Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #004

Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #004 – “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy”

I don’t know how many Canadians out there are able to say they got their first job in sunny San Diego, California, but that’s the way that it went for me.  I was probably about fourteen at the time, maybe fourteen & a half given that it would have been in the summer that I had gone down to see my Auntie Les, who had officially defected from Canada to the USA about six or seven years prior.  She wanted to become a lawyer, which she did because she accomplishes just about anything & everything that she has ever put her mind to – but at this particular moment in time, she’d reached a crossroads of sorts.  Maybe a mid-life crisis of some kind?  She’d been practicing law for at least two or three years by that point I’d figure, but she was no longer sure she wanted to be a lawyer.  With a bunch of cases closed and a bunch of money already made, she did what any person in her situation would do – she left her law office behind, and decided to open up a restaurant instead.  Not just any restaurant, mind you – no – this was Stone’s Café, situated in the perfect spot underneath my Uncle Gary’s healthclub called Bodyworks in downtown San Diego.  They were connected places to a degree, which made sense because they were connected people at the time, and you could even go to the back of the restaurant, find a professionally installed rock-climbing wall that you could go all the way up, which would take you from the restaurant below to view the fitness center above it.  With a big ol’ bell at the top you could ring if you made the whole trip, anyone hearing the sound in the restaurant or health club would cheer.

Anyhow.  In the grand scheme of things, a first job is almost always a stepping stone.  I mean, at the young age of fourteen, I was barely even a real person at that point, right?  So when I say ‘job’ I’d say take it with the proverbial grain of salt – I was still there for my summer vacation and if I didn’t like what I was doing I’m sure I could have just opted to do something else instead.  But the facts were that I did like what they had me doing, which was making the appetizers for the restaurant, and being a maintenance guy for the health club upstairs.  I’d work a four hour shift in one, and then head up to do the other for a full eight hour day.  A small paycheck for me, but the right kind of babysitter for an Aunt and Uncle that would have had to work all day anyhow; it was mutually beneficial.  I had to make things like strawberry spinach salad, Caesar salad, and an assortment of sushi rolls for the restaurant in the morning/afternoon shift.  In the late afternoon, I basically just strolled around the health club with a wrench and a towel, and believe me, I spent a lot more time wiping down equipment than I did fixing anything.  I had no idea how to do either job really, but they were largely symbolic titles more than they were anything real.  In fact, to this very day I have probably fixed about two machines in my entire life and I can guarantee they weren’t workout machines, nor were they anywhere there in my Uncle’s club.  My version of fixing things is banging them on the counter in front of me until they magically work again.  Or they don’t, which is usually the case more often than not.  I’ve never been mechanically inclined.

What I can do, or at least could do really well at the time when I was still a child with bones made of rubber and muscles still sadly yet to be formed, was run.  I played soccer all the time, which certainly helped with the running skills and athleticism, but I also think being a small mammal of any kind will naturally carry with it the instincts to run like hell if you need to – survival instincts.  At one point on a particularly hot summer day, Auntie Les came running up to the top floor where I was in the middle of repairing the most expensive and complex machine in the club busy with my rag wiping some butt stains off of one of the seats of a workout station, and she asked if I could run down to the hardware store and get a couple of air filters, because the air conditioner just went out downstairs and it needed a new one if it was going to start back up.  I was never really doing anything in my role as a maintenance person, so it only seemed right that I said yes to her request, even though I had absolutely no idea of where anything really was in San Diego.  It’s a beautiful place to visit, but my Canadian ass wouldn’t have known the difference between north or south if my life depended on it, and my brain only absorbs a maximum of about four to five instructions at a time.  So if this hardware store involved more turns than that to find it, I was going to be in a considerable amount of trouble.  Thankfully it didn’t.  Still, we took no chances and I had the directions written down.  Yes this is long before Google maps and all that stuff – hell…I think cell phones were just starting to become a thing.  Auntie Les forked over some cold hard American cash, and off I went running down the street several blocks until I reached that all important first turn, took that and dashed up the street as quick as my little legs would carry me.  As a person that rarely feels important in much of anything I do, I relished tasks like this that afforded me a little purpose.  Measurable tasks, where I could achieve results.  Find the hardware place, find the air filters, exchange the cash for goods and services with the shop keep, and run my little buns back to the restaurant.  Easy.

