BEG BORROW OR DEAL III #1.1.1

A SERIALIZED, FIRST HAND ACCOUNT OF HOW TO BE DOING CRIMES IN LOS ANGELES IN ORDER TO WRITE GOOD

By DG Allin

You ever notice that everybody that’s any good at writing is dead?  

That’s because today's writer are a bunch of college pussies posing in a coffee shop. How they going to die like that?

I tell you how I’m going to die: taking my hand off the throttle to press a button to answer a phone call from some drug addict who could have just texted while I’m racing a squad of korean homeboys to the next light, Saturday night, Wilshire Boulevard.

“Speak up, I’m riding a motorcycle.” From what I can gather over the detonations of the Triumph deathtrap between my knees is Ritchie Dagger screaming “fuck you...Australians...fuckstain fuck...at Jewel’s.”

The cursing is an elaborate code I worked out with Mr. Dagger called “Motherfucker” so he won’t use incriminating speech on the phone. In this code the worse the insult, the more money involved. It took weeks of Pavlovian training to get Dagger to speak “Motherfucker”. 

I removed the stimulus of drugs when drugs were mentioned on the phone  and then reinstated access when the results from Mr. Dagger were satisfactory. When, finally, Mr. Dagger was able to speak “Motherfucker” it was evident that me and cocaine might have been the only things that ever taught him anything. 

What Ritchie said, in laymen’s terms, is that he is with a band from Australia at a club called “Jewels Catch One”. The continent of “Australia” was mentioned because it’s a giant decommissioned Supermax prison. So, Aussies are known to buy all drugs at any price soon as they clear customs. 

I make a left on Vermont and head to Jewel’s Catch One nightclub because, dear reader, I sell cocaine in order to support this filthy writing habit. But, I don’t swim the Styx for nothing. I do it to bring you grains of deaths dirt, bleached by passage, eighty dollars a gram. 

Aussies are known to buy all drugs at any price soon as they clear customs

My story is not that different than some. If I’m one in a million that means there are at least twelve people just like me in the greater Los Angeles area. If you look closely you’ll see the dirty dozen of us splitting lanes down Sunset Boulevard on fast bikes, providing the false enthusiasm to keep this casino going.

Helicopters, news and police, converge in the night above where Sunset meets the 101. So, I take Fountain instead. The earbuds under my helmet ring. As I feel around to answer a Prius swerves across the line. I flash high beams. The car swerves further, then slows to ten miles an hour. I grab the front brake hard and stomp hard enough to make the back wheel skid out so I have to put my foot down to keep from dropping the bike.

“Say it quick because I’m about to die.”  

“WHERE ARE YOU AT?” the voice screams. I hang up. Drug dealing writers don’t talk to illiterate bastards who end their sentences in prepositions.  

I pull up next to the Prius and stick my middle finger in the window. The Prius lady, busy facetiming, horrified at being attacked, holds her phone out and commands me, “Do that again, asshole!”.  So I do. Her friend on the phone is outraged, too.

When the light changes the Prius bitch tries to run me over, but I twist my wrist. The bike shoots up the middle of stopped traffic, leaving the Prius bitch locked in her “rage cage”. This type of shit happens every night. To ride a motorcycle in Los Angeles is to take that line between what you are and what you are not, and charge right up the middle of it between a bunch of distracted, drunk, high people. If nearly committing suicide is a reaffirmation of life, then doing it on drugs, in order to deliver drugs, is Van fucking Halen. 

Traffic clumps in front of my destination on Pico, almost to the west side where there are still signs for “Pastrami Burritos.” Jewel’s is a place  so unapologetically gay, black and coked up that it can only exist between neighborhoods.  I park the bike.  I turn my back to the line at Jewel’s to cover from the kids waiting in line while I remove ten gram bags from the trick oil stash can under my seat and put it in my pocket. Then I palm a .38 hammerless from the inside pocket of my leather jacket, place it under the motorcycle seat and lock it down.

“Jewel’s Catch One” was the epicenter of gay black disco culture for twenty five years, but tonight it’s gentrified by Morrissey Mexicans, trandykes, ancient 25 year old skaters, and handfuls of black kids dressed like Easter baskets. Muscle punk dudes with long hair and denim jackets crab away from me when I approach the line, reading me for a cop. 

I’m met at the door by a girl with pink hair who uses her clipboard to rush me past the security goons. Pink Hair is wearing a Dead Kennedy’s shirt with the swastikas exed out . The red light in the hallway cancels the exes, so she’s just a blonde wearing swastikas.

“I’m afraid the Early Worms have been overserved.” Pink Hair tells me even though we both know you can’t over serve an Australian. I almost told her about the swastikas and the trick of the light but I’m interrupted by the sound of Ritchie Dagger screaming insults at someone in the green room. I know it’s him because Ritchie hasn’t taken a night off in six years, and the hasp of his voice has worn a groove in my brain. 

If nearly committing suicide is a reaffirmation of life, then doing it on drugs, in order to deliver drugs, is Van fucking Halen. 

Picture Ritchie Dagger: a black pinoy version of a gay Spiccoli. Torn jeans, a tiger stripe camo jacket, checkered slip on vans discretely doing cocaine off a house key and screaming, “Thank god, this faggot finally arrived.” Ritchie Dagger is so excited he’s waving his checkered shoe at me while he beg threatens me that “I owe him” and “fuck me”. 

“These guys can’t play, dude, without some shit,” Dagger knows that I know he loves skinny punk rock boys whose morals slip away after five or twelve beers. And tonight, he’s got a whole passle of them huddled in the corner, scrawled over with inarticulate tattoes, baby drunk, cursing doggerel, 

“Oo izit? Zis is the wan wif the charley?”

“But we’re a little funny right now.” Ritchie dagger rubs his fingers together to indicate money, “llana”, because Ritchie Dagger is also, somehow, mexican, “They get paid after they play.” 

Ritchie regards the single bag I hand him as the meager offering it is meant to be. “I mean... without alot of shit. Dude, there’s four of them.” 

The Austrailians try to greet me, the dirtiest offering a drink from a bottle of Fireball, hopefully, “You’se a feckin led-gend, mite,” while the others reiterate “a feckin legend.”

A deal is made for an eight ball, though what I hand Ritchie Dagger is nowhere near an eighth, he’ll never know, unless the Aussies have managed to install a scale in their noses. Of course, I give Ritchie Dagger credit. Ritchie will make them pay me back. Not just because I have a reputation for party violence, but because me and Ritchie Dagger need each other.

The phone makes the noise of a one armed bandit paying off, the special ring I have for choice clients. Text message “come by in half hour”.  And then a smiley face.  The message is from Shiba Maertin. You may remember Shiba as a spooky kid from a Spielberg movie, or the sitcom with the black dad and a white dad.  Either way, you wouldn’t recognize her now. 

If you’re insane and love drugs you’ll bump into a child star in Los Angeles sooner or later. My moonlighting job means I’ve had plenty of chances to study the habits and mating rituals of child stars. Evidence suggests that there is a Post Dramatic Success Disorder, and further, hard drugs are the only viable coping mechanism for the horrors of modern child stardom. 

I leave Jewel’s post haste, and kick the bike to life without bothering to hide my felonies under the seat. The Easter basket kids jump like they’ve been shot, because starting the Triumph is loud as bombs. It’s the only safety feature on the thing.  I slip back into traffic, rattling the brains of suckers stuck in their cars. 

Sure, people try to run me over because they are watching porn on their phones. But, I am unafraid, because two things your boy will never do is die or pay taxes.