The Life and Times of Innis E. Coxman (21 page)

They
immediately went to work taking apart my beloved dope mobile. Anything and
everything that could be dismantled was broken down and tossed onto the
shoulder of the road.

My
CD player: ripped from the console, thrown in the median to ruin in the wet
grass. My twelve-inch Kicker speakers suffered the same fate.

A
Rockford Fosgate amplifier that I had bought with hard-earned drug money: that
expensive item “slipped” out of a trooper’s hands and shattered to pieces on
the unforgiving asphalt.

The
seats, front and back: plundered by Smith & Wesson duty knives and a German
Shepherd
in the early stages of mange. That bitch even
relieved herself on the driver’s seat.

The
speakers in my doors: once the cops removed the paneling, they were left to
hang precariously by the wires.

And
my dash
?.....
by the time everything was said and done
it would’ve been cheaper to buy a new car.

The
way those pigs carried on, you would’ve thought I had the Loch Ness monster
hidden under the front seat. Or long-lost national treasure Amelia Earhart tied
to my undercarriage.
Or the goddamn ashes of Jimmy Hoffa in the fucking
ashtray!
I didn’t even know I had a spare tire in that piece of shit until
those douchebags arrogantly informed me that they were ripping the entrails out
of my ride because they swore they heard the cries of the Lindbergh baby. It
was only a matter of time before they slithered to the crevice in the trunk.
When they did, you would’ve thought I was the heir apparent to Pablo Escobar.

Game
over.

***

There
was no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow; it would’ve been welded shut
anyway. Nor did we pass “Go” and collect two hundred dollars; but I managed to collect
influenza from the holding tank.

All
three of us were charged with drug trafficking and possession with intent to
distribute. They hung me with a DWI just to make sure I knew the error of my
ways. Can’t really say I blame them; the whites of my eyes were as red as
Atomic Fireballs. If I were a
slab of bacon
committed police officer I
would’ve done the same thing. My precious Sunbird—or the skeleton thereof—was
towed to an impound yard fifty miles away. We were transported to the parish
jail where we began making harrowed phone calls to eager bondsmen.

***

Don’t
think I impart this tribulation with a whimsical air, good people. For all of
you reading, it’s a story from some good-looking bastard you’ve never heard of.
For me, it was a severe derailment in the Amtrak of my existence. Fact is, we
did time over this.

After
weeks of worry and a smorgasbord of funds paid to separate attorneys, we
managed to escape lengthy prison sentences for trafficking. They even dismissed
my DWI charge. The three of us plead guilty to possession with intent to
distribute and received two years apiece in six-by-eight cells. My emotions
were a composite of fear and resignation when the gavel came down. Mixed with a
crumb of gratitude.

I
thought of my friend who’d gotten the five years for his two small joints.

***

We
were forbidden to see one another upon release. Felons can’t hang with felons.
If you’re seen in the company of your ilk they send you back. The powers that
be didn’t care that Burt and Connie were a couple. They were forbidden from
contact, lest they return to the clink. As for myself, I resisted the urge to
contact my friends. The meager sentence handed down to me, in contrast to what
it could have been, taught me to fear that place. 

Prison
can change your perspective—provided you have the intelligence of a muskrat. It
gives you space to ponder your future, seeing more to the “grand design” than
being forced to do the Foxtrot with a very persuasive triple-murderer (my celly
was a
fantastic
dancer). Gradually, my desire to see Burt and Connie
faded. A feeling of guilt invaded my conscience; it hurt tremendously that I
could schluff my longtime friends so easily. We had been the Three Musketeers
for so long, though reconnection would’ve ended gravely.

The
cycle would’ve repeated itself and I’d revisit the same horrors I was blessed
enough to live through a first time. I’d take reckless chances with my freedom
just to smoke my profit away. I’d put myself in dangerous situations with
sketchy individuals who were my “best friends” on Monday, then putting a muzzle
to my head on Tuesday.

I’d
never get my life back.

***

Burt
died bad. Real bad. Though he was feeling good when he went out. He’d developed
an addiction to Morphine and Dilaudid, both extremely potent painkillers. They
proved to be his undoing.

Prison
chewed Burt up and spit him out several times in the years following our second
chance. I’d run into him in the city occasionally and we’d talk before moving
on with our respective days. We never chatted long; by then my daughter had
been born and I followed a different agenda (I still sold and did dope, but he
was too “out there” for me to hang with). With each encounter, he was a more
distorted version of the friend I once knew.

