Lots of asphalt on that ride from LAX to Gloria’s apartment. Because of the infamous reputation preceding it, I was keen to witness the traffic of Los Angeles. Normally I would not be so masochistic, but given that my stay was only a couple days, I was prepared to endure the certain amount of suffering required to behold things freakish and sensational. But over the course of the forty minute drive, I was reminded of Evil’s popular adage: It is banal. And so it was. Massive and tranquil, I saw how the weight of L.A.’s traffic suffocated its subjects into a grudging obedience, how it crushed the willfulness out of any would-be mavericks until they accepted full submission to the whims of the grid system, which was admittedly competent as far as systems go, but still anxiety-inducing for how it could lock up at any moment without warning, but José told me the traffic today was better than usual, and I agreed that it seemed alright. We made steady progress from the freeway to main streets that offered my first glimpse into how people lived and shopped in the area; not necessarily in that order. The answer to ‘how’ was ‘well’; most of what I saw was clean and well-kept, prepared to be perceived, and I made my peace with the fact that I would probably not be seeing any ‘real’ L.A. during my stay.
Around the time José’s GPS said we were three minutes away from our destination, we entered a suburb. We were in Culver City, apparently, which I could see on the map was in close proximity to the the famous Hills. There were many tiny houses built in Spanish and Southwestern styles, all neatly ordered and full of character and familial vitality. It was like looking at the handsome spines of your books all lined up on the shelf, and the sight brought me serene pleasure. José made stop after stop at four-way-stop after four-way-stop, maneuvered deftly around all road-work and pulled up to a slender two-story home made of orangish stone.
For the duration of the ride I tried to emanate a positive, easy-going attitude that assured a five-star rating for José. It was hard for me to imagine a scenario where I was upset enough by a drive/driver that a one-star demerit would feel so necessary, but José didn’t know me or my temperament, and these ratings were important for those who Uber-ed as a career, I’d heard. Even if this wasn’t José’s situation, I wanted to do right by the possibility. So, when José put the car in park, I cheerily affirmed, “Well, that was a five-star ride if I ever had one!” and met his kind, brown eyes in the rearview mirror. José gave me a thumbs-up. Then his mustachioed lip started to quiver, like a chilly wooly bear might, and José began to cry.
It was a hard cry, the kind usually reserved for bedrooms and closets, a series of long wails soundtracking convulsions of the body that strained the limits of the seatbelt. Nothing was held back in these full-throated sobs and I wondered if this was something José felt comfortable doing with all his passengers, if maybe this was some kind of weird selling point for him. Was there a preference setting in the app I should have set to get a non-mourner? I felt guilty for intruding on this clearly personal implosion, but how guilty could I feel when it was José who was making his grief public? I unbuckled to exit the vehicle, but noticed that José had taken the car out of park and was beginning to make minute adjustments to his already-immaculate parking job while continuing his crescendo of screams. The cacophony was unbearable, and it felt like his noises stayed in the car once emitted, all piling up on each other and tangling like so many suicidal moths. Then there was a loud-as-hell BOMP–José had gone up over the curb and onto the green lawn of the house. To compensate for the flub, José began exerting effort to keep it together as he churned up the lawn, but his despair was still leaking out in pathetic whimpers and moans that were way more sad. I finally accepted that José was not going to stop, and for all I knew my fee was still racking up, so I said thank you and opened the door to fling me and my shit out of the vehicle, hitting the ground and rolling away. The lawn was a mess now, an ugly salad of unearthed grass and dirt. I got up and brushed myself off, watching José make a forty-point turn to get off the lawn and back to the street, back on the grind.
