A Punker's Notes [Original Novel]

Part One: Entry 12

I pick Frank up after his shift ends at 10:00 p.m. from Fran O’Brien’s Greek Cuisine. We’re somewhere in the middle of the Long Beach Harbor complex.

“Where ya wanna go?” I ask.

“Ah..., Hollywood.”

“It’s Monday night.”

“So..., let’s get some beer and cruise around.”

We buy a twelve-pack of Lucky Lager and ride north on the Long Beach freeway jelling out listening to a Joe Frank monologue.

“Oh..., dude. I just remembered.” Frank starts as we’re merging onto the Hollywood Freeway a little later. “It’s dollar night at the Cathay... Somethin’ like six bands for a buck.”

“Cool.”

We exit at Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and head towards the club.

We sit drinking beer parked up towards Sunset on Gower. Frank pulls out a baggie containing a few buds. He breaks some of the weed up then places it in a Zig Zag cigarette paper. He rolls it, lights up and passes the joint to me. I take a hit and pass it back. After my second hit I cough uncontrollably for close to a minute. When the coughing subsides I’m completely stoned.

We get out of the car and as we head towards the club entrance I spot a former workmate.

“Hey...! Shannon...!” I’m surprised to see her.

“Hey..., your Jack right…? You still work at Del Taco?”

“No..., I been workin’ at a buncha different places.”

“Cool,” she answers with little interest. “You got any spare change so I can get in?”

Shannon is almost as attractive as when she was a Del Taco hostess. But her cheery disposition has been replaced with disillusion.

Then ignoring me she’s yelling, “Sam...! Sam!!!” to a guy walking in with a guitar case. “Put me on the guest list!”

The second band has already started playing. Instead of going downstairs, we sit at the upstairs bar, order beers. We check out the few girls who’ve ventured out. Soon, Ish, short and chubby, walks up with Ron Skidmore.

“Fuck dude...! You want some Locker Room?” Ish takes the cap off a small jar of amyl nitrate and holds it out to us.

“Maybe later,” Frank declines.

Ish takes a big whiff off the bottle. Stands in front of us staring into space the stuff pounding his brain.

We all go downstairs to watch Battalion of Saints. Directly in front of the stage the small dance floor is a mass of violence. Fists swing and boots stomp as bodies are shoved around. I stand all the way to the back watching this scene. I’m not able to get into the music. Being super stoned I feel like the beat is controlling my heart. It’s a little fast for my buzz. After only ten minutes I walk back upstairs and out to my car where warm beer is waiting.

I sit down in the passenger seat and twist the top off of a Lucky Lager. I skull the thing in a matter of seconds. The alcohol begins to intensify my pot buzz. I turn on KXLU, a college radio station.

I finish the last of the beers throwing the empties on the floor in back. I get out of the car and walk down a narrow concrete sidewalk just to the left of the club. I find myself between a vibrating stucco wall and an old wooden house. I step up against the house behind a towering bushy evergreen shrub and take a leak.

Back in the car, sitting behind the wheel, I’m talking with Ish. He stands in the street leaning up against my door.

“Dude..., have some fuckin’ Locker Room!” he offers me the bottle. I unscrew the lid, hold the small glass vile under my nose sniffing hard and long. My head pounds hot and heavy for a good thirty seconds.

Frank walks out of the Cathay, gets in the Cutlass and pulls the door shut.

“I’m gonna go check out the Fuckoids,” Ish slurs after having another hit of the amyl nitrate walking back towards the front of the club.

I turn the ignition starting the V-8 and we slowly rumble off.

“Where we goin?” Frank asks.

“I don’t know,” I answer stoned and drunk looking at the road ahead.

We stop for more beer on Sunset then meander around without any destination.

“Turn here,” Frank suggests and we find ourselves somewhere in a neighborhood across Highland Street from the Hollywood Bowl. I stop the car for a moment not sure what I am doing next. A Ford Crown Victoria cruises slowly down the dead-end street.

“Is that a fuckin’ cop!?” Frank twists his head around fast his unkempt long blonde dreadlocks swishing along the shoulders of his jean jacket. The car rolls past and we realize it’s just someone returning to their home.

Later, the beer’s finished, we’ve smoked up the pot. Feeling a need to extend our buzz any way possible I’m garbling, “Fu-uck dude... I gah a hit uh acid in the glove box... You wa- spli- it.”

“I swore I’d never do that shit again,” Frank laughs.

I reach across to the glove compartment, open it. I find a small piece of tinfoil under other junk that’s been stuffed in there. I hand the foil to Frank, he unfolds it revealing a tiny paper square. Frank, although drunk, somehow tears the tiny paper perfectly in two.

Empty beer bottles chink against each other violently rolling around the floor in a puddle of beer as I slide the Cutlass across a dark intersection somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. Then the two of us are laughing hysterically for no reason as we sit for a few moments after pulling into someone’s driveway.

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Photo by Nathan Engel