Eventually,
I got the long-feared call from a mutual acquaintance: a Guatemalan maid in
some flophouse motel found Burt’s cold, mottled body face-up on the filthy
mattress, a hypodermic dangling from his left arm with a pool of coagulated blood
next to his blue, shirtless frame. The vials of hospital-grade medication on
the nightstand stood empty, silently laughing at his rigid corpse, pleased
they’d increased their body count. His eyes were midway, frozen in an
unblinking stare.

Tear
stains streaked toward the pillow under his head.

Sadly,
there are so many gaps in my memory that I don’t recall attending the funeral.
I was still in “the life”—brain cells perished. If I did see him lowered into
the ground, the event has vanished from my mind.

Can’t
say I’m broken up about that.  

Whether
I mourned at Burt’s open grave or shunned the ceremony, two things are certain:
Burt Trippin was a good, talented, caring individual whose only slip was
letting the silver tongue of evil lie its way into his confidence. Two, I will
forever remember the man he
used
to be.

I
miss my friend dearly. I miss the laughter and good times we shared before he
was cursed with the cataclysm of addiction.

And
I weep when I think of him.

***

The
years crawled.

Slowly,
I got my poop in a group, save for this speeding ticket I had to pay. (When I
told the lady at the fines window that you can’t get blood from a turnip, she
said, “True, Mr. Coxman, but we can put the turnip in jail.” I paid the goddamn
ticket.) When I was leaving the courthouse, I saw the shadow of a familiar face
walking up the steps with a disheveled gentleman in a wrinkled suit and a
briefcase. Time and bad drugs had ravaged its once pretty features.

“Hey,
Connie.”

“Innis!”
she shrieked. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it! How have you been?!” The chap
that’d been lagging halted behind her.

She
threw her arms around my neck, then pulled away. We started talking and she
brought me up to speed with her family and other developments. As we stood
there speaking, I couldn’t help but flinch from her appearance. Her once milky
complexion was splotchy. The crow’s feet and wrinkles smacked of a woman in her
late 50s. It was scary. Connie was in her early 30s, same as I, but heavy
consumption of pills and methamphetamine can age you quickly, cutting grooves
into your face and sending your teeth to the floor like Chiclets.

When
I asked what she was doing at the courthouse, she said she was there for the
first day of her arson trial. Her silent companion was her public defender. (By
the bye, burning your own fucking house to the ground for financial gain is
severely
frowned upon by fire investigators and insurance companies alike. I recommend
against it.)

It
all came flooding back to me in a fleeting instant. I thought of the drugs, the
booze, the sex,
the
superficial means of escape. I’m
amazed at the absurdity of it all—the futures destroyed by shameful pasts, the
substances we use as filler to block the pain, to eradicate the memories of
personal injustices and perceived slights, to stop that hole in the soul from
collapsing us in on ourselves.  

To
squash
life.

I
couldn’t look at her anymore. It was too much. I bid my “good luck”s before
descending the courthouse steps. As I neared the sidewalk, a lightbulb went
off. I stopped and did a one-eighty. Considering the charges leveled against
her, chances were good I’d never see Connie again (I haven’t). Before I left
her to the fickleness of the justice system, there was something I had to know.

“Hey,
Connie?”

“Yeah,
Innis?”

“Whatever
happened to your suicidal cat?”

She
lowered her head and stifled a tear. “She finally killed herself. Jumped off
the second-story balcony of my place when we were in jail. My mother said she
bounced a couple of times on the lawn like a beach ball.”

It
was a punch to the gut. I stared at the concrete, flabbergasted that she’d been
telling the truth about that fuzzy bitch all those years ago. Connie lost her
composure at the flashback, a salty stream running down her cheek.

She
needed comforting words, but me being me, I couldn’t help myself. I grinned
evilly, knowing I was buying a one-way ticket to Hell.

“Well,
don’t worry, Connie. There’ll be plenty of pussy to stroke where you’re going.”

I’d fallen victim to this before.
But I
wasn’t falling for it now. Many would call it prostitution. I simply call it a
“suck for a buck.”

So
then.....

I
left the DMV after having my past probed for over two hours. Considering this
was a new state, I tried to be relaxed. Subservient. But goddamn if they
couldn’t leave “well enough” alone:

“What’s
this arrest for ‘possession,’ Mr. Coxman?”

“None
of your business.”

“Si.
And this conviction for ‘assault,’ sir?”

“Oh.
That’s nothing. It’s old. From a long time ago.”

“Si,
Mr. Coxman. Smile at the camera, sir.”

Snap!

***

I
drove to the Exxon across the street after having officially moved into my new
state. As I was filling up my truck, a little Mexican girl sashayed out of
nowhere asking to use my cellphone.

