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Newsgroups: alt.hemp,alt.drugs,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Crazy Stanford Law students on acid- true story
Keywords: hemp
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 93 12:07:44 GMT
Copyright 1993 Lazlo Lazarus
"Nothing so much hinders the soul from knowing God as time and space."
Ñ Meister Eckehart, Schriften und Predigten, 1921.
"Church picnics, despite all of Aunt Martha's talk about the Lord's Bountiful
Harvest, are nothing more than a good excuse for Sunday gluttony; and everyone
knows that lots more than Bible reading goes on in the bushes."
Ñ Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible, 1969.
"All I need is some cool waves, and some tasty bud."
Ñ Spiccoli, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, date unresearched.
Nuestra Vida Loca C/S
Capitulo Dos: Steely Dan III from Tijuana, or "Why Am I Not Getting High?"
And so life continued, my fellow droogies, and our fancies turned to
thoughts of prohibited sexual practices, yesca, and summer employment. Not
particularly desiring to spend our summers sequestered away in air-conditioned
cubicles as legal wage-slaves, we nevertheless realized that for the purpose
of actualizing our future careers as sell-out "Hi-spanic" corporate lawyer-
sharks, it was necessary to postpone our enjoyment of the hedonistic
profligacy that only truly aesthetically splendid beings such as ourselves
could savor and philosophize upon with the requisite finesse. Those were our
delusions.
Besides, we were not quite certain that the recently-conferred accolades
praising our adventure-filled novel-of-ideas1 would keep us supplied with a
plethoric cornucopia of narcotics and painted women until early September, at
which time we would return to induce grave doubts about the P.C.-sanity of
Stanford Law School's admission committee by voraciously eyeballing the new
female talent in the entering One L class.
We resolved our job quandary by selecting a probability-based algorithm;
we would strategically bombard the mailing rooms of innumerable Los Angeles,
New York, and Washington D.C. (5000+ lawyers) megafirms with our elegant
Award-Winning¨ resumes. But in order to send out the minimum semi-myriad
missives, we realized we would need muchos rolls of stamps (for Freddie to
tonguelick individually) and hence, as a precondition, some seriousducats.
Clearly, a problem to be pondered while metabolizing a few Phillies Blunts.
No problema, monamigos. Fortunately we had nearly unlimited fundsÑ
somehow Omar had rigged his antiquated but souped-up Macintosh SE so Ramon
could break into the Financial Aid Office's file server and add an extra zero
to his grant disbursements. Next thing we knew, Hormonious musclelonious was
receiving $280,700 in federal and state-sponsored funding per annum. Charles
Keating would have been proud. Or, more probably, envious.
We figured that by the time Janet Reno's G-Men kicked down our luxury
condominium's oaken front door in a clandestine pre-dawn ATF raid2, we would
already be airborne in our private Gulfstream II at 37,000 feet, halfway to a
recent real estate acquisition in Rio de Janeiro. There, our developer was in
the second phase of building the world's biggest profit-sharing strip club3Ñ
in our adopted homeland of Brazil, of all places.
ÁQuŽ coincidencia!
As always, we had selected the location carefully; it was near the sol-
drenched sands of the Cabo Frio bay, in a jurisdiction where pervasive
bribery made U.S. extradition agreements veritably unenforceable.
Although feria was no longer an impediment to our rapture-grounded
teleology, we were still plagued by the distressing predicament of finding a
new lackey. Ever since Freddie Barbados' untimely demise in Tony Serra's
office, when the rare phenomenon of spontaneous combustion had a most
deleterious effect upon his otiose corpus, we had missed the willing hand and
credulous cheer of our allegiant squire.
In other words, what with the stamp-ducats obstacle surmounted, there
was nevertheless an additional unpleasantry; standing in tortiously long
queues at Stanford's archaic, inefficient post office for a few thousand green
duck stamps seemed to be a most unsavory prospect. Propitiously, a most
flagitious thought crept into our flashbacking flashbacking [non-sic] mem-
brains: we would resurrect our late pal Freddie "Flamenco" Barbados to endure
in line for us. Once again, our 700 I.Q.'s came through.
Luckily, good help was not too hard to find. Employing the services of
a Cuban Santer’a high priestess that Ramon had tried to scam on in a
Laundromat in the Mexican part of San Jose, we prepared to summon Freddie back
from purgatory. There, his penance consisted of taking at least one shower
per every time he had uttered the Lord's name in vain. So far, fifteen coats
of filth had been exfoliated from Freddie's carcass. And now, with the
assistance of esoteric multicultural technologies, we were relieving ourselves
of ennui-engendering routines. Incidentally, since our poor Catholic mothers
would have been horrified by this heathen ritual, the situation acquired the
requisite flavour of the forbidden.
Pero no nos trag— la tierra.
After lighting five black candles and burning acrid copal atop a
smoldering coal, the high priestess laid out her paraphernalia in the middle
of the Persian rug in Ramon's bedroom, located right next to the solarium of
our humble hovel. She sported a spotted Giant Panda robe, a bleached starched
cap, and a necklace of bichromatic wooden beads, some yellow, some white.
Splitting a coconut into four pieces with her rusted but sharp machete, she
tossed the offerings behind her head onto the plush carpet. They landed face
up.
As per usual, the significance of this portentous adumbration was lost
on Ramon. A fly wandered into his slightly-lowered mouth.
"Babaluye Aye is pleased," the high priestess moaned. Ramon chewed the
fly thoughtfully, enjoying the 5 grams of protein from its exoskeleton, and
wondering when the next feeding time was. He was also undecided as to which
gluteal quadrant would be the recipient of 1200 I.U.'s of Deca-Durabolin.
Next, the high priestess draped a crimson tapestry over the portable
ebony altar her acolyte had brought. Moments later, after a monodical
incantation, a sterling silver tray unexpectedly materialized. Positioned on
its bronze surface was a mind-boggling array of objects, including, inter
alia, adipose candles of dubious origin, a miniature straw-filled Freddie doll
with a demi-joint stuffed into its maw, a vibrating pleasurer with golf-ball-
like ridges machined onto its surface (christened Steely Dan III from
Tijuana), and ithyphallic fruits and legumes. A small cauldron resting on the
altar was filled with a mixture of baptismal water, bat guano, Dos Equis,
Panama Red kief resin, Freddie ashes, and chicken blood.
The last, la sangre, was extracted after a glorious decapitation, and
deserves further description. After mumbling something totally
incomprehensible to us, the priestess savagely severed the gasping fowl's
carotid artery from a cat-like stance (and with a samurai-like flash to boot.)
Healthy gobs of fervid, staining blood sprayed in a hemispheric spoor.
"Babaluye Aye is near!!" we howled gleefully as the plasma splattered
across our ebullient countenances.4 We proceeded to boil the syrupy contents
of the cauldron on a pilfered Coleman stove until the mixture had acquired a
thick, viscous consistency. Then we left it out to dry in the solarium while
the santera siest—, Omar meditated, and Ram—n blasted his abs.
Over a grueling period of two days, the sweat-drenched high priestess
proceeded to snort the paste that had as its primary active ingredient
Freddie's burnt remains. After various esoteric rituals, the last of which
involved young goats, velcro, a vibrating pleasurer with golf-ball-like ridges
machined onto its surface (christened Steely Dan IV from Calcutta5), and
vodka-jello, the exhausted high priestess emitted a blood-curdling scream and
fell prostrate. We waited expectantly, grinning devilishly, while yesca-
induced epiphanies coursed through our consciousnesses.
Finally, it happened - a fetid opaque-grey cloud of smoke slowly
emanated from the santera's rump, and hardened into an endomorphic figure. Lo
and behold, Freddie Barbados was back!6
"Freddie, our intellectual inferior, welcome back to your masters," we
greeted in stentorian duet.
Freddie's head bowed instinctively.
His mouth was about to open when Ramon distastefully reached over and
patted the oleaginous top of Freddie's skull condescendingly.
Thereafter, Ram—n el Surf-Cabr—n brushed the greasy hair
ointment that sullied the palm of his once-impeccably manicured hand onto
the side of his artistically-ripped $600 Emporio Armani jeans, and thought
that maybe he needed to do twelve more sets of tricep extensions before
four.
Subliminally influenced, Freddie wiped the the bubble-encrusted
webs of saliva dangling from his gaping maw and panted eagerly at a job
well done. "Smoke me out, fool," he said and then collapsed to the floor.7
Soon after Freddie's collapse, his pallor took on a sickening ochre. His
body convulsed, his head rolled to the side, and his thick and furry tongue
plopped to the rug. We stood in motionless stupefaction as black bile
tobogganed past his cracked lips onto the rug. Omar struggled to assert
self-control and prevent himself from kicking Freddie's unprotected and
protruding cranium with his steel-toed Doc Martens.8 Luckily, Omar was able
to contain his ire until the Percodan¨-powered parademics whisked away
our favorite mascot in a nitrous- equipped ambulance. We saw a star alumnus
from Santa Clara Law School run after the receding ambulance, waving his
business card desperately with his Rolex-adorned9 left paw.
