Night Out

I was supposed to be being tattooed. We drove up to the Ave. and I went to see Hector. As usual he had someone still on his table, the Shop was all closed up, so I headed to the Bar. I ran into Bryan, who is working at the Shop now. He told me I must not have gotten his messages earlier today. I hadn't. Postponed.

I was supposed to get tattooed. My arm is almost but not even close to being finished and well, no one can finish it except Hector. There was a big pitty outside the Bar. All tied up and lonely looking. Very stoic but beautiful 100-something pound puppy. O.K. So "puppy" probably isn't the most accurate term. Some drunk fool's dog. we both had a bad feeling about the pup.

Next thing I know, I'm drinking a beer, chatting it up with some friends, and a guy runs in saying something like, "if you own a pit bull, it's getting killed." Well half of us own dogs and half of that half shouldn'town dogs - but do.

I guess the pup - Apollo - had an owner that shouldn't have been. Drunk douche had left the bar not 10 minutes earlier. Apparently made it just across the street and half a block down before - who knows what happened - his dog is in a death match with some other dog. I know why Apollo wasn't on leash - his leash AND collar were shit so must have gotten out of them, but the other dog...who knows.

We went outside to figure out what was happening. Stood on the corner for about a minute. Figured out it was a dog fight in front of Connolly's. Went across the street to get more context. About a dozen people hanging around like a fight ring and only one person trying to do anything about the situation. Great. Ian turns around to go back to the Bar. I run down the street toward the fight.

The rest is a little hazy. Bits and pieces of images too vivid and the rest, gone. The dogs were fighting to the death. Not because they wanted to anymore, but because they had to. It was the quietest dog fight I have ever witnessed. Both dogs didn't make a peep. The look in their eyes was both sad and drained. They wanted to be done, but nobody was doing anything.

A broom handle up the ass, tentatively, but nothing. Banging, punching, kicking, stomping, nothing, just - not death - survival.

I came up, started yelling for water - first things first - but I noticed that had already been tried. I took the trash bin on the sidewalk and started banging it. Ironically, Ian and I had just had - about an hour prior - a good long discussion about dog fights. I am very much afraid of them, very nervous for them to occur and overcompensate with the preventative measures. He told me things, and others have as well, on how to stop fights depending on their severity.

In reality, the only thing that works, is what works in the particular situation you are in with the particular dogs that are fighting at the time...and really, that could be any number of things. So, you start at the top and work your way down. After preventative, there is:

1. Water
2. Noise - banging, anything that will distract the dog(s) from what they are doing
3. Grab the hind legs and pull

This last one really only works if both dogs are getting pulled at the same time. Broom sticks up butt holes, really are just a variation of #2 and really, it doesn't work.

4. Put something - door - between the muzzles, noses - and squeeze it until it's shut.

This is really the best but last option. It's not always available but once the door, gate, whatever is shut, the dogs are still separated.

By the time I got to the fight, #1 was tried, #2 I tried, #3 worked once two people got up the courage to grab two fighting pit bulls hind legs.

The conviction they hold in their jaws when they are in a death/survival match is enough to keep you from wanting to get in any kind of way...I don't blame one soul...I was not about to grab onto either dog, dogs I had no way of knowing if they were HA or not.

Really, this is just a very clinical description of this massively terrible, bloody fight that I witnessed. It is too difficult for me to describe what I actually saw. The blood, the tearing...if you haven't seen it, you just haven't.

I just hope the puppies are O.K. I hope their parents are douche bags, but not so much that they won't shell out for the damage that was caused. I would estimate Apollo at about 2 G's, hopefully not more, 'cause that would just mean he was FUCKED up.

Poor pups.

Nick's Lick Her

Nick's is the liquor store on the opposite side of the side street from my apartment. I'm not sure who Nick is. Mohamed runs the place. He most likely doesn't own it, but he runs it. When the alarm goes off in the middle of the night, he is the one that comes and turns it off.

As far as I can tell, he's been there for a long time, at least 5 to 10 years. Ian and I ended up running into some people up at the Russian River earlier in the year that had lived down the street at one point, many years ago. They asked how "Mo" was doing. He introduces himself as "Mo", most people in the neighborhood, at least the women, call him "Mo Mo".

Anyway, Nick's. "Nick's" is written vertically on the South side of the building in black paint. There are a few signs that protrude off the building on the East side, the entrance side. The top one is white and lights up and reads, "Nick's Liquor". Just beneath that is another white sign that reads, "Liquor" and below that is another light up sign that is yellow and looks like at one point it spun, this one also reads, "Liquor". Most everyone calls the place Nick's, but when we're feeling saucy or asking if someone knows where we live, we mention it as, "Nick's Liquor, liquor, liquor". Seems redundant but at least none of the signs read "Grocery" or "Deli" as a lot of other corner stores in the O-town do; at least it's accurate.