I
say “little” as in she appeared to be five-four. And “girl” in the sense that
she had a vagina. In every other form of the description, she could’ve passed
for a madam at a house of ill repute; she was forty if she was a day. In my
youth—or if I was a lesser man—I would’ve broken it wide open.

I
mean shit: long black hair that gleamed under the sun; big, dark eyes that
beckoned for a fucking; a white wife beater juggling naked, still-firm C-cups;
and a pair of purple Umbro soccer shorts.

Do
they even make Umbros anymore?

***

“Excuse
me, sir. Can I use jur phone to call for a ride?”

“No,
baby. Can’t do it.”

“Okay.
Ju wanna come around the corner then? I could give ju something else and
ju
could gimme a ride.
Que piensas?
”

What
did I think? I’ll tell you exactly what I thought.

“You
mean we can go around the corner of this store? And you’ll gimme a blowjob or
some of that hoo-hoo just for a ride somewhere?”

“Jes.
Ju wanna see
?.....
”

“No.
Get away from me,
perra.
You’re fuckin’ nasty.”

I
got in my red pickup and screeched out of there. I’d paid before I fueled so my
exit had the greatest impact. I left her at pump number six with her mouth
hanging wide open.

Waiting
for a dick that wouldn’t come.

Charles Bukowski, one of the most underrated poets, authors, and
human beings of the twentieth century, said it best: “How in the hell could a
man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 AM by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed,
shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where
essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be
grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

My
God. He was the lazy, instructional uncle I never had.

I
have but two regrets concerning this most poignant of statements:

One,
I didn’t invent it myself; if I did, I’d have it tattooed on my chest backwards
to ogle it in the bathroom with my covetable beard. Two—and this deeply saddens
me—I don’t have the motivation to send copies to the heads of every major
corporation on the planet after wiping my ass with the pages repeatedly; if I
did, they could use the ass hairs as dental floss to remove the chunks of their
edible labor force.  

***

The
United States. A bona fide geyser of milk and honey. The greatest country in
the world, we’re told ad nauseum. A bastion of capitalism where the fat of the
land can be suckled like the thimbled teats of a pot-bellied pig. A place where
men and women with a little drive and mountains of luck can succeed in their
goals of making it, whatever their individual idea of “making it” may be. A
speck of Earth whose indigenous peoples were tricked into nickel-and-diming
away their cherished homeland by empty promises from European settlers. (Some
history books say otherwise. Personally, I cling to the idea that Native
Americans are completely justified in their distrust of the White Devil.
They’re doing better than me, though; I have a healthy misgiving for
all
colors.) A continent of expansive acreage whose trees were used to provide
homes, whose grounds were cleared to build navigable roads, and whose raw
materials were harvested to compile one of the strongest societies in the
history of mortal beings.

Even
the ancient Greeks would marvel at the structural accomplishments of North
America. The same minds who conceptualized the Parthenon, the Acropolis, and
the Temple of Zeus would soil their togas if they stood before the Willis Tower
of Chicago, the JP Morgan Chase Tower in Houston, the Empire State Building of
New York City, and the Washington Monument in.....

No.
I’m not doing it. If you have to ask where in the fuck that is, put this down
immediately and go to a class.

A
legion of man’s achievements—from the wheel to carts to weapons to power tools
to plastic to cement to mechanized machinery to vehicles to aircrafts to
national monuments to theme parks to the most cloud-puncturing skyscrapers that
Homo Sapiens have ever erected toward the Heavens—were invented or improved
upon by proleptical visionaries who saw the potential in this great land of
ours.

Then
they let others do the heavy lifting.

***

Surveyors
were needed in the wilds of the new frontier, but without men to level the
forests, early immigrants would’ve slept at the mercy of the elements.
Engineers were responsible for designing the railroads; without workers laying
the tracks and cross ties for slave wages, we’d still be driving covered
wagons. Architects blueprinted testaments to man’s hubris and creativity, but
it was the sweat of metallurgists that enabled financial centers to trade money
under steel girders rather than huts of mud and twigs.

Sure
enough, if it wasn’t for the ingenuity and grueling work of our forebears, we’d
still be living in rickety wooden shacks, heaving manual plows, shooting
inaccurate rifles at each other, and drinking beer because it was cleaner than
the water in some areas. Day after day, this country was built on the backs of
those who toiled in the blazing sun to push us into the modern fold. ‘Tis true,
our ancestors were hardcore. I tip my hat to them all.

And
I’m thankful I wasn’t around for any of that horseshit.