After a successful convalescene, Freddie emerged relatively intact from
his visit to the afterlife and the marijuana-fast of the recovery room, ready
to obey our capricious and despotic whims. We immediately ushered him off in
the direction of the post office, generously giving him an extra 75 cents so
he could purchase his most cherished dietary staple Ñ a Cappucino It's-It ice
cream bar.
An hour later he returned, glutinous ice cream smeared all over his
chin, and we instructed our panting disciple in the ways of stuffing, sealing,
and stamp-licking five thousand resume-showcasing letters. We were even
kindhearted enough to leave Freddie's favorite Scoobie Doo water bowl nearby
so he could quench his parched gullet and tumescent lingua. What Freddie
didn't know is that we had carefully smeared onto the bowl's surface eleven
drops from a Visine bottle full of liquid lysergic diethyllamide. Oh, the
lengths we were forced to go in the name of scientific experimentation, we
mused reflectively.
Confident that the megafirms would be flying us out first-class for
Martini-soaked interviews in a matter of mere hours after their receipt of our
phenomenal credentials, we sat back and waited for the cajoling offers to
stream in.
After several months with no responses, we began to engage in some
profound soul-searching. Perhaps it was the bad karma we had accumulated
for dosing Freddie without his knowing it.10 Perhaps listing our Skills as
"Supergeniuses and TetraHydroCannabinol Connoiseurs" was not such a prudent
idea, and neither was Ramon's asserted hobby of "Injecting Copious Amounts
of Anabolic Steroids." We concluded we had to do something ‡ndale,
‡ndale if we didn't want to end up begging law school professors for
positions as summer research assistants in fun and exciting Palo Alto,
California, particularly since we seldom attended classes and had forgotten
their names. How uncouth!
Luckily, Ramon came up with an uncharacteristically brilliant
proposition.
"You deem-weet," Ramon began to explain in a choppy staccato, imitating
the acid-crazed cartoon Chihuahua and popular icon known to viewers as Ren,
before he was rudely interrupted. Freddie started begging us to take him to
Sav-On and buy him a Stimpy lunchpail11 and a carton of Kool's so that he
could dip the cigarettes in a vial of .
"Come on, guys, pleeeeze," Freddie importuned, but a quick backhand
silenced him. We decided to adjust his daily dosage of powdered ketamine.12
"What you want, carnal?" Omar digressed, impatient to determine if he
had the equanimity and concern to listen to what Ramon had to spew.
"We'll work as clerks for the U.S. Attorney's office in San Francisco,"
Ramon replied. "Remember that tequila-crazy vato "John"? Well he's the U.S.
Attorney for the Northern District of California, ese. He'll totally hire us
because we're 'Hi-spanic' minorities from Stanford. Just think, we'll get a
fat public interest grant, and we'll be able to go to the End Up as often as
we'd like".
"Right on," Omar smiled as he thought of gurgling waterfalls, whirling
soon-to-be-supermodels and megadoses of Ôshrooms. And, to seal the deal, we
performed the sacrosanct ritual known to notable ethnographers as the Secret
Chicano Handshake. Besides, there existed a plainly obvious logical connection
between the End Up and our potential clerkships. As Assistant Prosecutors we
would almost certainy have some kind of access to evidence rooms, we
reasoned. Of course, such loot would function as fuel for our Dionysian
escapades. "To the victors belong the spoils, homechickens!" we shouted
defiantly at each other, as our Aztec ancestors had in a different tongue when
they subjugated neighboring peoples to serve the sun-sacrificing imperatives
of their militaristic theocracy.
We had met the U.S. Attorney several weeks earlier at a Stanford Latino
Law Students Association13 dinner function which featured successful (read:
sell-out) Mexican-Americans prominent in the legal community. Needless to
say, we were there by mistake, for we had assumed that we would just graze on
some firm's expense account and leave as soon as dessert was partaken.
Instead, we were subjected to tedious lectures on how, as Chicano
students at an elite legal institution, we should take advantage of the
opportunities offered to us and ascend to the pinnacles of corporate law. La
neta, we'd rather have been solving quadratic equations while calculating the
contours of Gerard Depardieu's proboscis.
The refection was taking place at Compadre's, a Mexican theme
restaurant with Episcopalian proprietors and Barbie-ish acephalous
waitresses. With Pancho Villa posters ironically preaching "ÁViva La
Revoluci—n!" prominently displayed on the wall and a steady stream of
Julio Iglesias ballads projected through the cheap speakers, we were
mentally and emotionally transported back to our homeland, domain of the
mighty Toltec minstrels who perfected our craft.
The moment manifested a surreal hypokeimenon because the only other
living Mexicans in the place were the busboys and dishwashers.
As we were led to our places, Ramon strategically positioned himself
next to the suit who had been pointed out by our fellow students as the U.S.
Attorney, the person in charge of prosecuting federal crimes in the entire
Northern District of California. Maybe it augured imminent misfortune, but it
so happened that Ramon had chain-smoked five Phillies in the past forty-five
minutes and thus the only reason he sat next to the prosecutor general was
that he had mistaken "John" for Grateful Dead guru Jerry Garc’a.
Although we reeked of potent Panama Red, John had been an alcohol purist
his whole pathetic life and couldn't tell kind green from fresh grass
clippings from his Suburban American Dream front lawn. Consequently, when he
asked Ramon what that "strange smell" was, Ramon was quick to dissemble like
always, unwittingly.
"Dooode, it's my super work-out ultra-buff musk deodorant that I bought
in Bangkok," Ramon bellowed while gesticulating wildly. "Makes me smell like a
man. Yaahhh!!"
To illustrate, Ramon jumped on his chair, dropped the tailored black
leather chaps which contrasted most saliently with his nearly-naked torso
(except for the silver and turquoise bolo tie), and struck a most bombastic
Front Deltoid Expansion with Swiveled Quadriceps Strain. The thick steak-like
slabs of somatotropin-induced muscle tensed tautly and his carotid veins
protruded visibly. Even his bloodshot eyeballs bulged obscenely. The diners
turned and gasped in horror, but Ramon responded only by flaring his nostrils.
"Egads! For the love of Zeus, the very earth trembles beneath this
modern day Samson's bulk," John exclaimed while in an enraptured state of
margarita-grounded euphoria, his eyes bloody from an incipient inebriation.
With John distracted from his potentially incriminating inquiry, Ramon
got off the chair, zippered his custom leggings, and sat down to begin
devouring the first of three main courses he had ordered, every item specially
prepared to contain absolutely no muscle-concealing subcutaneous fat. The
other diners returned to their lard-cooked meals and mundane conversations.
Although with Ramon's grants and strip-dancing income we were practically
wealthy, free grub was something we could hardly refuse, since it always
tasted better than a meal paid for by the sweat of our own brow.
Within minutes Ramon was enthralling John with insider views of covert
criminal organizations, both in the States and abroad:
"Check this, mon freire , what with the impending reversion of Honk Kong
back to the communists in 1995, we can expect to witness a significant
increase in the immigration of Triad crime groups to the United States. The
Triads and associative tongs have already garnered a substantial share of
the world chiva market - just below Japan's Yakuza but above the Sicilian
Mafia".
He spontaneously invented various statistics, much to John's amazement.
"How do you know all this?", John inquired suspiciously.
"Uh, I did research on a book I wrote years ago," Ramon replied less
than convincingly. "And I watch lots of TV," he added.
John, possibly because of the euphoric effects of his last drink, was
nevertheless persuaded of Ramon's sincerity and, transgressing not only all
expectations but also violating all logic, he invited Ramon to interview for a
summer clerkship. The eleven tax payer-funded Handshaken Pink Cadillac
Margaritas14 certainly had helped transform John into a most amiable dinner
companion.
"Hmmm, most interesting," Ramon mused, considering the offer and
stroking his Apollonian chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps, ese, es posiblemente."
Ramon remained silent, allowing John to get properly ass-kissed by obsequious
Hispanic wannabes.
After finishing our firm-funded portions, we retired to the front bar to
configure our prospective strategy. "I say we go back to the dorm and get
ultrasuperhigh, homeskillotus," Ramon suggested.
"But of course, of course, mon freire," Omar replied ebulliently. "Let's
slip out the back door so that we may bypass the usual signing of autographs
that precedes our exits."