I watched him go, aghast. I couldn’t dismiss the awful idea that, through some callous oversight, I was to blame for José’s meltdown, that I had hurt him without meaning to. Was I wrong about five-star reviews? Were they somehow actually bad? I shifted my weight back and forth in the mangled remains of the lawn for a few moments, stewing in hot guilt. Few things could deject me quicker or with more ruthlessness than the aftermath of good (or at least self-righteous) intentions gone awry, gone so awry that their effect is the exact opposite of what was intended. It was a chaos I could never quite reckon with, that a person could point all their intention and effort in one direction, only for the end result to be an unceremonious failure, denied of meaning. There are certainly much more tragic examples of this kind of arc occurring all the time, but my episode with José made me acutely aware of the prevalence of such arcs. My awareness inspired helplessness.
But I had to let it go. I couldn’t keep standing on Gloria’s ruined lawn doing nothing, it was very suspicious; so I gave José his five stars and scuttled down the driveway of the house, following it to the rear of the property where it emptied out into a small parking lot, currently empty, which I knew to anticipate thanks to Gloria’s texts that told me her roommates would be out at their respective works when I arrived. Now it was just a matter of getting inside. I referred to the texts once again:
sorry cant pick you up at airport!! Dont be mad. i have work, so just uber to my apartment [address]
front door keys are under mat at top of stairs. roommates shouldnt b home. my rooms the last on the left
feel free to do whateva. at 7 uber to a hotel in the Hills called “the purity,” i’ll meet you there
if u dont already have some, get clothes that are all black or all white, i can explain when we meet. I have a fun evening planned so See u soon!
I checked the time, 10:35 am. Looking up from my phone, I quickly spotted iron stairs attached to the side of the house that led up to a door on the second floor. I climbed to the top and reached under the brown, wire-brush welcome mat to find the promised house key. So far so good. After struggling with the lock for a second, I busted the door open with a bit more force than I would have preferred, and it slammed against the wall. “Shit!” I whispered, and checked for damages, all of which amounted to some chipped paint and a slight dent in the drywall. Fortunately, also as promised, no one was inside the apartment to witness the snafu, and I knew I would be long gone before anyone noticed or cared. Gently closing the door behind me, I took stock of my surroundings. To my right was a tidy little living area that was comfortably-but-reasonably furnished. I recognized a pillow on the couch as Gloria’s. The kitchen lay in front of me, equally well-kempt and non-ostentatious, and to the left was a hallway with the bathroom and bedrooms attached. All in all, it seemed like a cozy spot, and I was relieved to see with my own eyes that Gloria was living decently.
Gloria had painted a skeletal portrait of her roommates in our conversations, reducing the two to their occupations. Reportedly, Rebecca was a high-strung woman working as a Content Director at a nearby Content House, in charge of figuring out skits, bits, and personalities for a group of lads with high potential to go viral, and William was being paid by his Stanford graduate program to discover a new species of cryptocurrency. Like me and Gloria, both were in their twenties and were monsters of the twenty-first century.
I heard a sound like a rope being dragged across the floor, and whipped around to see a small dog hauling itself by its front legs, back legs lay splayed out in the rear like the dog was humping the floor in one long hump. Gloria hadn’t mentioned any dog! I grinned. The little dog was silent, but its tail wagged furiously, tipping its head up at me in a desperate bid for affection, a request I obliged happily. Checking the dog’s collar, I found a tag that read “Baby Lord.” The dog’s name was Baby Lord. “What’s up with your legs, buddy?” I asked while scratching under Baby Lord’s chin. He (I saw Baby Lord’s penis) didn’t respond and still didn’t make use of his hind legs, so I guessed Baby Lord was a cripple, which of course made me want to be extra generous in my cooing and petting. But then our session was interrupted by something Baby Lord heard, his ears perking up as his nose pointed to the window above the couch in the living room. Faster than I could offer a lift, Baby Lord took the position of a handstand, hind paws hoisted all the way above his head, to run on his front paws over to the couch, somersault up, and thrust himself to the glass to see what was up in the neighborhood. I had never seen anything quite like it.
