The day I learned that healthcare was a commodity I saw everything. Customer Service. 2008

The Sheriff was in Town with Border Patrol at Her Side

     I inquired about United Airlines flight itineraries through the bathroom-stall divider. "Damn, you're across the isle from me. That's okay, we'll ask someone to move."

     Two weathered-well looking females strut onto the plane, sunglasses everywhere; deep sunburns, one with a High Pomp the other with sparkling eyelids. 

     "Can I get either one of you to move to the other side?" with pleasant gusto. We were looming over two elderly people in seats 6A & 6D. Disgruntled nervous stares were the only response. They hadn't been prepared for confrontation. We, on the other hand, were wired for weird interface. Come out on top. Rows of boarded passengers behind them wathcing this confrontation; front row seat to the Showdown. The Sheriff was in town with border patrol at her side. They were watching in real-time two cocky cunts who weren't accepting any answers but the ones that worked best for them. Stuttered half-sentences were their best response. "Please, this is my sister who I never get to see." She gestured at me leaning over her shoulder with a toothy smile. "She lives in D.C." I lived in D.C if she needed me to just like she lived in L.A. if the story was right. 

     The elderly gentleman reluctantly creeped out of his seat and across the isle.
     "I don't know if he wants to sit next to me," grandma said to all of us, sneering.
     "I gaurantee you'd rather sit next to her than me." I grinned at the old man. We took our seats.
     An hour earlier we had talked our way out of two-hundred dollars worth of flight-change charges at the United ticketing counter.
     The flight attendent came through the isle after ascent. We ordered whiskey and lots of ice. The Southern California Sun was still bright as we took every last thing from it before we flew East across the country into night-time thunderstorms and I put my mirrored, rose-colored lenses over my red eyeballs. Then Ashley promised not to spill her drink on her seat-back tray-table this time.
     "Ashley, never take the first offer and stop apologizing." You never did anything wrong.

"Eat a good breakfast, you're gonna need it." (original) 2008

     "What did you learn, Crystal?" She asked me like a mother as she was getting into the Driver's seat. She had sunglasses on her head and a Red Bull in her hand. It was midnight in Los Angeles. "What did you learn?"

    "I don't know, Ashley. What did I learn?"

     We were en route to O'Connell's Pub for Cocktails. "Don't look people in the eye. Jeramy taught me that years ago." She said it with her head cocked the was that she cocks it with a Big-T.I.P. sensual smile. She lowered her shades to her eyes and we were off again down Pacific Coast Highway.

West Hollywood, I guess. 2008

     I remember ordering hamburgers on Santa Monica Blvd. Hamburger Habit I think it was. I had had too much Phentermine so I wasn't really hungry but Ashely told me that I needed to eat and i knew she was right. We split a hamburger. I remember the place was leaning. Ashley doesn't like leaning. She had something to say about it but I ignored her. I was high on pills and anticipation. We were sitting in plastic patio chairs and I liked that. Mexican burgers and patio chairs in West Hollywood. Holy Shit I was amped and the burger was good. When we ordered the burgers they gave us playing cards. The Troubadour was a couple blocks west. We had passed it earlier along with all the of losers in the Will-call line. We didn't stand in lines, though. We wanted hamburgers.

I'm hungry. 2009

     Normally I would not have eaten that cookie after it rolled across my kitchen floor but I was listening to old-OLD-soul gospel music and I didn't care anymore what it touched. I picked it up and put it in my mouth.

How do you know when The Casherman has a moment of clarity?

Copy of a message to Ashley Marie (my border patrol).

Ashley! I just had my first True mad max moment. It's three thirty in the morning and I was digging into the depths of my purse for I can't remember what and I found my travel-bottle of aerosol hairspray. I'm fucked-up but I still know it's hairspray only I have a verrrrrry overwhelming urge to spray it in my mouth like it was breath spray. I'm still resisting the urge. In fact, if I had a black and mild within my reach Right Now I would deffinately eat it.