With that we threw some Q-Voles to the bartender and stumbled out to
the rear parking lot. On the way to our new, recently purchased white
ultrastretch Rolls Royce Silver Shadow-edition limousine (equipped with a
jacuzzi, weight training area, and even a midget bartender to fetch our
drinks), we heard severe retching sounds. We quickly rounded the corner and,
to our profound disbelief, ran into John who was on his polyester-padded
knees, doubled over and projectile vomiting a vile substance from his tequila-
infected lungs. He wiped his $10 tie across his frothing mouth, sucked in a
few precious breaths, then began spewing out his Macho Combo burrito against
the white-walled tires of his meticulously restored 1979 Ford Fairmont,
complete with "A Don't Drink and Drive" bumper sticker. We looked at each
other and shrugged.
"Anyone who gets that drunk can't be all that bad", Omar judiciously
pronounced, although he also noted that he had never (a) booted, or (b)
endured a hangover, as a resut of inhaling the Devil's Lettuce.
"Yeah, I guess so", Ramon concurred, his rivulet of consciousness
focusing on several half-suppressed memories of pre-sunrise arm-gnawing.
Ramon pulled out a business card and slapped it on the back of John's
sweat-drenched blue pinstriped jacket. "Give my secretary a call, carnalito."
John retched affirmatively.
Ramon's overmuscled frame strained as he rocked the limo to awaken
Freddie. After his most discourteous arousal, Freddie dutifully jumped out of
the front seat and ran around on his stubby legs to open the rear door for us.
"Don't ever fall asleep on the job, loco, Ôcuz you don't get
paid $4.50 an hour for nothing," Omar admonished him, zapping him with the
cattle prod he carried in his jacket pocket and had adjusted to Maximum
Dysphoria just for that purpose. "Or else, next time we'll just trade you
in for that reward money."
Freddie took out his razor sharp Tanto knife to make amends, yakuza-
style, but right before he was to sever his right pinkie at the second joint,
Omar's generous nature got the best of him.
"That will not be necessary, ese," Omar softly vocalized. "Just remember
that next time you err, it will be three fingers: one for this time, one for
next time, and one for my Vietnam-era digit collection. ÀMe entiendes,
MŽndez?"
Freddie exhaled gratefully, spraying tiny droplets of infectious saliva
before him. Omar cringed.
After jumping in and settling into the plush leather seats, we noticed
Freddie was still waiting expectantly. The smell of his carrion breath was
powerful enough to melt the Extra-Super Hold Aqua Net which lacquered Ramon's
hair.
Ramon groaned and said "Okay, okay, relax., relax."
He reached into his full-length snow-white authentic Baby Harp Seal
jacket15 and pulled out a greasy napkin. Wrapped inside it were table scraps
we had saved just for this purpose. Ramon flung the meat in Freddie's general
direction and urged him to make haste. After all, Ren and Stimpy cartoons were
awaiting.
Freddie fiercely attacked the scraps, and before we could finish our
preparatory joint, he had managed to suck the marrow out of every bone.
Because we were feeling munificent, we only made him wash and wax the car
twice when we got to the aparment. Understanding the potential implications of
our generosity, Freddie smiled gratefully in hopeful anticipation. It was a
rare night that he did not feel the hot sting of salt-soaked rawhide flailing
the very flesh from his back.16
Freddie wiped the sweat from his face and resumed his chauffering
duties.17
And so it was that several weeks later we found ourselves enroute to San
Francisco for the Big Interview. It was a tense morning for us and our little
malovacheksÑ whom now consisted of Ramon, Omar, Freddie, and our newest
recruit, Marceau.
A five-foot four-inch, two hundred and sixty pound, bare-knuckled, bar-
brawling Navajo warrior, Marceau competently complemented Freddie as a member
of our crack security squad. Marceau, like his paragon the character Chavez y
Chavez in Young Guns I and II, was proficient at knife-throwing.
He also had several unique talents of his own. For instance, since
he was widely feared as a semi-professional cantina pugilist, he had been
banned from many local pool halls. Indeed, in mano a mano combat, he could
still18 expertly manipulate both the broken Rolling Rock bottle and the
splintered cue stickÑ while sober, drunk, DeathBaked¨, shrooming, or
dosed, to name just a few states of altered consciousness Marceau had
weathered.
Because he aimed at conserving glycogen for his enigmatic mind, Marceau
disdained moving any part of his body for more than the bare minimum it took
to keep himself well-fed and thoroughly hemped; surely, it was partly a result
of his mysterious ways that he had the highest SAT score of any entering
Native American freshperson at Stanford.
Indeed, Ramon always complemented him.
"Don't worry," Ramon would reassure Marcel. "A high percentage of body
fat will no doubt be back in fashion again, just like the Elizabethan period."
Marceau nodded confidently, with unshakable conviction. But Marceau had
not always been like this.
The transformation Marceau had undergone in the two weeks since he had
first met us was nothing less than phenomenal. For example, he no longer
attended classes; instead he began going to bed at dawn and waking up to the
rhythm of the bong, and he wasted huge chunks of his time playing pirated
versions of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons on the Macintosh at the Native
American Cultural Center. In spite of this promise-filled lifestyle, he was
nevertheless overjoyed to luxuriate in the privilige of hanging out with us
future cultural icons.
It was certainly going to be a stressful morning, for we would be going
behind enemy lines. As Eddie drove and a DeathBaked¨ Marceau navigated, Omar
and Ramon lit up the air-compressor-powered hookah. Our heroes certainly were
not loath to apply the latest advances in technology to their sacred bhang-
ingestion rituals.
Believe us, the technology worked.
By 9 a.m. we pulled up to the 57 story Federal Building, and by 9:01
a.m. Ramon and Omar were stumbling out below the clouds of reefer smoke
billowing from the sunroof of the limosine, gasping for oxygen.
"Let us pray," Ramon pontificated. "Pakalolopas is our friend. We shall
never betray her. We shall always preach the benefits of marijuana."
Omar concurred. "Legalize it!"
Freddie yelped, "And lower the age of consent too!"
We pulled on our sap-gloves, and boxed Freddie's ears, like the pious
Catholics we were.
"!Malcriado!"
Ramon's blessed abuelita would have agreed with us for punishing
Freddie's for his sins, vato loco-style.
We yelled at Freddie to find parking immediately and meet us at the top
of the marbled stairs. It took quite a bit of coaxing to get Marceau out of
the car to perform his bodyguarding dutiesÑ even a few electromagnetic shocks
from our trusty cattleprod failed to elicit more than a muscle spasm or twoÑ
but a few quick jabs to his pressure points from Omar's stiletto-like index
finger squelched the slothful insurrection.
"That AP ninja training elective at Woodbridge High certainly proved
applicable, mon amigos," Omar reflected.
Marceau nodded, for fear of being jabbed mercilessly.
Then, Marceau swung his ample frame around like a top, and half-
stumbled, half-fell to the floor as he exited the front right seat. Thereafter
he joined us at the top of the stairs to await Freddie. In the ten minutes it
tooks us to put a sizable dent in the 750 ml. flask of Sauza Tres Generaciones
waiting in Marceau's jacket pocket, we began to calculate how much Freddie's
salary would decrease for every second of tardiness.
Luckily, after Ramon had swallowed the Sauza annelid at the bottom of
the bottle, Freddie showed up. He had finally found a metered parking space by
using his intuition, we inferred, because he sure hadn't found it by employing
his sub-par analytical skills. The chauffering expertise he had acquired in a
past life as a Pakistani cab driver in Spanish Harlem had paid off once again.
Freddie ran to join us, wheezing uncontrollably. Together we slapped
him heartily on each jowl, spun him around thrice, and shoved him headfirst
through the double glass entrance doors of the Federal Building. It was a most
fascinating place indeed. There were police officers, FBI spooks, DEA agents,
and all other manner of law enforcement cogs-in-the-machine there, scurrying
around like mindless ants.
Fear and paranoia immediately froze us, particularly because we were
alternating between "reality" and a cubist flashback, and also because we felt
fear as three Mexicans and one behemoth Navajo would when infiltrating a place
where the only other people of color were being led away in chains by
anglos.19
But, our fear subsided as we remembered we weren't dressed in our
regular vestments and in fact wore the requisite sartorial badges. Indeed, we
were all clothed in double-breasted suits: Omar's was a grey silk Versace,
Ramon's was a navy wool Armani, and the others wore Dacronª and Fortrelª
Short & Fat. So, regaining our composure, we traversed onward.
Noticing the metal detectors by the elevators in the main lobby, Freddie
whispered in a panic. "Hey, loco," he intoned anxiously. "What about my gun,
ese?"