Dinner of Champions

I went next door to Nick's to buy some much needed beer. The woman at the counter had a pickle in a bag, waiting to be purchased. Her man counterpart was in the process of picking up a few other items. Total purchase was a small handle of the white Carlo Rossi, a $.99 bag of honey roasted peanuts, and the pickle.

Dinner of Champions.

Birthday Fun and Games

Yesterday was my neighbor's birthday. He turned 11. My downstairs neighbors and friends decided to have him and his two brothers over. He had previously been a bit down in the dumps, not only because in general he feels that no one around him really cares about him, but that he was pretty certain that no one who had the ability (or even the responsibility) to do anything, would do anything for him on this special day.

I remember when I was 11. I remember when I was younger and my birthday meant a lot to me. I can't even fathom what it must feel like to want to be very excited about your birthday and have to protect yourself against the hurt because no one cares. I'm glad that my downstairs neighbors are as wonderful as they are to take him in, give him cupcakes and even presents. I think the couple hours he was allowed to play video games would have been enough for him. I'm so very glad he got his day.

Happy Birthday Marcus. You rule. In the face of every obstacle that is put in your way in this life of yours, you have already perservered.

Marcus is a young child from a common but sad background. His mother is the mother of several (six) children of perhaps just as many fathers. She is on welfare and works most of the time. Grandma comes by and helps out, whatever that means. The oldest daughter, though she is not in the house herself, often leaves her own son of 1 year, to be taken care of either by mom, grandma or in most cases the two oldest boys - Marcus being one of these. She once left her son at the house for over three weeks, the story I heard was that she was out, partying or some other thing, something that perhaps an 18 year old should be doing. Then there's the mom's little one. She's about the same age as her oldest daughter's son. From there are an 8 year old, Marcus, a 14 year old and the oldest sister in the house whom I'm guessing is around 16.

The boys take care of each other and the babies for the most part. The Grandma and mom do their part of yelling, bossing and generally abusing the boys in what I'm assuming they believe is "caring" for or "raising" the children.

One time Marcus said to me, "That's cool you guys get to take care of dogs. We have to take care of babies."

In general they are very good boys. Boys that have lacked a stable home. I heard recently that when you are in a disfunctional home, you don't realize that it is disfunctional. But what happens when you do realize?

My only hope is that these boys continue to perservere and come out of it mostly unscathed. That they find their place in this world and that it is not in a gang behind a glock.

In the West O

and what!? what the fuck is supposed to happen? what the fuck are we supposed to be? I am so scared right now...i fucking hate this place. I hate this place we call fucking earth, this place we call home. I hate people. I hate that people hurt other people, that they kill them, that we have movies that are all about torture and fear and we are entertained by this. i don't even know what to do with myself. I don't know if i want to cry or scream. If i want to stand tall or cower and hide. I had a guy ask me where i got my shoes. then try and convince me over the course of a very long five minutes to take my shoe off. now if a big black guy with grill and a fucking stocking hat in a very nice new pick up truck at midnight asked you to take of your shoe...what would you do? Fucking right. run. I did that. In as much as i am proud of myself for getting the fuck out of the situation it was six minutes too late. what was his right hand doing? reaching for a gun? jerking off? who the fuck knows. To his own point, if he had wanted to do something to me, he would have. He would have bashed me...but what if that wasn't his style? WHAT THE FUCK? WTF? wtf? what the fuck? I can think of the million things that i did "wrong" the fucking million things that I shouldn't have done, the half dozen things that I could of done, topping the list with uh, fucking RIDE...RUN...get the fuck out of dodge. Why explain to him that I'm all fucking bent out of shape because we are in fucking west oakland. uh, duh. he knows where the fuck he is. why the fuck did he want me to take my shoe off...i think that's why i stuck around for so long...if that is his method, to stun, then he fucking made his mark but he failed to fucking deliver. I'm stupid, 1. I smiled to much, 2. I do that when i'm scared, nervous, uncomfortable or happy...hmmm, ok. I gotta say, I'm so fucking happy I'm not dead I truly was expecting to know what it feels like to have a bullet in flesh. truly. yes. wow. dumb. scared. i didn't have any money. 3. i couldn't think of anything 4. deer in headlights 5. i know exactly what dude looks like 6. license plate? no. make? no. black. late 20's early 30s. camo jacket. net hair douche bag skull thing. grill. rounder face. maybe 5'10, 6'. silver truck. great. 65% of oakland. 75% of california. fuck. i'm out. rode for my life. out. home. done.dumb as fuck comes to mind. not dead also comes to mind, since i still have one. perv? killer? normal dude that has a way of fucking scaring the living shit out of fucking white girls on bikes? yes. and now i'm left wondering. do we even know what to do? is it just me that's retarded? could we handle it? could we really be that protagonist from saw? would we fight back? we'd want to and we know exactly how we want to be, except when we're there. and then you know what? we're fucking stuck with who the fuck we are. and we do stupid fucking shit. we are stupid. i am stupid. i am alive. unscathed. scared and finding this all a little too fucking real.