“Damn, Baby Lord,” I praised, and Baby Lord gave me a wink and a wag before returning to his vigilance. I texted Gloria “dog is impressive” and sighed, then shuffled down the hall towards her bedroom, the final steps of the first leg of my journey. With no articulation of my sleeping arrangement, we were either thinking the same thing or not. I caught myself hesitating when I reached the door, hand resting on the knob, but was unsure of what exactly was causing my dis-ease. Though Gloria wasn’t in the room, the room was still of her, an impression, and that wasn’t nothing. Anyone would tell you that getting your toes wet is a more difficult increment than full immersion, but it felt stupid that the very purpose of this visit would get me so hung-up, and I reprimanded myself for overthinking. But still, when crossing the threshold, I did so with reverence. Couldn’t help it.
The aesthetic of Gloria’s room was heavenly, intentionally probably, an effect aided by the wide window on the eastern wall, above the bed and open, which allowed the brightness of the day, as well as a smooth, comfortable breeze, to inhabit the space. The blinds were linen and so were the bedclothes; the walls were painted in a blunt, ultimate white, a very intentional point along the spectrum of whites. There was a bookshelf that I perused a little, hovering over titles I had actually seen Gloria read in real life. I searched for All The King’s Men, and there it was–that was a good day.
I shed my backpack, suitcase, sweatshirt and flopped on Gloria’s bed, moaning “ooooooooaaaahhhh” in relief. I had finally stopped traveling. I closed my eyes and inhaled through the nose, and it was then I recognized a whiff of the Gloria Smell embedded in the pillows and blankets. The ensuing shock of nostalgia caused me to momentarily forget about exhalation, and I lay there with my eyes still closed and my chest arced upward like there existed a too-short string with one end tied to my sternum and the other tied to the ceiling. For the duration of those ten-or-so seconds I was somewhere else, somewhere unrealized, fantasized, mythologized, criticized, baptized, and idealized; a memory un-complicated. Even Gloria in the flesh would have had less of an effect than just her scent, as unique and identifiable as fingerprints, yet just as forgettable. But now I was remembering, and the arrival of memories ascribed a rising feeling, like I was waking up.
So I woke up. My eyes fluttered open and Gloria’s bedroom racked back into focus. I’d fallen asleep? I checked my phone for the time–I'd been asleep for an hour and a half. It was noon now. I must have been more tired than I thought. Laying outstretched in the bed’s blinding square of daylight, I stared at the ceiling and took time to let my disorientation melt off. Taped on the ceiling were a few personal effects–cards, pictures, and a piece of printer paper with “MY SINS ONLY BELONG TO ME” written in many layers of thick, black Sharpie.
I shot up to a sitting position, all at once fully awake.
What an intense mantra to put on one’s ceiling! All those feelings, those implications. I had a strong urge to distract myself from them, so I looked about Gloria’s room and spotted the perfect thing, a few loose cigarettes atop her bedside table. The last time I had done nicotine was at school, but this was the perfect excuse to break fast. I grabbed one loosie and a lighter from my backpack and went back outside, locking the door behind me and moving with caution, wary of any unwanted attention the destroyed lawn might have gotten. The day, however, was as peaceful as ever, so I settled on the bottom step and smoked lazily, squinting out into the street and feeling blue-collar cool.
Rosemarie’s prophecy floated through my thoughts like she was yelling it from the window of a passing car: You already know! Gloria choose! Those words were déjà vu, a tap on the shoulder to fake me out into looking Back Then. Smoking a cigarette in the sun, waiting for Gloria...the elements were all too familiar, a present that was just a portmanteau of the past. And while nothing is new, only referenced, I’d sworn to Gloria to produce no sequels, which meant no looking back.
To that end, it was helpful, then, that a Prius pulled into the driveway just as I renewed my vow, pulling through to park out back. Either this was a first-floor resident or one of Gloria’s roommates had come back for lunch or something. I heard the car door slam, and I peeked around the railing of the staircase to see emerge from around the corner a guy on his phone, my age, in cargo shorts, with a shaved head that still showed a deep widow’s peak, a slight beard, and a nondescript green hoodie over a plaid shirt. Whatever was on his phone, he looked at it until the very moment he reached the foot of the stairs and saw that something, me, was blocking his way, to which he said nothing and just stared at me, aloof and mouthbreathing. This must be William, the cryptocurrency guy. Decidedly uncharmed already, I snubbed my butt, started to throw it on the ground, thought better of it, and instead put it in my back pocket. William stood by silently, watching, until I got up and extended my hand to him.