"No te preocupes, homechicken," Omar fired back confidently, his eidetic
memory kicking in. "You have a 9 mm Glock 17 Semi-Automatic Pistol, composed
primarily of the non-metallic Teflon, a trademarked name for
polytetrafluoroethylene, which is a strong, waxy non-flammable resin. I may
add it is a polymer composed of large molecules formed by chemical
combinations of small ones into chains. As you know, polytetrafluoroethylene
is characterized by a slippery surface and resistance to chemicals. But, alas,
I digress. Non-metallic is the key word."
"In other words," Ramon paraphrased, "you've got nothing to worry about
since the gun won't set off the metal detector, pendejo."
Freddie nodded in blind faith.
Marceau just stared blankly in the distance, only aware that he felt a
voracious grumbling in his distinguished paunch. Thus, we calmly approached
the metal detector flanked by the armed federal marshals. "Good day,
gentlemen," a bear-like marshal said, his beady little eyes hidden behind
mirrored sunglasses.
We stared at ourselves in the reflection of his lenses, admiring our
supermodel looks. We flashed ourselves a confident smile, and then Omar
politely cheered, "Jolly good day to you, kind sir."
The marshal smiled widely, but alreadyÑ as he often didÑ he was
reminiscing about his glory days, when he was professional wrestler Jimmy
"Superfly" Snooka.
As Omar and Ramon passed through the metal detector with nary a beep,
Omar reflexively palmed the marshal a C-note and told him he had deserved his
tip. The marshal, who was concentrating on a memory of his last battle with
the "Iron Sheik", hardly noticed as we went by. Since Freddie and Marceau were
assiduously following our instructions to trail us at no more and no less than
ten paces, we turned around to wait for our servile underlings.
Smiling dumbly, Freddie and Marceau stepped arm-in-arm through the metal
detector, detonating strident alarms and sirens. Within nanoseconds, Freddie
was sucking on the barrel of a Winchester riot gun. "Make my week, Pancho,"
Freddie heard, his heart pounding, and then, ÁWhack!, the club to the temple
sent him downward.
"You too, Tonto," another steroid-fed marshal, who had been Jessie "the
Body" Ventura in his youth, ordered. Before Marceau could grab his Lou Diamond
Phillips name brand throwing knife, a barrage of baton blows sent him crashing
to the freshly waxed linoleum floor, on top of Freddie. Herr Ventura grinned
ear-to-cauliflower-ear, for this reminded him of the time he snuck up behind
"Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase and smashed an oak chair on his skull..
It only took a few well-placed, hearty kicks to Freddie's already
damaged liver to persuade him to finally consent to a Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S.
1 (1968), stop and frisk. After discovering Freddie's pistol, the marshals
administered a few more rabbit punches before handcuffing the prisoner and
preparing to teargas him long past after he started begging for clemency.
"This is better than the good ole WWF days," Jimmy and Jesse thought
simultaneously.
"Are you with these clowns?" Jimmy inquired, gazing suspiciously in our
general direction.
"Nope, never seen 'em, honourable sires," we responded unhesitatingly.
Our mission could not be compromised for anything, especially the ineptitude
of our crack security squad, and, as planned, Ramon cheered, "Throw them down
into the deepest, blackest, most diseased dungeon ye have, pusillanimous
varlets! May we suggest the Rikers Island Federal Corrections Center?"
Jimmy and Jesse looked back vacantly, trying to remember what the word
Ôdungeon' meant.
Then, Omar looked up at the roof and whistled Beethoven's Ninth Symphony
while Ramon carefully scrutinized his recent manicure. The officers dragged
our little droogie pals off to the holding tank, where they would be subjected
to various tortures not approved by Amnesty International. The look of anguish
and helplessness displayed on Freddie's cherubic face was enough to cause any
decent-hearted person to break down in sympathetic sobs. Fortunately, such
human attributes did not burden us. Our only regret at this point was that we
hadn't brought a Camcorder to capture Freddie's piteous countenance for
subsequent entertainment.
After the commotion had finally subsided, we looked questioningly at
each other. "There goes your theory about Teflon, mon freire," Ramon remarked
quizzically.
Omar sighed. "Well, this will furnish me with a tragic yet jocose
example of the thesis that even genuises like myself may be mistaken. How
fortuitous that Freddie and Marcel are gonna have to pay us 500% interest on
the bail money that we're gonna lend them. Just in time, too, Ôcuz my AMEX
gold payment for next month is due in a few days," he asserted.
"At the rate these derelicts are amassing full recourse debt," Ramon
observed, "they continue will be our indentured servants indefinitely."
We turned around and headed toward the elevators.
Ramon pushed the Up arrow insistently until the doors opened. We moved
forward, and unwittingly stepped into a car filled with overweight, balding
FBI agents who stunk of Old Spice. It was a long ride, and we grimaced
distastefully the whole time.
As we exited the elevator, Ramon bumped into a couple of agents. A few
seconds later, the elevator door closed and Ramon began to assess the contents
of the wallets he had pilfered.
"Strike one for Chicano militantism, ese!" Ramon celebrated.
"Viva Zapata! Long live the revolution!" Omar replied triumphantly. And
then he launched into poetry:
"when the revolution's over"
When the revolution's over
I'm gonna be happy
When the revolution's over
I'll grow lots of yesca
Plant-slaves for my whim
Cow-milk-thing
When the revolution's over
I'll never die longing
When the revolution's over
I'll drive a Ferrari
Oil-fed for your godspeed
godhateful of me
godhatefullofme
When the revolution's over
The spring will last always
When the revolution's over
There won't be such a thing.
© 1993 Lazlo Lazarus. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced without
submission of proof of consent from the Dalai Lama.
After the magnificent recital, Ramon golf-clapped softly, his ears still
savoring the euphonious verse. Omar chortled modestly, accepting the applause
with an aristocratic grace, and we strode majestically down the hall to the
Attorney General's office.
We stepped haughtily into the faux-ferned lobby and made our way to the
reception desk. A kind-faced, matronly vieja looked up expectantly. "Yes, may
I help you", she queried in a cloyingly sweet tone.
We looked distastefully at her, instantaneously beginning a
clairvoyantly telepathic communication process with each other's psychically-
gifted self. This was undoubtedly one of those fastidiously nice but
unreflective people, the type which made us impatient and impolite. Like
Freddie, she had to be taught a lesson she would not soon forget.
Omar banged loudly and rapidly on the desk bell. "Service, goddamnit, we
want service now!" He glared fiercely at her. "Chop, chop, you hoary virago!!"
The poor receptionist, quite visibly shaken by Omar's tirade, sputtered
"Uh, yes?"
Omar sighed heavily. "Jesus H. Christ, Mabel or whatever your name is,
we have an appointment to meet the United States Attorney General for the
Northern District of California at..." Omar pulled back his 14-karat-gold
monogrammed jacket sleeve to reveal a Crown Collection Presidential Rolex with
diamond face and emerald-and-ruby bezel, making sure everyone else in the room
feasted their eyes on it. "...At...NOW!"
The frightened harrigan grasped for the phone. "Who may I say is
calling, p-please", she stammered.
"My name is Omar CuauhtŽmoc Figueroa and I am the hand sign
interpreter for my aurally-impaired colleague" - Omar motioned at him -
"Mr. Ramon Mendez Gonzalez, esquire and Hispanic - slash - high-as-a-kite
Juris Doctor candidate from STANFORD Law School!" Omar waved his arms
wildly, spilling our business cards across her desk. Ramon nodded and made
random signing motions with his right hand.
Omar mistranslated rapidly, "He says he wants to know if you're married
and, in the likely event you are not, he wonders if you would perhaps not
object terribly to giving him your phone number so that he can call you and
ask permission to take you out to a little Dim Sum and perhaps, later, the
Opera." Ramon kicked Omar in the shin.
Mabel blushed. "Shoo, shoo", she waved us away. "I'll call your names in
a moment". She gazed rapaciously at Ramon's swollen, blood-and steroid-
engorged biceps. He winked back and gripped his manhood assuringly. Mabel's
cheeks flushed again.
We sat down in front of the desk and made random motions with our hands,
seemingly engaged in intense philosophical inquiry, while Ramon winked at
Mabel intermittently and ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek, Laverne
DeFazio style.
Suddenly Mabel called to us in her rather annoying sing-song voice. "Oh,
Gentlemen. Mr. Garc’a-Rockefeller will see you now".
We looked at each other approvingly. "Sweeeet...." She buzzed us in
through the steel door, instructing us to go down the hallway, to the right,
and all the way down to the last corner office. We sauntered down the hall
impatiently.
