My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

I DON’T WANT TO BE AN ANIMAL

I work the door at a bar. A shit-hole place with the fear of health inspectors and undercover vice top on the owner’s list of problems. His problems are different than mine. He comes in in the morning and counts the money behind locked doors. I’m on the night-shift street standing between angry drunks and a bar serving cheap drinks. I’m an asshole. They tell me every night. A fuckin’ asshole.

“Hey asshole, this is my neighborhood. I’ll come back with my boys and we’ll see what you have to say.”

Yes, okay, your neighborhood, but this is my corner. My little house on the corner, the white boy in the vato neighborhood.

Some don’t cop out with threats of friends, they challenge me right there.

“Come on, stop me from going in.”

“I’m not here to fight, I’m here to call the police on faggots like you.”

They don’t like cops. No one does.

It was the worst night I’d had on the job. Drunks kicking newspaper machines, a stolen car from the parking lot next door, gang banger hit and run, and I knew the hitter, saw him with the red eyes/red face that only come from PCP. A gangster favorite – dipped cigarettes, he was spaced out…walked out of here between dimensions, got in and drove his car like it floated on air. Crashed and didn’t hear it!

Someone scored a pile of it, all the locals were flying out of their minds. What else causes someone to light their shirt on fire inside the bathroom at a bar, standing in front of a mirror flexing while it burns in the sink?

Try talking that one out of your establishment. But the law of the land is, keep the law out of here. Don’t involve the cops, because they become involved with you. So someone convinces him that he can leave, and I’m back at the door.

The end of the night is in sight. 1:30 am. Almost last call, then stools go up on the bar, the cue ball picked up mid game and hidden in a draw behind the bar, jukebox off, drinks taken out of hands. A great opportunity for fights.

Learning to watch people, that’s what I’ve learned at this bar. Watch their hands. Are they in fists or in their pockets? Is that a beer in their coat or are they readying a weapon? Look at their eyes, how drunk are they, how angry are they? If words start, how do they position themselves? Do they know how to fight? Chin out or down? Are they standing with shoulders square, talking hot shit or do they pivot a little, get a left ready to block, protecting themselves with a dipped right shoulder ready to fire?

Know your clientele. Clientele? Know the jail birds. Know the street reps. Find out who’s affiliated with who. I started in on some young punk only to find out he was a trigger man. Skinny punks with tough mouths just may be coming up in some bad shit and will kill you. I got lucky. Will you? Point is, bigger or smaller don’t matter. Anger does. And who they want to impress. Don’t die for twelve bucks an hour. That’ll really make you mad.

“The eyes are the other balls,” an old timer tells me. “Keep your palm flat, fingers flat out and rigid, like you are just talking, and make your point right into their FUCKIN’ BRAINS!!! BLA-OW!!!!” and he jabbed at me right into my chest. Had it been an eyeball, he would have given my occiptal lobe the middle finger.

There’s that and kicking someone’s knees backwards. But your best bet is to avoid that. Sure you might win the fight, but you start a war. Personally I don’t have friends in this town. I could get jumped on my way to the 99 cent store for a soup bowl and no one would notice I was missing till I didn’t show up for work three days later. Those people would assume I quit. I’m a white boy on brown streets. Diplomacy is my strongest weapon. I got to keep my eyes open. Got to stay aware.

I made it through the night! Came home. Parked my car on the street and walked down the dirt alley towards my apartment in the middle of the block. Trees grow up on the sides and give it the sense of a lonely country road. It was 4 am and everything was quiet. I was walking with my head down, tired, amazed at the heat of this July in Los Angeles. The hottest on record. Is that why everyone was nuts? I wasn’t paying attention. Most accidents occur in or around the house…

There in the dark alley about where the trampled hair curlers are squashed flat, the purple and pinks of them all dirty, they’ve been there a few weeks now, sinking in deeper to the earth as time goes by, I look up at a noise coming at me.

A dog runs at me. Shit. Good. It’s the stray with the big nipples. I’ve seen her eating garbage before. Running crooked behind her is a male, feral and dirty as well, still stuck inside her. He is confused with their coitus interrupted, run-hopping with a twisted dick stuck in her. She looks me right in the eye, the male finally popping out as they run past into the darkness.

“Pay attention all the time,” I tell myself. “The animals know it. Why don’t I?”