“Hey, are you William? One of Gloria’s roommates? I’m Seth, I’m just visiting for a couple days.” William eyed my hand like it was a stupid idea, but begrudgingly put his phone away for the shoddiest of shakes.
“So why are you here?” asked William in a deep voice he must have been so proud of. It was such a rudely posed question that I stopped caring at all what kind of impression I left on William, and loosened up.
“Oh, Gloria’s my friend. Just visiting. I hear you’re a cryptocurrency guy?”
William looked at me like looks could kill, and deadpanned, “Sure. I’m the cryptocurrency guy. Listen, I’ve been up since 2am working.” His emphasis on ‘work’ was to imply I’d never heard of such a thing. “I don’t know what work you do, if you work at all, but the work I do is very demanding and consequential. It’s needless to say, then, but I guess I should anyway for the sake of your comprehension, that’s it’s been a long day, and I’d really like it if I could get into my apartment without playing twenty questions with what’s-her-name’s fuck buddy.”
I wish I hadn’t visibly gaped, but I did, and stepped aside. William thanked me in the manner of a particularly pathetic beggar, all saccharine, and trudged up the iron steps with footfalls so heavy it made the whole structure quake. Jesus Christ! It was almost an honor to be in the presence of someone so audaciously unlikeable. The Prince of Piss rose to his quarters and fumbled with his keys.“ And was that you who ruined our lawn? Hope you can afford to pay for that much damage.” William aimed this comment at the front door, eyes on the lock, his tone flat and factual, like he was reading aloud from an encyclopedia entry dedicated to how much of an idiot I was. I expressed innocence without giving too much away, wanting to protect José from William’s overeducated wrath. William snorted mirthlessly, having expected nothing less from a criminal than to deny, and opened the door, but I wanted one more word with him.
“Wait. William?”
Probably despite himself, William heeded my call from halfway inside.
“What.”
“Who’s Baby Lord’s owner?”
William’s lips twitched, and I knew it was him.
“It sure would be a shame if–”
That’s as far as I got before William flipped me the bird and went into the apartment, locking the door behind him. Touché, William. Just as well, I didn’t really know where I was going with that threat. I couldn’t imagine inflicting any sort of harm upon Baby Lord, but something had to be said, and I’d at least tried. Though I could see myself doing something for real if word came back from Gloria that he had been being really awful to her. For the sake of my bluff and Gloria’s emotional health, I hoped it was not the case, and for the first time I began to wonder if life for her in L.A. was less than ideal. I had just assumed she was alright because Gloria had always seemed to me the type of person who would always be alright, but going back over our scattered conversations in my head, I realized Gloria had never illustrated her day-to-day with much detail, which now struck me as telling. I pledged to get an honest answer when I saw her.Then I patted myself down and realized, while I had the essentials, wallet/phone/lighter, I had not brought Gloria’s door key out with me. I sat back down on the steps in defeat to plan my next move. I knew I still needed to get clothes that matched Gloria’s mysterious dress code of all black or all white, so I perused a map, searching for nearby outlets that were affordable. Eventually I decided on a Goodwill that was a forty minute walk away, expecting it to be a good time-kill as well as an opportunity to see the city at street-level. My knees cracked when I stood up, and I started walking.
***
Most of my journey was unremarkable; not worth remarking upon. The most enjoyable stretch was at the outset when I was still in the suburbs and able to admire more closely the lines of homes brimming with character. I watched blondes in sunglasses carry their little dogs while walking their cats; I invented backstories for each decorated house, hypothesizing motivations for giant garden gnomes and gargoyle door-knockers; at four-way-stops I peered down perpendicular streets to watch them fade into infinity. This short period of travel was stimulating enough to merit commentary.