Instead of knocking, Ramon's shaved fist turned the knob, and then his
powerful Adonic profile followed right in. John dropped the National Enquirer
newsweekly he was reading (no doubt a feeble attempt at self-education), and
his hand reached for the nickel-plated gun he had once carried as a token
member of the Texas Rangers.
"Hey, kay passa, doodes?" he said, recognizing our handsome profiles,
and giving us the Nixon victory sign.
"Lo que pasa, no te pasa," Omar responded in mellifluent Castillian,
adding a covert popular finger gesture while he rubbed his eye.
"Engaged in autodidactic persual?" Ramon inquired.
Ignoring Omar's unintelligible pronouncement and Ramon's wry
observation, John stood up to introduce himself.
"John Garcia-Rockefeller. Damn glad to remake your acquaintance, my good
fellows." His nostrils involuntarily twitched at the pungent stench of our
favorite cologne, Eau de Kief.
"The sentiment is mutually protracted, Big J," Ramon responded with an
angelic smirk.
"Sit down, sit down, make yourselves comfortable," John unctuously
uttered. We sat. "Can I get you boys a drink?" John asked, scooping the bottle
of aged, taxpayer-funded Cuervo 1800 that he cradled in his lap below his
paper-cluttered mahogany desk.
We looked at each other, extremely tempted, but then decided that we
would abstain from the White Man's Poison for the time being. "No thank you,
big guy. The interview will commence now lest we inform your supervisors about
that picturesque scenario outside of Compadres".
John cleared his throat uncomfortably and instinctively loosened his
tie. "Yes, heh, heh...heh. Just need a nip or two to get me through 'til
lunchtime". After knocking back a triple-shot, John stood up unsteadily,
scratched his "little buddy" and watched the skyline through his floor-to-
ceiling panoramic window. "I got your message last week about that little
expose you boys were going to write about me".
"Yes, sir, that's correct", Ramon beamed happily. "It was to be for the
Stanford Law Journal, mon freire".
"Yeah well, I appreciate you boys coming down and interviewing with us
here and I especially appreciate your holding off on the article until after
you've had a chance to consider my offer." He smiled gratefully. We motioned
for him to sit down and this he did irascibly.
For the next forty five minutes John cajoled us about how much fun we
would have if we worked for him this summer. He never once glanced down at our
resumes which had been delivered to him in carved ivory tubes. "Why don't I
show you to the office you two will share if you should decide to bless us
with your magnificent presence," John suggested.
"Right on, loco", we signaled. Ramon shifted impatiently, but nobody
noticed.20
We got up and followed John down the hallway. Several office personnel
stopped to brown nose and pump our hands hopefully. Obviously word had gotten
out that we were from Stanford; several assistant attorneys general even
paused to examine Omar's Yale Bong and Keg Secret Society lapel pin. We passed
out obligatory counterfeit twenties en route.
"Well, here we are", John proclaimed proudly, waving his flabby arms in
a most grandiose fashion. We glanced around eagerly. The locale was indeed up
to our expectationsÑ the office consisted of at least 5,000 square feet and
the two corner walls were composed of floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass. Most
of the hardwood floor was covered by a thirteenth century Persian rug. We even
had our own exhibition secretarial staff, Sabrina and Brittany from Captain
Cream's Legal Secretarial Service, capably assisted by literate paralegals to
boot.
"Of course, we'll also be providing you with several of your own law
clerks. We have a couple of bright students from Golden Gate and Villa Nova
who could serve quite adequately in that capacity," John added, hoping all the
extra perks could dissuade us from joining the downtown New York offices of
Chadbourne & Parke this summer. Ramon had vociferously made clear that it
would take a lot to lure him away from the $1650/ week salary of our alleged
offers. Omar only said seven words. "Yale Club, Manhattan. Penthouse. Alumni.
Liquor. MegaConnections."
We furiously whispered at each other as we looked out past the San
Francisco skyline to the shimmering, yatch-dotted Bay. Droplets of sweat
formed on John's brow. We debated, occasionally glancing derisively at John,
who smiled hopefully. Finally, we came to Omar's consensus.
"John, what can we say but that it's your lucky day," Omar decided.
John smiled sanguinely and clapped us on the back. We spent the next
twenty minutes carefully teaching John the vendido version of the Secret
Chicano Handshake, which incidentally consisted of a substantially shorter and
less complex ritual than the authentic S.C.H.21
After a nearly insufferable sermon of thankful verbosity from our newly
converted disciple, Big J dropped la bomba.
"Boys, we still have a minor formality to dispense with," he began as he
was handing us the key to the evidence room. "I'm sure this isn't a problem
considering you're from Stanford and all, but what with the recent confessions
of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, I'm forced to ask you this - HAVE YOU
EXPERIMENTED WITH MARIJUANA WITHIN THE LAST FIVE YEARS?"
For a fleeting picosecond we froze before regaining our composure.
Visions of the previous evening's intemperate hash experimentation coursed
through our cerebellums.
"Of course not, Little J," we lied convincingly.
"We may drink ourselves blind on the weekends and wake up face down in a
pool of our own vomit, but we'd never dream of touching that...poison", Omar
spurted. Just then, a rooster crowed in the background.
"I'm so drunk," confided el jefe, chortling after noticing he had
momentarily lost control of his bladder.
Omar and Ramon looked at his dampened tan slacks, soiled white golf
shoes, matching white leather belt, and clucked their tongues disapprovingly.
It was at that moment that we decided to never, ever drink the White Man's
Poison again.22
"Whatever you say Little Big Man," Ramon continued conversationally.
"Damn right," John belched, pounding his little fist against his
cholesterol-saturated heart.
"We even have projectile vomiting contests after chugging 40's of Crazy
Horse," Omar testified. "My record's twelve linear feet."
"Heh, heh, heh, he," John sniggered, fondly recounting his own admirable
feats. He proudly exclaimed that his own personal best was in excess of twelve
radial meters.
Omar looked at the Western State College of Law23 diploma behind John,
and came to the conclusion that John was a political appointee.
We held our breath and waited for John's next statement - it did not
bode well, my little droogies. "Of course you realize that if you work here
we'll have to drug test you weekly...."
We sank deeper into the plush ostrich skin couch, and our pupils
contracted like Lou Ferrigno's in the Incredible Hulk.
"....And we are going to have to run a GOVERNMENT BACKGROUND SECURITY
CHECK."
Omar looked at Ramon who was already envisioning the hundreds of
pages the FBI's criminal computer files would soon be spewing out on him.
Alas, the skeletons in Ramon's closetÑ enough bones to fill an elephant
graveyardÑ were finally coming back to haunt him. Six years of being a
top notch hitman (complete with the moniker "Ice Pick Louie") for John
Gotti had not left Ramon unacquainted with the federal criminal justice
system. After John's heart- stopping pronouncement, everything simply
seemed to move in slow motion.
Omar forced a weak smile. "Oh, yes, of course. We expected this. You,
like us, share our concerns; we all must be sure to exclude any possible
malcontents, sociopaths, or other liminal figures from any decision-making
processes involving prosecutorial discretion."
"Indeed," John grinned, spreading his thick, stubby digits behind his
perfectly combed coiffure, leaning back in his chair. The seat groaned from
the strain.
It did not take a Wittgensteinean genius to figure out that our search
for summer employment was as of now far from complete. At this twinkling,
those pathetic summer research positions at The Farm were looking rather
tantalizing. And everything else that subsequently disgorged from John's
aperture echoed meaninglessly inside our skulls.
"Well, boys, we'll call you in a week once your background checks are
completed," John concluded, putting the key in his pocket. "Meanwhile, study
hard."
Ramon gulped. Now he would no longer have an opportunity to pilfer any
neurostimulants from the federal evidence room. "Of course, of course. We
haven't missed a class since the beginning of the semester."
John nodded encouragingly. "You guys remind me of my youth: so fresh and
full of promise."
Omar, who at the time was seeing brilliant patches of color projected
upon the three Johns who shimmered before him, agreed surrealistically.
"Indeed, you remind me of my middle age, ese."
We stood up and staggered unsteadily to the exit. "Cheerio," Omar
valedicted. John poked his head out the door after us and yelled to his staff
excitedly, "The boys are gonna come on board, troops!" The staff cheered
loudly, just as when the living population of Tenochtitlan had greeted the
arrival of our Aztec warrior antecedents after their slaughter of a rival
Tlaxcalan war party.
"I want you boys to come home and eat dinner with me and the missus,"
John proposed amicably, handing out handrolled Cuban cigars.24
Ramon carefully examined his manicure and Omar kneeled down and untied
his shoelaces. Then he tied them again.
