride a bike.  Do something every minute of the day, then relax.  Tell yourself only good.  A lot easier then the alternative.  Travel the country, be a cowboy or an orca whale.  Know what you are doing every step of the way with confidence.  There is no time for stopping a mind that is growing.  Yes, there is bad but there is the opposite which needs to be seen in times of suffering.  Simplicity.  You cannot call it what its not. Its happiness we are looking for.  I found mine in a rush.  Find it before life is over, not after.  Fascinate yourself daily.  Impress yourself daily.  Show yourself you are strong.  Life is undeniably beautiful when one lives the way he wants.  Wake up and do everything you can today.  Live for the night for you might wind up dead in the morning.  Eat s**t, f**k a hooker, think outside your head.  Transparency is therapy a wise merchant once told me.  Check to see if you’re stressed, because you should not be.  Celebrate morning and night.  You’re mind will create intelligent words if you let it.  Shut your brain off and do whatever it is you want to get ahead.  You may not take my advice but for me, this has always worked.

What does nature do?  It sits still and relaxes.  Live today, worry tomorrow.  Fear death, jail, insanity.  Masturbate off a building and watch it hit a girl on the neck.  Always leave your house, there is a world waiting outside.  Drive fast with techno blasting and the windows rolled down. 

I’m heading to Mexico to hang glide through the forest while drinking Dirty Monkeys on the way.  You’ve got the power to change anything.  

Take what is sincerely cool, f**k the rest.  I want to be free so I am free.  You must deserve it.  I am free to think and be whatever I want.  Use it up, work it out, make it do or do without.  Stop, look and listen every once in awhile.  Talk to someone you don’t know.  Live at top priority like a god, every morning and every night. Take what you want.  I myself, just hope I'm completely hammered when I die.

I ran into the car, grabbed a grammy slit from the tree, blew on it and took a bite.  I started driving through the back and out through some trees and onto the free way.  I usually sleep in my car on the side of the road or in a parking lot.  I was home free.

Me and Rosie headed down the 101 to San Diego.  “I love you Richie”, Rosie whispered from the passenger seat.  I smiled and replied “Ah, totally of a homeward stare, letting it all hang out.  Like how I got the diploma of being a fucktard at the best of your high school standards.  A lost certificate amongst the group.  A lost certificate meant to be lost.  I came 42 out of no one.  Been 42 out of nowhere. 42 out of nothing.

Time stops and goes and I cant hold on.  Down the right shutter, protect your skull, have a late supper, blend like camouflage, become water.

One time Johnny Cash meditated in a room and the ceiling cracked.  He left the room saying “Sorry”.  That's kind of how I wanna leave the world.

I’m glad I had Rosie with me.  Shes something else. Some butterflies who lost one of their wings would have people attach a different wing back.  Some would be orange and blue.  That's like Rosie.  Shes beautiful but her other wing describes her danger.  Shes lost and in a rush, just like me.  For her I feel it is worse for I am already grown.  Let the dame run, see how she fly’s in a candy color coated world of tunes and make belief.  I am just a magician, all I have to offer a back of a car and a low wage but she loves me.

“I am just a slaw dog Richie, was what we did bad?” She asked me.

“Nah Rosie, there is no belief in hell in Judaism, just good deeds vs. bad deeds decide if you make it back to god.”  I tried giving her a wink but realized I only had one eye so it looked as if I just gave her a friendly nod.  “Sharks travel 1,000 miles in pursuit of their pray.  I am a shark Rosie, and my pray is money and the land to travel”

“How did you get away with all those robberies Richie?” She then asked.

“With my bare hands...just joking.  Mosquito repellants don’t repel anything, they hide you, they block the mosquito censors.  Like blinding them.  I used natural old illusions by the greats like Houdini and my father. Seemed like all my life I just wanted to get out and do something.  Maybe ill rent an RV or move to Kentucky.  There is still a law in the books in Kentucky saying that you have to bathe once a year.”  I don’t think you can put a price on life.  Life is something that was given to us and it is up to us to do something with it.  Life is too valuable to put a price on.  Anybody can do something in their life.  Its whether you choose to do it that makes it valuable.  The people choose the “price” of their life because if they try hard in their life their life will be more cared upon where a homeless person who gave up will have more of a worthless life.  For everyday any person is dead they can be doing something good instead of lying there dead in the ground.

There is a minute in time when all is not well and then it goes away and after awhile you start a new minute.  This minutes better then the last minute but this minute doesn’t last long before a new minute comes in to confuse you and make you think you are and what he expects out of you I do not know.  How the last minutes brought you to this though but then that minute ends and you feel distraught right when a new minute comes in and your happy again which only last a little.  While before you worry about something then you forget your worries and anything have in your head you start to live because what else are you supposed to do with this body of yours.  God knows exactly who you are and what he expects out of you I do not know.  Let your secrets be known, not feared and let spiritual and physical support help for inadequacy in life.

      Take a look outside, if you’re already outside, remain outside.  Everything outside seems as if it remains the same but suffers serious change indeed.  Like sand on the freeway.  See things as they were and how they have progressed to now.  The wind still sounds soft.  Objects places and people will feel younger as one grows.  Your love inside is equal to your love outside.  One little thing can be a whole new thing as we all know.  Lets have patience and not rush our thoughts.  Slowly but surely things will work out.  It takes a heart with unsure lust and an unsure dedication to have success in a different field of your own.  People that quit people I admire. It takes a winning attitude to quit honestly and truthfully.  I myself have a lackluster devotion to my job on earth.

The young get sick of how many years they have to live, the old get sick of how many years they’ve lived.

         I’m typing this to all you now on a typewriter in the jungle.  I’m drunk, I don’t remember the incredible he woman incident, or the snakes.  In fact, every now and then ill type just to make it seem like i'm typing so Rosie thinks I am being productive.  I’m writing this now but when I read it it will seem a long time ago and I will think that I am different and that I have changed but I have not.  All my memories seem so far behind me, it is now time to be good and move on.  I cracked two beers and laid them to the side of me.  The beers had to be cracked and I know one thing that I will never turn back and if the cops wanna chase, lord willing let the boys chase, cus I'm fast and sweet but sour as lemons, let them search but they ain’t ever gunna find me, Richie Clemens, the one eyed scuba diving magician bank robber.  My home is currently under the sun and above the moon, in a tropical jungle next to a waterfall I call paradise.  Goodbye everybody, goodbye.