The truly unremarkable part kicked off when I escaped the ‘burbs and stumbled out into the Waste, a desolate, dry stretch of land with a single, perfectly straight road branded into the dirt, an extremely hostile environment for anything that wasn’t a car. It was a hard cut from the close, green domesticity I had just traveled through, like the two environments were contained within comic panels I had transgressed the boundaries of. One side of the road had a slightly elevated sidewalk for misguided pedestrians like myself, while the other was lined with dead shrubbery and a fence, beyond which was a railway. Several times during my odyssey down this road did I pass a station that I could have accessed, but each time I declined, reminding myself that neither speed or efficiency was the point.
Marching down the roadside under an empty blue sky, I was equal parts pleased and embarrassed to feel an earnest, American Thing stir deep in my chest. The vastness of the landscape, the naiveté of the adventure...I had etched out my spot in a grand, flawed tradition. Lewis and Clarke could eat their hearts out, and Sacagawea I would respectfully leave out of it.
Who knows how many lifetimes passed in the Waste? How many speeding cars buffeted me with the wind of a tardy worker? How many possible greetings I considered to begin my reunion with Gloria? When my phone told me that I was just five minutes away from my destination, I couldn’t believe it; nothing looked different than how it had looked forever. But then a promising bend in the road appeared, as tantalizing as an oasis, and before I knew it I was walking down a ratty main street populated exclusively by strip malls. However, ratty as it was, even here I could sense in my bones what I had sensed every moment since I’d left LAX, which was the vastness of the West, the way horizons spread wider and skies stood taller than sight could contain. Even a strip-mall had the opportunity to stretch and flourish in the Californian sprawl.
As I approached my destination, it became apparent that I would have to cross the street. And what a preposterously wide street it was. This damn street was so wide, lanes upon lanes, that the curvature of the earth impeded my view of the other side, but I did manage to catch a glimpse of some kind of commotion halfway across, a collection of people on the median. It occurred to me, in a banal sort of way, that it might be a riot, and that an L.A. riot might be something I’d like to see, so I decided to cross the street there and then so that I would intersect the gathering. And besides, a pitstop would be necessary; no way could I get across this street in one pass.
Layers of heat rippled up from dozens of lanes of moderate traffic. I was hoping an obvious opportunity to cross would present itself, but the traffic kept coming and so, sick of waiting, I launched. Running as fast as I could, I managed to cross four lanes unscathed, but at the top of the fifth I saw in my periphery a Honda Civic bearing down on me. With very little time or mental allowance to strategize accordingly, I performed a confusing shuffle-stop-trip as the driver tried to decide in the moment whether to stop or advance. I can only imagine the distress I was causing them, and so it was understandable when, seconds later, the Honda struck me at a speed of, I’d guess, thirty miles per an hour, nicking me by the hip and subsequently ragdolling my body across the pavement in what must have been a gruesome spectacle for bystanders, if there’d been any, but, to me, was actually quite curiously painless, maybe because of the adrenaline, so after doing a quick check for any bodily traumas, I dusted myself off and continued my sprint at the behest of a line of honking cars, waving thank you/sorry.
However many lanes of traffic later, I staggered over the borderline of the wide median that doubled as a turn-lane; my yellow finish line. Taking deep breaths, primarily as a test for internal bleeding, I sat down to rest my scraped palms on my should-have-been-shattered knees and appreciate the insane miracle I’d just been the conduit for. Had a Higher Power chosen me to confirm its existence? Who could possibly be content with me as Prophet? My gaze, so far cast down upon the scorched asphalt, ascended skyward, to where Higher Powers are generally believed to reside, looking for some kind of answer.
An answer was tossed down from on High as a pair of sunburnt breasts, red and glaring like bloodshot eyes. I sighed in relief: What’d happened to me was just stupid. A yellow tank top slid down over the breasts, which I could now see belonged to a white girl with dreads beaming down at me.