We despondently headed toward the door without responding to John's
invitation. We ignored the autograph-seekers and pushed our way out. However,
we did hand out several 8"X10" glossies of ourselves with fan club
instructions printed on the back. Omar almost tortiously slipped on one of the
rose petals that our newfound fans were throwing before us.
We made our way with celerity through the lobby of the attorney
general's office, and, after Omar had arranged Ramon's opera date with Mabel,
we stopped at the elevator.
Ramon jammed the down button with great force and persistence. "Ding,"
the elevator's bell onomatopoetically struck, and seconds later the doors
pulled apart. We stepped in, and loaded a fresh bowl.
After speedloading twice, we left the elevator feeling slightly more
buoyant, but in general, we could be most accurately characterized as
suffering from a profound melancholy. Angst galore. Our heads hung low, and
our feet shuffled slightly as we humbly shuffled our way over to the front
entrance. Alas, our little droogies, it was not a good day for your favorite
countercultural revolutionary icons. We walked down the marbled steps that led
away from the entrance of the imposing Federal Building.
The only problem now was that we had no idea where our limo was parked.
Stupid Freddie, we thought. It was his fault Omar had to suffer the indignity
of flagging down a taxi with a fistful of twenties. It was his fault we were
not traveling in the exquisite style we were now so accustomed to. There was
only one thing to do: raise Freddie's interest rates.
Oh well, we saw no foreseeable alternative but to have Freddie return to
the city, pick up the limo out of the impound lot, and pay the fine (of course
this would be deducted from the trickling pittance which was Freddie's
allowance.)
But first we had to get Freddie and Marceu out of the federal holding
cell where they were spending substantial portions of their listless lives.
For this we needed a most diabolical plan. We consulted our cool girlyfriend
Mary Jane, and by the time we had reached the half-mile winding driveway which
led to our gated compound, we had hatched a machination of Machiavellian
acumen.
The next day we hired a fellow law student, a delicate Frenchman by the
name of Henri25, to drive us about town. We spent three hours cruising all the
local laundromats until we found the santera Ramon had once tried to debauch.
Like most of the hapless women unlucky enough to come into epidermal contact
with Ramon, she was not overly thrilled to see his sculpted silhouette.
As a matter of fact, she had to be physically restrained from lacerating
Ramon's corrective-surgery-enhanced visage. Fortunately, Henri restrained her
in a Full Nelson while Omar expeditiously peeled off five C-notes from one of
the toilet-roll-sized wads he carried in the back pocket of his ultrabaggy,
saltwater-denim Quicksilvers. After this placation, and a reassurance that
Ramon would be thoroughly saltpetered26 during the proceedings, the sorceress
was willing to help us one last time....
A short time later, our festive, mischievous band found itself seated
around a milky crystal ball, while la santera chanted in unknown and
mellifluous tongues. (As custom dictated, Ramon and Omar's tongues featured a
Speed Racer stamp soaked in liquid dimethyltryptamine, also known by its
acronym DMT27, to help them synchronize their psyches with that of the ersatz
witch.)
Sensing irie vibes, we erupted in a bloodcurdling banshee wail:
"Babaluye Aye se acerca!" we noticed. And a preparatory bowl was speed-loaded
and rapidly consumed utilizing our patented Chicano toque-y-rollª marijuana
ingestion technique.
The principle underlying toque-y-rollª is elementary. Inhale, and
refrain from exhaling until you're ready to inhale again. Courtesy dictates
that you inhale as soon as the burning bong has made its frantic relay around
the smoking circle.
Properly executed, toque-y-rollª has its own rhythm, and it is
the rhythm of the severed heads of pre-Columbian jai alai players defeated
by our ball-playing Aztec ancestors bouncing down the steps of the great
P’ramide del Sol. Or so notable ethnographers agree.
With the sacred toque-y-rollª ritual completed, the milky surface of
the crystal ball miraculously cleared to reveal a gruesome scenario. While
Marceau slept on a bench with his eyebrows furrowed and his arms crossed,
Freddie was crawling in front of Marceau, surrounded by taunting prisoners.
Our optic nerves relayed a ghastly spectacle: a small, vile creature was
sinking a sharpened Hello Kitty pencil into Freddie's exposed dorsal nerve
center. Freddie howled with pain, and the creature chuckled malevolently at
the Nuestra Familia initiation ritual.
"We gotta do something," Ramon exclaimed exigently, grimacing.
"No doubt," Omar echoed, thinking wistfully of the missing Camcorder.
"Freddie simply is not allowed to have so much fun while within our employ and
under this particular stage of his tutelage. We haven't even shaved his head
yet."
"Let us proceed in the name of my blessed abuelita's patron saint, the
sacred Virgen de Guadalupe," Ramon suggested.
"Yaaaaaah," we primal-screamed in a dischordant duet, much as our
Zapotec ancestors had when they tortured rival Mayan prisoners of war by
hollering pagan obscenities into their unmuffled ears.
We instructed the santera to teleport our hapless co-conspirators out of
their captivity, and she made the requisite preparations, once even indulging
in symbolic cannibalism, like those barbaric gaijin Christians.
Then, there was a blinding phosphorescent flash coupled with a
thunderous clap. In teleported a disraught and perspiring Freddie, a still-
sleeping Marceau, and the ignominious degenerate we would soon come to regret
ever having met Ñ "Pee-Wee".28
Pee-Wee had the emaciated body of Tolkien's Gollum and sported brown
khakis and a wifebeater tanktop. His carcass was engraved with jail-etched
tatoos: a sparkling cross between the thumb and the trigger finger of his
right hand; "Florencia," the name of the gang to which he swore allegiance, in
a two-inch Gothic script inscribed across his left shoulderblade; "King of
Pains" [sic] in stylized pachuco font over his Adam's apple; and the
Immaculate Virgin of the Pachucada emblazoned in polychromatic glory across
his bony, acne-scarred back.
Ramon, finally putting his B.A. in English into practice, pointed out to
Pee-Wee that the plural of pain was "pain" and not "pains."
"So what?" Pee-Wee replied nonchalantly. "I don't care how you spell it,
you pathetics. I got it from my favorite song by Sting, King of Pains." We
looked at each other, and sighed. If ignorance was bliss, Pee-Wee must have
been in a state of perpetual rapture.
Omar changed the topic. "Q-vole, homechicken."
Pee-Wee turned, and saw Omar's Cypress Hill hemp shirt.
Using his precise sense of timing, Ramon fired the taser, sending 40,000
volts into Pee-Wee's soon-to-be-twitching torso. Before Pee-Wee regained
neuroelectrical control, he was rendered unconscious by Ramon's time-tested
but now supposedly obsolete L.A.P.D chokehold. Omar turned on the tat pen and
began inscribing a replica of Pee-Wee's bloodshot beady little eye onto the
middle of his pimply forehead.
Fifteen minutes later, Pee-Wee coughed twice. After a grand mal seizure,
his eyes fluttered open. He coughed painfully again, and, glaring at us like a
trapped rodent, spat, "Saquen de la poderosa, cabrones."
Omar translated for the Spanish-impaired Ramon, whose Anglo features
called into question the affirmative action targeting of multitudes along
quasi-nationalistic lines in the presence of interstitial ethnoracial
configurations. "Well, mis amigos, Pee-Wee wants Ramon to break out his
ultrapotent Kind, or he might relapse into catatonia," Omar interpreted.
Ramon unzipped his pants and took out from beneath his steroid-
shriveled-scrotum a concealed cigarette case, which contained a frio, a joint
of violet-haired Humboldt dipped in a vessel filled to the brim with
phenothiazine. Pee-Wee rapidly took the proferred blunt and jammed it in his
salivating chops, sucking forcefully enough to start a Harley Fatboy through
twenty feet of garden hose. Then he sparked a fuego.
Great columns of smoke made their way into Pee-Wee's lungs, and a
residual quantity was expelled from his prominent ears. Pee-Wee waited seated
for two minutes, then exhaled as he stood up to chalk up the last headrush his
limaceous self would ever savour.
