For Robb Nagle

VIDEO: KEVIN WAS A CAR THIEF

So. Exactly. Who. The. Fuck. Do. U. Think. I. Would. Know.

Junkies. Drug Dealers. Card counters.

(I love Card Counters because they screw around with casinos).

Car thieves. Kevin was a car thief.

“Wanna go for a ride.”

I was always up for going for a ride in a brand new car.

Fucking in the backseat at Land’s End was what we did.

High. How high is high. High enough.

Higher than any normal would dare his pansy ass to go.

American cars are fun.

But there is nothing – NOTHING – like a Rolls Royce.

When you steal a Rolls, you should hand it off ASAP.

It’s a chop shop rule.

What rule.

The rule that says there are limits to everything.

Kevin did not like that rule, and either did I.

We were betting we would not get caught.

We never did.

We were always on our way to Lands End. Where you cranked the windows down.

To hear the tumultuous waves crash against a steadfast if taciturn shore. To have someone go inside of you.

Like the fog.

Tightlipped and the cold implied.

Stealing cars will make your blood run warm.

We had just walked into our apartment in the Tenderloin.

729 Jones. To know Jones is to smell the street of bones. Death everywhere.

Your mama.

Your daddy did not know you. Jones Street is in no way a part of the world the normals lived in.

Everyone who lived on Jones was a car thief.

Danny called. Danny had always been a problem. Not even Oakland could service Danny’s habit.

This time, the problem was a problem.

“He sounds like he’s dying.”

“Danny is always dying.” Kevin had seen a few too many Danny Emergencies.

“I think it’s real.” I paused. “This time it sounds real.”

We loved Danny. We just couldn’t save him. “Tim, you know I can’t go inside a hospital. There will be cops.”

There was not a single ambulance anywhere in San Francisco that would respond.

No way they would so much as park anywhere near Danny’s building.

Zombies are not real. But junkies are.

It was us or no one.

We had just parked a brand spanking new Beamer in the parking garage.

He had to help Danny into the car. He could barely walk. 

Three blocks into it, Danny vomited in the back seat.

We had to kick his ass out in the ER driveway of San Francisco General.

We were forced to ditch the car. No chop shop could rid that car of the smell.

Danny was a dead man anyway.

So was Kevin.

You just can’t understand how it felt to live among the dead.

You had to have lived through it. Survival is never sustainable.

Everyone I know is dead.

They are all waiting for me to arrive.

I say this even as the wilderness today has lost species after species.

The normals just stepped around the bodies. Hearing nothing.

Speaking nothing. Seeing nothing. Just get through the day.

This is what normals do. This is what the normals have always done.

They do not fuck their brains out anywhere near Lands End.

No one will ever go inside of them while fucking in a Rolls. I regret nothing.

The normals own all the bragging rights to courage. The whole world is just a chop shop.

The whole world is just one starving habit.

To survive, you’re gonna have to steal it.

After Kevin died, I was forced to take the bus.