"She has my name tattooed on her arm,"she tells everybody with that look. 2008

Setting: Coastal Motel, early into the night, saddleworn. Hot night, motel door propped open with upright fan. Windows open. There's a party in the rooms upstairs.

     (C) is lying on one bed talking on the phone. (A) is characteristically moving compulsively about. (A) pours a drink at the bedside table and carries it with her as she makes a round of the room and her luggage. She exits the bathroom with a proper stir stick. (T) is on the other end of the phone inquiring about our evening.

     "...and (A) is stirring her drink with her electric toothbrush." (C) says to (T); (A)now standing at the foot of the bed.

     (A) promptly corrected her, "I'm stirring Your drink with my electric toothbrush." 

     And then she made one for herself, too.

Dr. Ismail walked in without looking at first and then looked at me. "Wow. Your hair…" was the second thing he said after ‘Hi'. 01/2009

     Waiting for the nurse to take my blood I grew restless in the plastic chair and the table that was covered with a terry-cloth towel that had been taunting me which I had resisted for my own self-gratifying reasons but I eventually gave into just before I was bored with it and almost forgot about was fucked with speculums. 5,6,7 of them. Did they expect it to take that many on me? I smiled and held back my laugh. The sight of me peeking under the white towel like a fucking criminal made me laugh. Then she came in with a fat needle that I couldn't wait until she stuck into my arm so I could Feel it. I told her that 'they' usually have better luck on the left side. That's the side I wanted her to use. She put it in completely painlessly and I hated her and couldn't believe her for that. She was pregnant...highly. 

      Mrs. Butler told me that I could write an almost-run-on-sentence like a mad bastard but not quite in those words. I write stories as I tell them with a thousand almost-run-ons.

The Internet is telling me to ’Repent & Turn to God’. 2009

     "...If The Sheriff can take it like a Man!" Ashley taunts me with that fucking gap in her teeth. She knows what she wants me to do and she knows how to make me do it.

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Anticipation: 
    I turned with a smile that you couldn't beat out of me when I heard the back door open. Anticipating you I was disappointed. But the blues are playing now and my drink is finally filling me and finally now you are here. You came in the back as I was smoking out the front.
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"Excuse, me. Have you seen a girl who can't pay for her drink?"
"Yeah, she's sitting over there."
"I'll pay for her's and have one more of the same."
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     Before she found me she kicked through the bathroom door exclaiming my name like a drill sergeant--last name only. She kicked through the front door and then she found me--like a private I awaited her word.
"Drinking doesn't help," Russell told her. I don't trust him.

Down on River Road Thats How We Were. 2008

     Look at those two pieces of unrepentant white Iowa trash. Drinking beer in a busted jalopy down on River Road. Pissing in the grass in the middle of the daylight and listening to Lynard Skynard. Lets not forget the cheap cigars. They might be my heros. In fact, we were and that was the greatest day. We may as well have been a thousand miles away.

He hates her more than he's ever hated anything in his life 2009

     I will make you drink too much. I will make you stay up all night. I won't sleep and then I'll go to work. My eyes will be crazy. I will drive hard and if you want to get out it's up to you. You gotta say something because I probably won't ask. You better have a nonchalant demeaner when Johnny Law is in our window because I am The Sheriff. "Have you been drinking tonight?" And without missing a beat,"No." And he believed us. You better believe we are right. We have done no wrong. I want some amphetamines and I want to drive loud. A want a big machine. I want some fucking hot sauce. Because we are vibrating and we have beautiful eyes and we are everyone. And we walk tall and bound and rebound. And sometimes we have credit. We labor for the fun. We labor tall and proud. We walk tall and proud. I might be a grizzly bear and she is a lizard. She can grow a new tail. And he is a ghost or some kind of presence.
     You don't get that from being born. Oh, no you don't get that from being born Abby told me. With a hand on a jutted hip I am your instigator in snakeskin boots. Be there soon. And then Willie said, "Til I can gain some kind of control again." And I thought it was the best damned thing he could have said.