What I wasn’t good at then, and am still not good at now, is going from point-A to point-B without getting distracted.  Fuck, I practically wear that like a badge of honor now, because what’s the alternative?  If I didn’t embrace that, I’d have to reckon with the fact that I pretty much can’t do anything without being sidetracked by something.  As I stood at one corner on my way to the hardware store, waiting for the light to change, I noticed a man in a payphone booth just hang up the receiver and come back into the light.  A black man, probably in his late forties, he instantly stuck out because he was wearing a sweater and a coat, long pants and shiny boots, all in the heat of a sun that offered no mercy.  I stared at him practically in disbelief; he had to be melting in this heat, right?  I was, and I was wearing shorts & a t-shirt.  I do so poorly with hot temperatures; they usually just frazzle my brain until I give up.

I don’t know precisely how long I was staring at him, but I soon realized that I was about the only other person on the street at the same time as this dapperly dressed gentleman.  Everyone else with some damn sense in their head was staying indoors away from the punishing glare of the sun.  I was just about to cross the street when the guy from the phone booth started to wave at me, and jogged slightly toward the crosswalk to wait for the light.  I swiveled around, looking everywhere to see if there was someone else he might be waving at, but again, it seemed like it was just me.  Plenty of cars driving around, so maybe it was for someone he recognized in one of those?  Nope.  He crossed the street and came right over to me.  Up close, I realized he might actually be more than fifty years old, possibly even pushing towards sixty.  You could see a few greys in his short jet black hair, so that probably seemed ancient to me at the time.  I’m still five years away from being fifty as I write this to you now, and I’m absolutely covered in grey hairs already & have been for years…so who knows, maybe he was still a young dude.  He had a giant smile on his face after he caught up to where I was standing, and asked me if I minded if he had a smoke.  It was rather uncommon in San Diego, which is somewhat of a known haven for health nuts, but every place has a dark alley or two where you can light up a smoke I figure.  In any event, I nodded my approval and he lit his.  “I just came off the boat,” he said, like I was supposed to have any idea as to what that meant.  “I’ve got three weeks of shore leave & I am EXCITED to get to it!”

“I hear ya man,” I said, not really knowing what to say next.

Not to worry – my newfound friend got right to the point.  He pulled his wallet out from the front of his pants, and like, just to look at it, you’d know he must have had to wrestle this thing into his pockets with the strength of ten men.  When I tell you that his wallet was THICK, trust me y’all, I’ve seen the wealthiest mobsters in movie history carry slimmer stacks of cash and call themselves kingpins.  I had no idea who this guy was, but in that instance it seemed like he was worth more than anyone I’d ever met.  Like, the entire thing took me completely off guard, and instinctively, I immediately told the guy to ‘keep it down’ like he was trying to offer me a knife inside of jail.  There might not be anyone in the street for the moment, but flashing a stack of cash this large could summon folks running from three states over.

To be truthful, it was an incredibly bizarre moment in time where I felt a million thoughts flow right through my brain – and not all of them good.  Part of me wanted him to put away his money so that I myself wouldn’t be tempted to bowl him over and run down the street with his dough.  I mentioned I was a good runner, right?  This guy seemed like he was practically worn out by crossing the street and definitely didn’t have the best shoes on for a chase to catch me if I was to snatch it and make a run for it, and I’d be totally lying to you if I didn’t say the thought had crossed my mind.  I might be an opportunist in that regard, but I still have a fairly intact moral compass and compassion for people, even strangers I’ve never met before.  He thankfully put this giant sack of cash he called a wallet back into his trousers, and turned his full attention back to me.  “I have a question for you my friend,” he said in a thick accent of some kind…maybe Jamaican?  I wasn’t sure.  “Maybe it’s more of a request.  You’ve seen that I’ve got money and I would like you to take me to…’the ladies’ now.  I’ll pay you for your time to take me there.”

Again, more thoughts flooded into my brain.  How long would that even take?  What about that air filter I was supposed to be buying and the hardware store I had to find?  And wait – what ladies did he mean?

“Umm…what do you mean by ‘the ladies’ sir,” I implored him.  “Am I supposed to know who they are?”

His eyes lit up & his smile became even wider as he repeated himself.  “You know…’the ladies,’ he said.  His eyebrows went up and down like an old Groucho Marx flick, comically trying to jump off his face.