In honor of the manumission of our faithful apostles, we decided an
impromptu soiree was in order. Within seconds, our hand-polished bull-
elephant-tusk Afghani hookah was commencing the first leg of its world tour,
around Ramon's chambers.29
In spite of the festive mood, our original hopes that Pee-Wee would
exhibit at least a modicum of interpersonal competency were rapidly
evaporating. He mildly amused us for several minutes with his tales of urban
ultraviolence and carjackings in South Central L.A. But our fellow partiers
grew morose after his explicit depiction of his fifteenth confirmed kill, this
one a fatal icepick in the ear canal with a brown No.2 Ticonderoga pencil. It
seems our favorite little fourth-grader friend was involved in a handball
score dispute.30
And, Peque–o Wee feverishly smoked our precious anodyne as if it were
his closing night on Death Row. Soon, we began to await his hopefully
perpetual departure. As Pee-Wee continued his execrable quasi-epic,31 we began
to inspect our two brave security officers for intimations of permanent injury
accrued from the White Devils' political prison. We figured that after
attorney's fees, which would go to us, Marceau and Freddie would enjoy $5,000
each from the $460,000 settlement we would negotiate from the civil rights
lawsuit we intended to file against the United States Marshal Service.32
Omar instructed Ramon to produce a fact pattern which, when
matched to the applicable substantive and procedural law, would result in
maximum ducats for us, and, consequentially, our clients.
Catching on, Marceau began to protest about the illegitimate invasion of
privacy that transpired when his medicine bag was searched for peyote, but
Hormonius muscleonious silenced him with a yakuza gesture.33 The facts we
could make up later.
To calm him even more, Omar shoved another Ding Dong pastry into
Marceau's sucrose-rotted molars.
Marceau seemed relatively unscathed and contentedly licked at the
processed chocolate encrusted around his noisome mouth. Freddie, on the other
hand, seemed rather flustered after his nonconsensual "encounter" with Pee-
Wee.
Sadly and inevitably, the yesca ran out. As soon as the bullet-headed
diablito realized this, Pee-Wee immediately began screaming at us to procure
him more, willing to bet his favorite switchblade that we were hiding grade-AA
kief somewhere. We sighed heavily and decided that we had no option but to
score some more locoweed. "Come, acolytes," we instructed sternly. "We are not
yet done worshipping our Santer’a deity Babalu Aye."
Fortunately we lived not too far from our herb outfitter. With the aid
of our dependable Navajo guide Marceau, we trekked across campus through a
small labyrinth of dirt footpaths and waist-high fences.
Suddenly we heard a motorized vehicle coming up behind us. Sure enough,
the answer to our lethargy arrived in the form of a Stanford Bookstore
courtesy golf cart, whose mission was to ferry customers to and from the
bookstore. With no warning whatsoever, we shoved Marceu into the oncoming
trajectory of the speeding vehicle. The driver registered panic for a brief
decisecond before slamming into the brakes, but it was too late. Our little
behemoth soared fifteen feet forward into a chaotic clump of huckleberry
bushes.
"ExcellentŽ!" We celebrated our genius, jumping up and smacking each
other a flying hi-five over Marceu's spasming, prone body, which we had
dragged feet-first from the bushes. After a few jabs from the cattleprod and
a swift solid kick or two in his solar plexus, our piteous worshipper was
successfully roused. Omar handed him Freddie's half-eaten It's It to prevent
any verbal reproach. Freddie started to complain, but Ramon silenced him with
one word. "Pinkie!"
We then apologized to the driver of the cart and boarded, shouting
directions.
"First, we gotta go to the ATM," Ramon ordered, curling his biceps.
"I'm sorry, but I only drop people off at their cars or residences," the
driver retorted.
Ramon showed the driver his steroid-pumped left bicep . "Not to worry,
our friend," he explained convincingly. "We're just taking a somewhat
circuitous route."
Omar reached into his vest pocket like Luca Brasi. Eyeing Omar
furtively, the driver turned the key and gunned the engine.
"Turn on this ranfla's nitrous oxide, ese," Ramon commanded, whacking
the wheezing driver on the back.
Before the conscripted chauffer had an opportunity to register protest,
we shoved a glowing shake-filled fr’o into his lips. The gasping driver had
no choice but to inhale.
Five seconds later, like the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse, he revved the
accelerator fiercely. The paraquat in the fr’o was doing its magic. We popped
a stony "Happy Mondays" tape into Freddie's Fisher-Price Portable Stereo.
"I smell dope, I smell dope, I smell dope, fine smelling dope," we sang
along in chorus.
After a delayed start we were well on our way, hurtling to meet our
friendly neighborhood urban farmer. In furtherance of their security duties,
we instructed Freddie and Marceau to run alongside the cart, their hands
touching the sloped hood, with their aviator sunglasses on. Several times we
were forced to stop and cattleprod a hyperventilating Marceau for his apparent
lack of enthusiasm in this project. At one point, Marceau somehow was caught
under the front tire of the golf cart, and ended up being dragged feet first,
his shoelace caught in the bumper.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, Omar and Ramon discussed what to
do. After successfully completing an ex parte bilateral negotiation, we
finally agreed to stop; however, by then, we decided to calculate the friction
mechanics of Marceau, seeking to minize the asphalt burns.
The driver looked questioningly at us.
"Don't worry, we're almost there and he's a stout fellow," Ramon
explained.
Omar nodded sleepily, and Marceau's shoelaces finally broke. Considering
the inevitability of a worker's compensation claim, we kept going.
Twenty minutes later we were riding home, with our jogging escort
ensuring our security. Our newly acquired stash was carefully stuffed inside
our hollow full-grain cowhide belts, the type employed by paranoid high-
rollers in our favorite town, Las Vegas, the setting for our disciple Hunter
S. Thompson's literary classic. Feeling a little THC-depleted, we decided to
stop for a quick smoke beneath the symbolically-protective, darkened aegis of
a burned-out street light.
Omar took the first toque out of his Indian sandstone pipe and passed
it to Ramon, who then handed it down to Freddie and Marceau for them to
squabble over. We forced Pee-Wee to wait until last- despite his violent and
insulting exhortations - since he was the newest member of our little klika.
Marceau took out his Lou Diamond Phillips mini-machete and Freddie
responded by rolling up the sleeves of his stained T-shirt.
After what seemed to him to be an interminable period, the smoldering
pipe finally made its way to Pee-Wee.
"ÔBout time, you pathetics!" he exclaimed venemously.
He paused to allow the redolent and ambrosial fragance of kief-sprinkled
indica to waft up into his cavernous, quivering nostrils. Pee-Wee closed his
eyes and popped the stone stem into his salivating mouth.
At that precise moment, a battered, battleship grey El Camino screeched
around the corner toward us, nearly crashing into the burned-out streetlamp.
Pee-Wee's eyes and mouth opened wide in shock, his foul palate not yet
sampling the nectar bud he so eagerly craved.
Ramon's eyes opened even wider when he realized who the intruder was -
his old flame, Anita, the first year law student from USF, an institution so
desperate for tuition money that it had admitted us to the Class of '95
without so much as us even submitting an application.34
With amazing precision and dexterity, Anita gripped the wheel with her
left hand and aimed an illegally-converted fully automatic nine-millimeter
mini-Uzi wih the right.
"Wilson, you monster!" she screamed at Ramon. "I finally tracked you
down! Prepare to be blasted back to the hell where you were spawned!"
Instinctively we jumped behind Marceu's protective girth, which at this
particular moment seemed to offer the best chance of survival. Simultaneously,
Marceu grabbed a bewildered Freddie (who had just soiled himself) and held out
his quivering corpus as a defensive barrier.
A fusillade of consecrated silver drizzled in our general direction.
Indeed, Ramon's blessed guardian deity la Virgen de Guadalupe must have been
watching over us that night, for miraculously none of us were hit except Pee-
Wee.
The scarred, tatooed torso of poor, peque–o expendable Pee-Wee was
riddled in half by the salvo of 9mm silver slugs. Now, his carcass somehow
remained standing, and was swaying back and forth. His feet were thus the
fulcrum of an invisible pendulum.
Anita's El Camino roared off into the firmament. Indeed, as it had been
a lip-smackey diplay of the old ultraviolence, we felt most gratified.
Omar sagely reached over and plucked the smoldering pipe from Pee-Wee's
protruding lips, taking a tripindicular toque. Pee-Wee slowly tumbled over
and sprawled face-first onto the sidewalk.
In a manifest act of inclemency, Omar broke open several ampules of
amylt nitrate beneath Pee-Wee's nostrils to prolong his meaningless and
excruciatingly painful departure from this biosphere.
We decided to get DeathBaked¨ while we pondered the day's
developments. After all, matters worked out considerably well. Most
notably, Pee-Wee had been a revolting and unmarketable character and we
were blessed with his conspicuous egress.
After rifling through his pockets for spare change and loose joints, we
hurled his stripped cadaver into the nearest bush. Then, we simply gathered
our effects and headed out.
We smoked and walked, puffed and paced. Alas, so far we had no
summertime vocation. We began to consider the idea of dropping out of law
school and flying to Japan to become well-known super models and pop stars.
Thus, we smoked and thought, rolled and ruminated.
