You know I once saw an old lady get clipped by a Metro bus?
My point? She lived! She was in bad shape, that’s for sure. She didn’t dust herself off and walk away, no, nothing miraculous like that, but she was alert and responsive and asking for her purse the whole fucking time the medics were working on her.
I mean, you don’t go around asking for your purse if you’re about to die, am I right?
III
Fiona, I don’t take the bus anymore. It depresses me.
When I was younger though, I’d sneak a video camera on there once in a while and shoot faces, hands, feet. Long exposures of the modern immigrant struggle, lost to me, fractured. The fabric of a new and ever changing, ever the same San Fernando Valley. Smothering everyone into the
“Land of the free and the home of the Suburban, oblivion.”
IV
I know if I had committed myself to study, I could have become a man of science. Rather I chose a life dedicated to impulse; the pursuit of fine art.
Art by its very nature is a violent compulsion. Rewards are seldom had and as with most compulsions they become an agonizing loop, and you soon realize that the agony is the reward, but you like it, you love it, and you want more and more and even more of it!
Suckers!
If I didn’t pursue my art I would have worked with animals.
Fuck me! Really?
Really? Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Shit!
-Breathe, Sasha, Breathe
I’m having an anxiety attack and what the fuck is this damned woman saying about the 101?
V
I stick to surface streets, always best in the end, less stressful.
Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Breathe.
The Freeway system in L.A. is a fuck of a mess.
Take one ‘Eastern European Oligarch’ type, placed in confined space with one ‘Banana Republic Dictator’ type, also in the same confined space. Turn up the heat to about 108 degrees, cover, let simmer, and watch what happens.
You think I want to be in the vicinity of that shit when it explodes? Fuck no! And it happens every single day!
BANG! BANG!
And my collective insides are now not so collected. Decorating the dash of my Japanese midsize sedan.
What is this woman on the radio talking about now?
NOT RELEVANT!
Yak, Yak, Yakking.
My stomach feels like a dryer full of jagged rocks -jagged rocks and broken shards of bone.
Inhale. Exhale. Breathe.
Yak, Yak, Yak!
VI
The park will do me good. That’s what I need, a few minutes, sitting under a shady tree to gather myself. I have no reason to rush, no reason to push myself. It is going to be an amazing day. God knows I push myself hard enough with work, and Fiona.
Fi, Fi, Fiona!
I make you purr, don’t I baby?
And
We are not stupid, are we Fi?
We are not desperate, or poor.
We are not hungry for anything at all.
We are proud, proud, proud!
of our bones, bones, bones!
We need to wake up though, Fiona.
We need to capitalize on this moment.
We need to lick the dew off every leaf,
off every blade of grass.
No one is going to do it for us.
Am I right?
VII
I’ve told you that story of when I was a child
Yes?
My 8th birthday and my mother telling me:
No money, no party.
Go outside.
Play.
How I went outside and found 3 crisp 100 dollar bills, fanned out perfectly on the scorched tarmac.
This is God saying you are a very good boy.
God love you little son.
Happy Birthday.
God loves us, Fiona.
God loves the shit, out of us!
VIII
My mother was Russian. A beautiful woman, God bless her soul. She had freakishly large, heavy, hands.
They were like bricks.
Breathe. Breathe.
She died last summer of congestive heart failure with me by her side and her beloved poodle, Sneg.
My mother always had a dog. One would inevitably die, and she would get another. Always white, always named Sneg.
She once told me that back in Russia, people would hunt stray cats for sport. A dog person my mom and apparently the whole of Russia.
IX
My father was a Spaniard with aspirations of becoming a great writer. He worked as a foreman for a construction company.
He abandoned us when I was six. -went off one morning and never came back.
According to my mom he left behind a 36-page letter explaining all the reason why he had to leave.
You believe that shit, Fi?
Fucking Spaniard!
My attempts to remember my father fall flat.
His look, his smell, his laugh, his voice, all fall flat.
I can only truly remember his hair. Shiny, dark, jet-black hair, slicked back.
My mother discarded all signs of his existence: Photographs, videos, anything and everything that reminded her of him.
She went through it in stages: denial, anger, self-pity, and finally acceptance.
Your father, Sasha, was a very beautiful man. He look like Julio Iglesias.
X
My mom had many suitors after my dad, but no one stuck around, and she bore no more children. I imagine she quickly aborted anything that festered in her belly for more than a few weeks.
Breathe, Sasha, Breathe
What frightens me most Fiona, is the unpredictability of this world and the endless combination of ways you can suffer. Sometimes it weighs on me and I become petrified and practically immobile for weeks. Luckily, I have you, Fiona, you help me get through it every time.
Fi...Fi...Fiona!
Maybe that was the problem with my father. Maybe he just looked around at my mom and I and the thought of anything happening to us made him piss his pants, so he left.
The 34-year-old Palmdale man charged in Wednesday’s Freeway shootings in Ventura County seems to have been acting alone, law enforcement officials said Friday. Ricardo Vasquez, arrested Thursday afternoon in Los Angeles County, is set to be arraigned Monday afternoon in Ventura County Superior Court on multiple felony counts, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and firing into an occupied vehicle. It does not appear to be a random shooting. Dist. Atty. Denise Wellington told a morning news conference.
See!
See!
That is exactly what I’m talking about, Fi!
This is what we deal with every single day!
Death on top of death on top of shit death!
XI
My first hand experience with death Fiona is something we have never talked about.
The first was in Elementary school, 5th grade. A Mr. Green paid a visit to our classroom one day and with him he had one of those cheap coolers you can get at any drugstore in the city.