“Sorry, man! I thought you were someone else.”
“No, yeah, it’s okay; I’m someone else.” I realized my comprehension error and shook my head. “Wait, I mean; that doesn’t make sense. Rather, I’m someone else to your someone else. Sorry, I’m a little discombobulated. I got hit by a car on my way here and so I’m still reeling a bit.”
“Oh my god, are you okay? Let me help you up.” Dreads-girl stuck out her hand and I gratefully accepted her assistance, easing up slowly.
“Thank you, yes; actually, weirdly, I feel mostly fine. My name is Seth, by the way.”
“Seth, you said? Seth! Nice to meet you, Seth. My name is Green Greens; self-given, of course, and my pronouns are they/them,” Green Greens chirped merrily. They were a tiny person, barely over five feet tall, and adorned with decoration: bracelets on wrists, paint on nails, trinkets and fabric tangled in the dreads, and piercings where piercings are possible. I saw a tattoo on their forearm, a quote attributed to ‘Dali Mama’ that reprimanded close-mindedness. Piercing blue eyes offset their flushed cheeks.
Dutifully I replied, “Ah, right, my pronouns are he/him. Nice to meet you, Green Greens. Excellent choice of name. Big Kirby fan?”
“The biggest! I’m trying to get my partner to change her name to DeeDeeDee, it would be so cute, but she’s not as thrilled about the idea. Say, have we ever met, Seth? How did you hear about our Autonomous Zone?”
“No, I don’t think we’ve met, this is my first time in L.A. And your what?”
Green Greens gestured over their shoulder to the group of people I’d seen from the sidewalk, numbering at a solid baker’s dozen and in festive spirits; holding up signs, shouting at passing cars, dancing to music, getting drunk and high. More and more people were crossing over into the median by the minute, causing Green Greens’ explanation to be delivered in distracted, choppy bursts, as it was interrupted often by salutations to and from the newcomers.
“Autonomous Zone. Our Median Autonomous Zone–MAZ for short (hey Alicia!). We’re occupying this median here in Culver City from 1pm to 4pm to protest how goddamn wide these streets are! You weren’t the first to be hit by a car trying to cross, and you won’t be the last (glad you could come, Raffy!). Daniel, who set this up,” they pointed to a heavily bandaged guy popping wheelies in his wheelchair, “has been hit twelve times on this road alone. Enough is enough, you know? So we’re hoping to cause a bit of a ruckus here today, get the attention of someone who works for the city, and start making progress for the sake of the citizens of Culver City (dope outfit, Maggie!).”
Green Greens paused to rip Juul. They offered me some, I declined, then they told me it was mango flavored, so I accepted. As I pulled, I noticed a banner being erected over the DJ’s set-up. The banner read, ‘The Clock Is Stuck At Midnight,’ in white, Arial font on top of pitch-black fabric, a little clock with the hands at twelve acting as a period. I handed the Juul back to Green Greens and asked in the same breath as my fruity exhale, “What’s ‘The Clock Is Stuck At Midnight’?”
“Oh,” they laughed, “they’re our sponsor. Not very radical, I know, for our MAZ to have money going into it, but they offered to pay for the speakers for the music, and they’re bringing pizza later. They have some merch here if you want to snag a shirt or something. They’re a brand just starting up; they sell cool clothes and their whole thing is being politically conscious. Progressive. I think their means of production are eco-friendly. I think. Here, look at this.” Green Greens pulled out their phone and showed me a picture of Jaden Smith wearing really tall shoes. “So, that’s Jaden Smith, and those shoes are Clock’s. I heard all the money from this promotion went to the ocean.”
“Like ocean clean-up?”
“No, like into the ocean.”
“Right.” I scratched my chin. “Jaden Smith, huh? That’s a pretty big get. Who started this brand?”
Green Greens shrugged. “I dunno. Someone with money and guilt, probably.”