***

When
you were a child staring dreamily at the stars, I’ll bet you wanted to grow up
to be something that brought joy and personal fulfillment. Maybe a writer, a
musician, a fashion designer, a journalist, an artist, a jewel thief, a porn
star, a photographer, head of a criminal empire, a
Playboy
model, or
Superman (clearly, some goals are beyond reach even for the most imaginative of
souls). But what are you doing with your life? Chances are you’re schlepping
away for some soulless entity that views you as an expendable workhorse. You’re
seen as a dripping washcloth of performance, ready to be wrung dry for every
drop at the lowest wage until you’re a stiff patch of cotton draped lifelessly
over the towel rack.

I
feel your pain.

I’ve
never met an employer who viewed me as a flesh-and-bone human, but I’ve worked
for plenty that saw me as a cash machine.

***

I
hate work. I despise it. More specifically, I despise working for other people
who could give a fuck less about me and my well-being. Waking up and going to a
place I loathe to nudge some forgettable CEO’s stock is an injustice on par
with running out of hot water during your shower. It’s not what any of us were
put here to do. Our passions and horizons weren’t meant to be sequestered
inside of offices. Our goals were not to “dig those ditches by noon” and die of
heat strokes. And we most definitely were not put here to fork over our minds,
bodies, and individuality just so high ranking company officials can take a
Tahitian vacation whenever the mood strikes. Personally, my catalog of
employment reads like a grocery list, and I can honestly say that to be
subjected to another’s demands in a work setting is one of the most unbearable
torments on the planet.

***

Now
don’t misunderstand me, good people—I use “torment” as a metaphor. I wouldn’t
dare be so arrogant as to compare employment in a leading nation to the
problems of an impoverished country, for there are many forms of actual torture
endured by poor souls in third-worlds everyday—false imprisonment, starvation,
civil unrest, open crime, and murderous dictatorships being among them (well,
maybe some of this applies to America, too, but being mashed under the thumb of
a job is the wheel on which most of us are broken). I’ve always had a problem
being exposed to the mercy of some faceless blob whose decision making is cored
in a greed that King Midas would find absurd, the end goal being the swell of
their treasure chest. And, goddammit, it seems like the bigger corporations
get, the more money-hungry they become.

I’ve
never understood it: a bunch of guys band together and form a business of some
description; they work hard through the years, sacrificing personal time and
time spent with loved ones; they make the right contacts, funnel money to the
right pockets; eventually, their company morphs into the yardstick of the
industry; someday, they garner the cover of
Fortune 500
or some other
financial publication, yet they predictably want more.

You’ve
made it, fellas. Relax. Either by hook or crook, you’ve squashed the
competition to achieve a level of financial security that many only dream
about. Enjoy your gold silverware and leave some scraps for the rest of us.

Perhaps
I’ve never thought “big” enough. Maybe I’ve always kept my dreams realistic,
humble. Maybe that’s why I don’t swim in a pool filled with Spanish Doubloons.
Be that as it may, what I’m certain of is this: contrary to the tutorials from
captains of industry who’ve used their preachings to conceal their own
megalomania, sometimes it
is
okay to sit back and enjoy what you’ve
created—to rest on your laurels and revel in your cushy bottom line. (“Bottom
line.” I’ve grown to hate that phrase as much as, “
It’s
crabs again, Mr. Coxman.”)

I
say fuck the executives. Let some asskisser or relative of the Vice President
come down and slog it out in the trenches. Chances are they’d be consumed and
shit out by lunch. We should leave those bastards high and dry to deliver their
own
packages, shelve their
own
dog food, and empty their
own
fucking Port-o-Johns.

With
that last point, most of you are probably thinking, “Coxman, this is utter
balderdash! Nobody
likes
to work, but how else am I going to finance
food, water, electricity, daycare, car payments, and life in general? Aside
from the necessities, I need entertainment. Something to relieve my mind from
the drudgery of responsibility. Your argument is unrealistic. Poppycock to
you!”

First,
calm the hell down. I’m not done. Second, you’re right.

I’m
a realist, man. I totally agree that toothpaste and lube aren’t going to pay
for themselves. What I want you to grasp is that you don’t have to be
subservient to an organization that doesn’t care about you. Whose doubletalk
and veiled threats control your every
movement.
An
employer whose hobbies include ruling by intimidation, belittlement to the
point of humiliation, and control by the threat of termination.

I
wouldn’t tell you to quit your job absent a second plan. That’s just reckless.
But please, if you can find a way to get out of there and make your own way
without having to answer to some eel in a suit that costs triple what you make
in a week, for the sake of those who fork over thirty years of their lives to a
subhuman collective claiming to have “your best interests” at heart.....

FUCKING DO IT.