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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
 O my brothers: we, all of us in the realms of light and mercy, have
watched movies for nearly a century where the bad guy threatens the
good guy or the town or the lake and all the good guy has to do is kill
the bad guy or chase him and his gang away and life goes back to normal
and he gets the beautiful girl.
Were it only so.
Flashback: a Tuesday morning, March 2003.
I had worked until three a.m on the HoneyBun website. Launch
approached. Money dwindling. Pay-off on investment coming minutes or
days after I get site up: this is the mantra which kept me humming
tunefully along as the newly formatted year gained traction in my brain.
My doorbell rang at about 9:00 a.m.
I ignored it: it could only be one of my local guardian angels who
would need three or five or ten dollars for booze with which to ease
her way off an all-night crack binge or for more drugs to keep it
going. They knew better than to ring the bell so early. However, in a
true emergency, which it often was — you know how it is when the booze
runs out or all the drugs are gone and you simply are not done yet— the
doorbell would keep ringing loudly until I wandered to the front
windows to see who it was. If I did that, they pretty much knew they
had me. So the task was to lie still, to passively resist, to wait them
out: an gargantuan battle of wills, which in truth I lost more often
than not over the years.
(continued on the flip-flop)
An illustration I was going to use on HoneyBun's blog. Those naughty girls!
The doorbell rang one more time and then no more, grace bestowed. I
went back to sleep. Didn't remember the trifling interruption when I
woke up a couple hours later.That afternoon, as I returned from lunch a
neighbor waved me over. As I drew near he said—We gotta talk.
—What's up? I asked.
What he told me, as a friend and as de facto emissary from GangstaLan'
(of which he was not a part, I must stress, but they knew that he knew
me, just by proximity) was this:
He said
—You a dead man if that gunshot case goes to court and you around.
He said
—The shooter was at your door this morning to get a look at you.
He said
—Oh, and the DA doesn't give a fuck about you, either.
I suspect he knew this last part just from being black. (To paraphrase
Ralph Waldo E: my heart vibrated to its truth like an iron chord.)
My brothers, I knew in a brickbat second that I was screwed.
Screwed, stewed, and French-tattooed. He stood quietly in the sunshine
as I furiously reviewed a lifetime's catalogue of movies and television
shows and detective novels, looking for a way back to the way things
used to be.
No luck.
Such unfairness.
I asked him if I needed a gun.
—No point to it, he said.
—Well then?
—It's only your word that puts him away.
The lightbulb went on, my friends, brighter than the sun shining on the sidewalk where we stood. I smiled.
Resumed breathing.
—Well tell them there is no problem. I'll just say my statement was
wrong. I really can't remember how much time passed between shots.
—Okay then. I'll get word to them.
Later my neighbor informed me all was well. Li'l Bro' the wack psycho
had been called off Knox-watch. The shooter would plea it down to a
misdemeanor: probation, no jail or prison time. We would all live
happily ever after.
I called a lawyer friend. He said:
—As your attorney, I cannot advise you to avoid the subpoena. If it
goes to trial, you will die, if you are around. That is, if you make it
to trial, which you won't, because they will kill you first. You have
about a week and half before the deputies start parking outside your
house around the clock to serve you.
Knoxie wasn't liking the drift here ... we were back in screwed territory.
I called Rod H., a guy who had been connected to the Mob thirty years
before. He had gotten out of the Life alive, thanks a dollop of divine
intervention (he would agree here). I had met him through the meetings
of a certain non-drinking club we both attended.
For some reason, Rod had always taken to me, and I to him. Where all
the other guys around got a handshake, he would give me a hug and kiss
my neck, and rasp
—Hey Kid, how'ya doin'?
I remember one night I ran into him and remembered to ask him a question I had been meaning to ask for some time.
—Rod, maybe you can help me with an argument I've been having with my sponsor for ten years.
—What, kid?
—Well, were you involved with organized crime when John Kennedy was killed?
—Yeah.
—Well, among your associates, who did they think did it?
And Rod got a funny look, his eyes kind of glazed over for a second, he smiled, looked me in the eye again and said:
—Are you having a nice night, kid?
He went on after a moment, very serious now.
—I could tell you a story, kid, I don't tell to too many people. They
asked me to be involved, I didn't want to. But I know fifty people who
were involved who have been killed.
Manna from heaven.
But at the moment I called him now, in my crisis, I wasn't thinking
about JFK, the Mob, or the Devil, or anything else Rod had shared with
me over the years.
—Hey kid, what's up?
—I think there's a contract out on me.
—Aw, if there was a contract, you wouldn't know about it.
I related my situation, hoping for some gangster wisdom on par with
karmic liquid plumber to dissolve the hairball that was suddenly
choking off all light and air and sunlight of the Spirit that made the
world the world.
—Jeez, kid, I thought I had problems! Man, all I got is cancer! [Laughter] You gotta leave town! 'Til it blows over ...
—I do?
—Yeah ... and remember, you never saw anything if anybody ever asks you again! [More laughter]
—Thanks for the advice, Rod. [Note lack of laughter]
—God bless ya ... keep me posted ... stay in touch ...
So there it was, in black and white, in black and blue, my brothers and sisters. This is how it works in the real world.
I had no recourse here. The police couldn't help me. The DA wanted the
conviction. The thugs valued freedom way more than "Thou shall not
kill."
Friends questioned my sanity, my sobriety, suggesting a lack of
simplest common sense. LIke the whole thing was my fault. I was hurt,
shocked, dismayed.
What of compassion, of empathy, of holding out a hand to help the man
whom Fortuna has dealt a critical blow? I mean rain falls, does it not,
on the just and the unjust alike? I told this repeatedly to myself and
anyone else within earshot.
I'll let you in on a secret right now: it was my fault.
I know that now.
Later I'll share how I came to realize that, but I haven't quite figured it all out just yet.
All I had to do was stay out of town from that time on until the trial was over, a few weeks.
Easy.
Clothes. Guitar. Fifty copies of my novel, Flapping. A gross of HoneyBun Spanking kits. HoneyBun hotshorts, t-shirts, camisoles.
I'd lived in Northern California, home of the global self-actualization
movement, my whole life: I had steeped for the last three decades, like
a tea bag in a hot tub at Esalen, in the movement's fundamental
precept, that of turning adversity into opportunity, making lemonade
out of a lemon. Once we get past life is suffering, this is what we do.
And this is what I would do: Knoxie, I told myself, this could change
everything. A new life. On a fundamental level, I knew that things
would never be the same again. O my droogies, I was petrified.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
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Words and Art 