Then, we had Freddie drive to the silk screener to inquire about the
delivery date for our "Bring Back Pee-Wee" t-shirts, just in case a critical
mass of our ardently loyal hordes of readers protested his early demise as
they had when we dispatched Freddie into the netherworld.
A few weeks went by and our epic lives continued as normally as ever --
Marceu was still refusing to do more than twelve minutes on the Stairmaster;
Freddie's Flamenco dancing skills had paid off and he had just been offered a
lucrative spot in the New Menudo; and your humble heroes were considering
working for -- dare we admit? -- Public Interest.
Verily, our loyal subjects, a sub-optimal fate had befallen us. Our
unimpressive credentials were hardly attracting offers of $1600 a week
clerkships. How ironic it was that we -- future sell-out His-panic
bloodsuckers -- were now going to be forced to help others in order to live
this summer. These perfectly manicured hands (which were meant to hold
pulchritudinous gorgeosities and pick gold from the streets) would now be
slaving pro bono. Graduate school was beginning to look good.
For many hours, we pondered our fate, taking long yet solemn kief hits
while standing by Pee-Wee's freshly taxidermitized carcass.
The next night, we whistled Beethoven's Ninth Symphony off-key,
gamboling down Stanford Avenue, smiling savagely at each other when we
approached a group of fresh-faced Paly High seniors, who were no doubt all of
legal age (or so we hoped, considering there was strict liability and no mens
rea requirement for the old in-out, in-out.)
"Can you guys score us some beers?" one of them asked in a most angelic
voice.
"Heh, heh, heh", Ramon chuckled, so lasciviously that even Bevis and
Butthead would have been envious. "Of course, of course, my little babushka."
Omar winked at a blonde cheerleader, and she smiled hopefully.
We could tell it was time for a bit of merriment, my little droogies.
Afterwards it would be time for the lip-smackey dvochkas and a few frothy
glasses of soma at the local milkbar Gordonbiersch. But now, it was time to
frolick. And frolick we did. It was most horrorshow; and the soma was
enjoyable too.
1 Cf. Our account of Tony Serra's illumination.
2 Likely to end in a fiery apocalypse, as our zealous disciples would be
sure to mount a fierce defense, as they were convinced that Omar was the
reincarnation of the Toltec deity Quetzalcoatl.
3 Don't get us wrong; we are still hyper-PC. We only established the
profit-sharing club for First Amendment purposes.
4 P.C.-Apologium nœmero deuce: the sanctity of our traditions takes
precedence over the equally arbitrary customs that delimit the praxis of
animal rights activists. Long live ethical relativism.
5 Steely Dan III from Tijuana suffered irrepairable structural damage when
Ramon decided to test-drive it on hapless passerby while loitering in the
Law School Lounge.
6 We originally had no intention of reintroducing the Barbados character,
mostly because he repeatedly asked for his promised share of domestic
royalties from our prize-winning account of the illumination of our
spiritual disciple, Tony Serra. But after massive "Bring Back Freddie"
rallies, we were forced to concede his miserable existence. Of course, the
massive windfall we reaped from the wildly popular "Bring Back Freddie!"
t-shirts we had copyrighted before announcing Freddie's unfortunate demise
almost made up for his inauspicious presence.
7 This was unfortunate because said collapse occured before we got a chance
to tender an offer: in return for buying each of us two skinless chicken
teriyaki dinners at Miyake's sushi emporium, we would let Freddie inhale
copious puffs of the violet-haired Humboldt we had recently acquired from
one of Tony's clients, a kind gesture to welcome Freddie back into this
plane. But that was not to occur. Freddie's ife inspires pity.
8 The blemishing of the museum-quality rug offended Omar's Nietzschean
aestheticism.
9 Actually, it was a bad copy of a Rolex, a slightly more expensive version
than the genuine imitation Rolex we had bought Freddie for his Stanford
graduation.
10 For twelve and a half hours, Freddie had been convinced that he was only
a barrow wight
11 As we knew, Freddie also had a Ren lunchpail, yet always babbled about
adding Stimpy to the variegated collection of lunch items he had been
steadily amassing since fourth grade, beginning with a Partridge Family
thermos.
12 Ketamine, also Special K, is a felines and sub-human primate
tranquilizer.
13 The organization was so exclusive in its admissions standards that it
did not admit anybody who did not claim to possess a blood quantumn of at
least 5% pure Spanish, Mexican-American, Chicano or other Latino lineage.
14 Recipe for our favorite drink: An extremely liberal dose of Cuervo 1800
Tequila, with Sweet & Sour, Triple Sec, a splash of cranberry juice, and
just a wee dash of Grand Marnier, shaken, not blended, served on the rocks,
preferrably in Baccarat crystal, just as we enjoy it.
15 The fur was the byproduct of a half-dozen crushed Pagophilus
greenlandicus skulls.
16 Though our mistreatmeant of Freddie may have seemed cruel at the time,
it was for the best, for it must be understood that at this stage of his
resurrection he was only a wraith. Thus, harsh Skinnerian conditioning was
necessary to socialize him properly (including, most importantly,
housetraining), especially if we hoped to barter Freddie on the black
market in exchange for a pound of Acapulco Gold.
17 Freddie sure hoped that Ramon and Omar would give him the thousands of
dollars in royalties they had promised him, so he could purchase his dream
car, a biturbo Gremlin Pacer X with a race-modified engine and a small
cigarette machine installed in the back seat. This was a youthful
aspiration, like his dream of working for Tony Serra, and Freddie had
conceived this wish while reading Lowrider magazine and listening to War's
"Slipping Into Darkness.".
18 Hyperpolitical militant Marceau had broken his spine after he was thrown
from a cliff by capturing FBI agents somewhere in the Mohave Desert, who
sought to destabilize his countercultural political activity . On that
occasion, Marceau had been protesting marijuana criminalization, which
disproporationately affected stoners like himself.
19 Usual obligatory concession to P.C. conceptions of racial dynamics as an
ironic form of bifurcated ethnographical analysis. 20 Our prospective
sobriety made clear the necessity of buzz-maintenance activities.
21 Knowledge of this inferior version in a few years would result in
excruciating pain for John, after his bribery-charge-based imprisonment.
Apparently, the political configuration of our Chicano brethren in la pinta
indicated hard-core Chicano nationalistic penchants intolerant of
assimilationist Hispanicism and hateful of those who preached it. 22
Except with a few jealously-guarded, narrowly-drawn exceptions. Thus, when,
a) We ran out of yesca; or
b) Drinks were free; or
c) Drinks were very cheap; or
d) Circumstance(s) dictated the necessity of beer goggles.
23 Fully-accredited in several sparsely-populated counties of Texas.
24 Once again, tax-payer funded.
25 Henri (Pronounced "On-ree") had a penchant for thinking himself in the
height of fashion while he actually dressed like: a) Ramon's father in his
pre-dissertation days, or b) a cast member from "My Three Sons".
26 Saltpeter (a libidinal sedative) was also administered to a
nine-year-old Ramon in California Youth Authority disciplinary camp to keep
him and his bunkmates from commiting furious acts of nocturnal onanism.
27 Also used by the Panamaniam Kuna to induce violent hallucinations of a
beautiful and mystical character, and to disorient their clergy.
28 Apparently, Pee-Wee had been "positioned" too close to Freddie when the teleportation field had been activated, and it was
safer to bear the probability of his presence than to risk the possibility of Freddie being transported with a few missing limbs,
which would greatly decrease his already diminshing utility as a lackey.
29 Since the santera was too exhausted to beam Pee-Wee back to whence he
came, we decided we had no alternative but to keep him, housetrain him, and
then sell him to California grape growers as an indentured servant. After
minutes of animated discussion, we resolved to use the cattleprod as well
as the Humboldt-stuffed spliff to reconfigure Pee-Wee's behavioral
architecture so that it would not contradict the incentive-set demanded by
the growers.
30 Not coincidentally, that was the last year Pee-Wee attended a
state-funded institution uncircumscribed by stone walls and concertina
wire.
31 (Punctuated with plenty of epithets and manifesting an insecurity-caused
hubris.)
32 As a matter of fact, Marceau and Freddie were the first clients of our
newly-opened criminal defense law firm in the Mission District of San
Francisco. So far, our Spanish fluency, discount services, and Ramon's idea
of Spanish advertising in Guns & Ammo magazine had had the effect of
curtailing Tony Serra's Latino clientele by half.
33 Ramon extended all the fingers on his right hand except for the pinkie
and thumb, which was to signify a gruesome multidigital amputation.
34 Rumor had it that the late Oscar Zeta Acosta, a.k.a. the Brown Buffalo
and infamous Dr. Gonzo (who lent his name to our particular journalistic
genre), had attended said school!