This Mr. Green, he went around, one by one to each of us and lifted the lid off the cooler - inside was a little bunny rabbit, rotting away with thousands of maggots chomping in unison; you could hear them tearing at the remains.
Fiona the smell, it was and still is the most wretched and foul smell I have ever encountered.
It burned into me something profound, it revealed and destroyed all at once.
It gave freely and took without remorse.
It spread naked for me the preciousness and futility of air in lungs, and blood through the heart.
It showed me that we are all in the end food for the true warriors of this world.
Maggots!
Fiona, whenever I see those coolers, it all comes back, the smell, the classroom, and Mr. Green. His forehead covered with a million drops of sweat dangling like stars in the night sky.
(I think you fucked me up for ever, Green! If I ever find you, I’ll be sure to thank you.)
Fi...Fi...Fiona!
XII
My second experience with death is by far the worst. I was 19 and working in a downtown L.A. jewelry store.
One morning as I was passing an alley that housed the trash bins for 2 large tenement hotels, I heard a muffled scream.
I looked up and witnessed a man leap off the roof of one of the buildings.
It was a horrific scene as you can imagine. He hit every single fire escape landing during his plunge. When he finally made contact with the ground, his rib cage exploded, his insides were oozing, his organs were tossed about like meat on a butcher’s block and I just stood there Fiona, frozen, watching the steam begin to rise from his body and for the life of me I couldn’t move.
One question kept repeating over and over in my head, and locking me in my spot.
Could this be my dad?
Yes, I know it’s crazy, but something compelled me to ask the question, to this day I don’t know what it was.
I walked and stood over the body. I stared into what was left of his face, at what remained of his body. I kneeled to get a closer look at his hair, to make out its color through the blood, to imagine its style before the impact.
BACK AWAY NOW!
I jumped up and back all in one grand motion.
The policeman pushed me out of the alley and out to the street.
What happened here?
He jumped. He jumped from that roof it seems, and now he’s dead.
Ya, he’s fucking dead!
What the fuck were you doing hunched over him like that?
I was curious if he might, maybe, be my father.
Your father?
You think this guy is your father?
No, he’s not. His hair is all wrong and he looks nothing like Julio Iglesias.
Listen to me and listen carefully.
Are you listening?
Yes.
Good man!
I want you to walk over to that nice officer over there and give him your name, your address and a phone number where we can reach you, and then I want you to go home. You understand all that?
Yes, officer.
Fiona, I did what I was told. I gave them my information and went straight home. I didn’t even bother going in to work.
That night, I thought about what had happened. I came to the conclusion that he obviously saw no worth and no value in his existence.
He looked at others and saw himself reflected back as a tumor that needed to be exorcized from their midst.
He was weak and that made his soul weak, so he ended it all.
All creatures are not created equal, Fiona.
In fact, some are of such inferior quality that they get pushed out, pushed down, and pushed in.
They sacrifice themselves so the rest can revel in the fact that they are still bound to this pebble in the universe, still breathing, fucking, eating, shitting, still devouring everything that crosses their paths.
Expanding their trophy shelves, their driveways, their lawns, their pools, and their filthy progeny.
XIII
When I got up this morning, and you weren’t next to me, I knew something was wrong. I had to act, I had to fix it.
Is that why it was so cold this morning?
Like that weekend mother and I spent in Big Bear, and my toes and fingertips became something otherworldly. They denounced me and the rest of my body.
Sasha, you are lucky, you were not born in Russia. This is beautiful, come outside with me.
I can’t breathe, Fiona. I can’t breathe with all these people.
Sasha, you know this Ms. Martinez? Her daughter has little baby cats. She ask if my son want, I say I ask.
Sasha, you want baby cat?
I don’t know mom, I’m busy at work-
Sasha, listen, stop stupid talk, cat not like dog. They do nothing. Take cat.
My mother had a way with men, she was persuasive without trying very hard, it came naturally. But with me it was something else. Maybe because I didn’t know better. She was all I had, and for the most part I was all she had. She fed me, clothed me, so the least I could do was take a damn cat, get her groceries, and clean her apartment occasionally.
May she rest in peace, Fiona.
XIV
I wonder how they’re getting along at work. You know they can’t do shit without me, Fi. I’m the best photographer they have got.
Nobody can wrangle those bratty kids like I can.
Fucking Sears, knows this to be true.
Fuck Sears!
You’re more important than any-
What the fuck is this about, Fi?
XV
License, registration and proof of insurance, sir.
What did I do, officer?
Sir, please let me see your license, your registration and proof of insurance.
Okay.
Is this your current address?
Canoga Park, yes, it is.
What’s underneath the blanket in the back seat?
Oh, just my cat, she’s scared of strangers and she’s not feeling well, I took the day off to take her to the vet.
Sir, I need you to get out of your car.
What for?
I know my rights.
And I’m sure you know that I pay your salary! So, you should get back in your car and let me be on my way. I really need to get my cat to the doctor, because I knew, when I woke up this morning she wasn’t feeling well and-
Mr. Petrov, your car fits the description of a hit-and-run from this morning-
Baker, this looks like blood on the front bumper. Maybe hair and fabric too.
You thinking this guy is good for the hit and run death, from this morning?
Officer, sir, I really need to take my cat to the veterinarian, I don’t know what this is all about but can we please hurry it along so I can get my Fiona some help.
She was a gift from my mother’s neighbor, Ms. Martinez. I have had her for quite some-
Mr. Petrov, I need you to be quiet and place your hands behind your back.
Fiona!
Fiona!
What are they talking about?
Tell them that I could never hurt anyone!
Tell them how I take care of you!
Tell them, Fiona!
Looks like your cat’s been dead for a while,Mr. Petrov.