It was such a truthful thing to say that I laughed, and Green Greens laughed, too. Then, remembering Gloria’s dress-code for the night, I asked Green Greens if they could show me the merch table. They obliged, taking me by the hand and leading me to a tent with a representative from The Clock Is Stuck At Midnight selling their wares. Everything was staggeringly overpriced, of course, but this was my vacation and I had come prepared to do a bit of spending. It didn’t hurt that I thought the long-sleeve button-ups they had in stock were actually very cool, made of black corduroy and featuring a small, golden clock embroidered on the breast-pocket. I bought it, donned it on the spot, and threw away the shirt I was wearing. Getting hit by that car had tattered it into worthlessness.
“Looking sharp, Seth!” Green Greens cheered. “Here, wanna dance?”
There was still loads of time before I had to meet Gloria, and just as they asked the question, the telltale xylophone line of ‘Love My Way’ floated through the air, igniting within me an ecstatic reaction. “Richard Butler!” I cried. “Fantastique!” We dove into the crowd and were embraced by its warm, silly energy. Cars intermittently honked in solidarity as they drove by, and some of us cheered, but some of us shook our fists at them, only seeing another enemy. “Don’t honk, show up!!” I heard one protester scream. People waved signs reading ‘YOU CAN’T HIT US ALL’ and ‘MAZ KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES’ and ‘25% OFF CLOCK/MIDNIGHT MERCHANDISE.’ I jumped around with my eyes closed and a big smile on my face, all blissed out under the sun. For the first time that day, there was no who/what/where/when on my mind.
It was while we were shuffling and swaying to The Mamas & The Papas’ ‘California Dreamin’ that the police arrived. The music must have been loud enough that no one heard the sirens, leaving the MAZ totally unprepared for the two massive SUVs that plowed into the crowd, bodies careening over their windshields and rolling under their wheels mere feet away from where I stood. Raw instinct threw myself backward, landing on the ground in a heap. Everyone was screaming and running in a churn of chaos, exacerbated when one of the cops, decked out in full riot gear, threw tear gas into the mix. Get out of here, I thought, obviously. But it was nearly impossible to tell where ‘out’ was because of the clouds of gas obfuscating my vision two-fold. Tears streaming and snot flowing, I did my best to summon the geography of the MAZ to my mind, and began scrambling towards what I hoped was the other side of the street, staying low to the ground. Then I remembered Green Greens.
“Green Greens!” I coughed through the haze, looking this way and that, waving my hands around in front of me to prevent collision. Then I saw Daniel, the guy who’d organized the MAZ, splayed out on the ground beside his crumpled wheelchair nearby, not moving. I came so close to running away. Very, very close. But in that split second of indecision I heard a cop yell, “There’s their leader!” I knew then that there was no other option than to help. No way could I face Gloria later and inform her that I’d left a handicapped activist behind to be brutalized by the LAPD. Blind with fear and toxins, I ran to where Daniel lay, threw myself on top of his body, and waited for us to get the shit beat out of us.
Instead, I heard a big, muffled thump, followed by a series of smaller, muffled thumps, and then a tap on my shoulder. “I’m not resisting, I’m not resisting!” I wailed.
“I know,” Green Greens said. “Just please get off Daniel.”
I complied, rolling off to the side. At Green Green’s feet was an unconscious SWAT member, helmet disposed of and a big bruise on his temple. I whistled incredulously while Green Greens got Daniel to swallow some water. They said he would be okay.
“Green Greens are you alright? Did you just put down SWAT?”
Green Greens panted out a chuckle. There was a thin trickle of blood seeping from their left nostril. “I am alright, thank you, Seth. I’m just strong, man. I’m strong.”
“No shit.”
Green Greens let out a bigger laugh, then“You should get out of here.” I objected, despite not knowing exactly what I could contribute past this point. “Everything will be fine,” Green Greens assured, “I’ve got this under control. Pigs are only pigs, you dig?” It was a really cool thing to say, and at this point I took Green Greens’ word as gospel, so I heeded their advice, giving them a hug and fleeing to the Goodwill.
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