Sometimes you have to take a good hard look at yourself and who you are.  I didn’t like much of me in that moment.  I was half ready to beat this guy down and make off with his wallet for one, which didn’t really sit well with me.  I also realized that, within an eyebrow raise or two, I did in fact know exactly what he meant by ‘the ladies’ in that moment – he was talkin’ about prostitutes.  I shouldn’t have known that, but I did.  I absolutely, 100% did.  As to where the heck they would be in broad daylight in a city I was still relatively unfamiliar with, I had no idea – but I had to at least TRY to help him, didn’t I?  So I looked up one side of the street and looked down the other, only for each side to reveal itself as still pretty much devoid of all life forms entirely.  A paycheck is a paycheck though, and if he was willing to grab even the tiniest bill in a wallet that stuffed, it seemed to me that it could be well worth my while.  The air filter would have to bloody well wait.  I was now completely invested in trying to find this poor gentlemen a hooker that he could spend his hard earned money on.  I started to piece it all together now…he must have had some kind of role in the navy, got shore leave at the San Diego port, and he immediately set out to pack in as much deviant fun as a man could have in the time that he had to do it.  At this point, it only seemed right that I helped him find his way to some poontang.  We all would, right?

Halfway up the slight hill of the street we were on, I could see that there was a hotel of some kind, and suggested that we make our way to it.  Beyond that, there was no real plan.  I didn’t even have any kind of clue what I would do when we got there!  Was I supposed to just go to the front desk and explain that this man I’d just met moments before possessed an obscene stack of cash and would like to purchase some pussy with it?  Or perhaps a butt of some kind?  Money talks, am I right?  No judgements here.  For real though – what was I going to say?  Who was I going to ask?  How was I going to get at least a couple of the bills outta this guy’s wallet for services rendered?  I found myself with so many questions.  The man seemed to take kindly to me though, and clearly mistook me for some kind of resident of San Diego that had a clue where I could take him.  He smiled back as I suggested we walk up the two or three blocks to the hotel, took a huge drag from his cigarette, stomped the stub underneath his foot, and said, “Okay then, let’s go.”  He still had half a cig to finish at least, but the mission was priority #1.

We didn’t talk too much as we made our way up the hill from what I remember, just a little small talk about the heat of the sun I’m sure.  We crossed through the first crosswalk and continued up the street.  As we made our way to the next corner ahead, finally, I could see another live human being!  They still existed!  Fantastic news.  And now, for better or worse, this was the only person I’d be able to ask about ‘the ladies’ in a sincere effort to get some of that sweet, sweet cashola in my hands help my new friend.

As a small mammal that wasn’t even fully grown yet, the closer we got to this other human being, the larger he looked.  We hit the light to signal the crosswalk and waited for the light to change.  At this distance, the guy looked as tall as Kareem Abdul Jabbar – he was monumentally LARGE.  Another black man, though not as black as the one I was already with, he too had a long coat that practically went down to his ankles.  What in the hell was it with the sweaters and coats? I thought to myself as I continued to melt pounds off my body in sweat in real-time.  As we started to cross the street with the changing of the light, I could see my friend start the struggle of wrestling his wallet free from his pants once again, and before we’d even reached the other side, this guy was already shouting to him – “Hey!  HEY!  Do you know where we can find ‘the ladies’ sir?  The tall dude did the same thing I did originally, which was to swivel his head around and look for anyone else that this guy might be talking to, but found no one else.  Realizing it was him, and seeing the size of the wallet this guy had, I could see him register the sheer girth of the collected bills between the folds.  He looked at me and was like, what the fuck is going on here, and WHY are you involved in this equation here little kid?  It was comforting to me that he quickly adopted the same tactics, and upon seeing the wallet, immediately told the guy to keep it down just like I had.  I instantly wondered if he had the same reaction to all that money and was now thinking about whether or not he could knock us both out in one punch and run away down the street.

I scrutinized this guy’s face as best I could.  I sensed that there was some kind of danger to be had here, but I was a child…just barely a teenager…and now there were two adults together.  Kareem put an arm on the guy’s shoulder, invited him to come on up to the hotel, and let him know that he’d help him find ‘the ladies’ as soon as he could.  I continued to walk with them, much to our new friend’s dismay – I could feel myself becoming a third wheel really quickly, and I kind of felt like this new dude didn’t want me to be around.  So I stuck it out for a moment or two longer, because the rest of the walk to the hotel was fairly short, and someone should at least make sure this guy on shore leave found his ladies, right?

As we got to the front of the hotel, which looked like it very well might be the kind of place that would have prostitutes inside of it, the tall guy let us know he was just going to go inside and make a call so that some ladies would come down to meet the man with the overstuffed wallet.  “Wait right here man, I’ll be right back,” he said, then turned to glare at me in a way to communicate my overall redundancy.

So we did…we waited there outside the hotel.  My new friend hauled out another smoke, lit it up, and proceeded to puff away.  Then, for the third time, he hauled out his treasure chest some would call a wallet, took a small set of big bills out of it, and proceeded to present the rest in my direction.  “These ladies,” he began, always drawing out the E sound at the end of ladies, like it was spelled ladieeeeees, “you cannot trust them.  But I trust you.  I want to give you my wallet to hang onto while I’m in there.”

This was it, right?  This was my moment.  All I had to do was say yes, he’d hand over the cash, willingly, and when he was inside busy humping away, I’d be able to run off with thousands over US dollars, which is like, millions in Canadian.  It’d be the easiest money I ever made, wouldn’t it?  Wouldn’t we ALL do the same thing?  What kind of obligation to restraint was I supposed to pretend that I had at age fourteen?

“I…I…hmm…I…umm…” stammered as I was basically breaking my brain trying to figure out what I was supposed to do in that small fragment of time.  “Yeah…I’m really sorry man, I can’t do that.  I’ve gotta go and buy my Aunt Leslie an air filter so her restaurant won’t become a sauna from all this heat today.”

The man looked heartbroken and in need of a new solution.  He shortly came to one, and asked me, “do you think that other guy would hold my wallet while I’m in there with ‘the ladies’?”  His eyebrows were pumping up and down again…I almost laughed, but this situation actually seemed quite serious now.

I had a bad feeling about this new guy that seemed so willing to come in and take quick control over this whole adventure, but just as I was about to inform him about my thoughts and tell him that he should probably run away before something bad happened, the tall man came back outta the hotel and said “Alright, everything is all set my man, the ladies are on their way.”

Dude’s face lit up with glee, and before I even had the chance to stop him, he extended his wallet out towards the man, asked him if he could hold it and wait for him to finish.  “Oh,” he said, looking nervously in my direction, “Yeah…of course I can do that for you my friend.”  He put one of his bony long arms around the guys shoulder again, and started to lead him away towards the hotel doors.  He turned around just long enough to look at me, gave me a smile and a wink as if to say “you know what it is son,” and they disappeared behind the doors.  I never saw either of them again, because of course I wouldn’t.  To this day I honestly don’t know how I saw either of them to begin with; they were both the kind of characters that you create and write about…not the kind of people you think you’d ever actually meet in real life.  From time to time, this moment in my life comes back to haunt me.  I will always wonder what happened in that very next chapter of the man with the cash, and whether or not he got his wallet back.

As for me, I did eventually find my way to the hardware store, got the air filters, and made my way back to the restaurant, somehow in enough time to not incur any questions about my absence.  I know you were all reading this, completely riveted, and you NEEDED to know how the situation with the air filters ended up, so there you have it, you’re welcome.  I don’t think my aunt has ever even heard this story herself, because I wasn’t about to try and explain this to anybody at the time.  Would they even believe me?  Would she believe me even now?  I wish there was some way to find out dear readers, dear friends, but alas…the only way to know would be for her to read this story, but most of my family/friends don’t tend to give that much of a flying fuck about what I do.  So I guess we’ll never know that part.

All I know, is that in another life, a me with way less morals is fully loaded with a bunch of stolen cash.  I like to think that version of me took the whole damn thing, invested it in ‘the tension sheet’ (look it up kids), and that he continues to live in a castle somewhere out there, and can still run a couple city blocks whenever the opportunity arises.  As for this version of me…the me that I currently am…I kinda gotta accept that my running days are over, and that my beautifully bearded face looks a lot less trustworthy these days than I guess it must have once seemed to back when I was still a kid.

C’est la vie, as they say…what a fucking strange-ass moment in time.

Keep it weird y’all…life’s way more amusing that way, I promise you that.

All my love to all of you.

– Jer @ SBS