SORRY MAN

   After a couple weeks in L.A. we decided we were going to head to Tucson, Arizona. We hopped on a city bus downtown, to where we could catch a commuter train out to San Bernardino and start hitch hiking. To get on a city bus and the commuter trains was a pain in the ass for us because of the dog. We had to put her in a sleeping bag in order to get on a bus or commuter train, and Why hated to be stuck in there. What dog would? Why was I about six years old back then. She was a dingo husky mix with one brown eye and the other one blue and she weighed about 70 pounds. Why was the shit! She was well behaved and cute as hell, too.

  People always give street kids shit for having a dog on the street, but I’ll tell you right now that a street dig is the happiest dig on earth. Granted, some assholes don’t get it and will neglect and beat the poor things, which if it were to be the case, someone would take the dog from them. They always have more than enough food because people would rather buy the dog food than a street kid. They’re always with their owners, not chained up in the backyard or stuck in the living room all day while their owners are at work. They get to play all day and go walking, etc.

  San Bernardino is about 60 miles east of L.A, I think, so we got there later that same night. Interstate 10 is right there so that’s where we started hiking from. I remember those Cholo Mexican gangser kids stopped us and one of them said to us, “You know what we do to squatters here? No squatting in this fucking neighborhood!” Fuck off! But yeah, there’s no doubt in my mind if they would have caught us sleeping around there, we would have been hurt.

  Syd and Lance stayed on the on-ramp while I went right on the Interstate. I hate hitchhiking on the on-ramps but to go on the interstate was illegal. You would find yourself talking to the first cop that passed by. The only state you can legally be on the interstate is in Oregon.

  I don’t think it took me too long to get a ride out of there. There’s only two things that stick out in my mind from that trip to Tucson. Just before Palm Springs I got picked up by a girl and a guy. It turned out that this dude was an old traveler and had rode freights before and I guess he was staying with his girlfriend's parents in Palm Springs, so they took me back there to grab something to eat. I ended up staying the night. Me and my buddy went downtown and got hammered and he ended up going to the drunk tank and I had to call his girlfriend to come pick me up. Thank fuck she came and got me, seeing how I had left all my gear at her place. He got out the next morning and gave me a ride out of town.I ended up running into buddy like three years later in New Orleans, which was cool.

  I remember it took me a while to get a ride out of Palm Sprnig, well what can you expect they are all rich, old fucks around there. When I finally got a ride, it was with this really cool chick who had her kid in a winnebago. Fuck I wanted one - a squat on wheels! She gave me a ride all the way to Tucson. I was officially in the desert. What a change of scenery, the barren landscape, dry humidity, and my first nine foot cactus.

  Lance told me they would be on 4th avenue, which was just east of downtown. I found Syd there but Lance had gone to some house party. Syd and I made some money to get some beer, and went drinking by ourselves. Needless to say, we fucked again. Syd had been talking about leaving Lance for a while now, so we decided we would leave town together the next day. We took a city bus to the east side of town to where we planned to start hiking from, but instead we started to fly a sign and did really good. We ended up getting a hotel room for the night.

  What I’m talking about when I say “flying a sign” is when you stand in a meridian or at the end of the off-ramp with a sign asking for money. You write something like “Traveling hungry and broke” on a piece of cardboard. It works well sometimes and other times you don’t make shit. This time we did well. We got a room for like $40.00 and just chilled out all day and drank, fucked, and enjoyed each other’s company. To this day, I’ve never had as much sex in one night as I did with Syd and it was fuckin good sex too. My feelings for this girl were strong as fuck. Syd was about 5’6, she had amazing blue eyes, shoulder length dark red hair, and a tiny bit of freckles; not many but just enough to make her cute as hell, and a smile that killed. Ironically it was the reason I ended up leaving her a couple years later.

  The next day we hit the road. We ended up getting a straight ride all the way to El Paso, Texas. I remember when we crossed the state line there was a big sign that said you were entering Texas. It also said in huge bold letters DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS. That was so true - you don’t fuck with Texas! I also heard of signs saying HOME OF OL’ SPARKY referring to the electric chair - fucked up or what? Only in Texas!

  The guy that gave us a ride was going there on business and I guess his company was paying his way so he got us a hotel room, well he had one bed and we had the other bed. He also bought us smokes and beer. It’s funny, the amount of times me and Syd fucked in the next bed over from where buddy that rented the room was sleeping, or on the top bunk of some dudes big rig truck.

  We stayed the night and said goodbye to buddy and hit the interstate the next morning. We were headed up to Austin, TX. I ended up getting into a fight with Syd for a reason I don’t remember just north of San Antonio, so I ditched her and went up to Austin by myself. I remember thinking, now I know why Lance was always calling her a stupid bitch. I was also thinking I had just fucked up a good friendship over this.

  WellI ended up in downtown Austin with $20.00 and wanted to score some crack, so I asked around and got pointed to 7th and Red River which wasn’t far from where I’d been dropped off. It was funny as hell. The gangster chicks with months full of crack rocks; you would give them your  money and they’d spit your shit out on the sidewalk. The funny stupid thing was that there was no wrap on the rock it was just a is, and I’m pretty sure if the cops came and you had to swallow that shit you would most definitely die! Oh well not my problem, give me my drugs!

  The University of Texas is in Austin and I was told to go up by there on Guadalupe Street. I guess just prior to getting there there were incidents of college kids going around at night, throwing gas on homeless people and lighting them on fire while they slept. Fuckin dicks! Man, that would suck!

  I ran into Syd up on Guadalupe after I finished getting high and we rekindled and everything was fine. We’d been there a couple of days but knew Lance was right behind us and he wouldn't be happy. And I don’t blame him, either. I would kill me too. The night before Lance showed up, Syd had got arrested for public drunkenness and in a big way I'm Lucky this happened because the cops made me take her backpack (which was huge) and her dog. When I saw Lance he called me out. He was standing in the alley with a smiley in his hand. A “Smiley'' is a chain with a lock at the end of it. I was like “Fuck you man I’m going to find a weapon too.” I knew I could take Lance with my fists no problem, but with a weapon I’m not too sure. He throws the smiley on the ground so I’m like, “Okay let’s get this over with.” I was coming from Guadalupe and couldn’t see around the corner of the alley. So whenI get to the alley, Lance suddenly pulls a huge piece of wood from behind the wall and hits me with it. Luckily I hadn’t taken syd’s backpack off so the wood snapped in two. After that, I punched him a couple times and that was the end of it - for now. Later that day, Syd got out of jail and we were walking down the street and we ran into Lance and a couple of his buddies. He came at me again, but I dropped him with just one punch. I thought for sure I was going to get jumped, but they didn’t jump me. That was nice of them.

   It didn’t take long before I was the one being hauled off to jail for public intoxication. In Austin, it’s more or less the drunk tank where they will take you for the night and you’ll see a judge in the morning and nine times out of 10, you will get time served. But it’s still a criminal charge, and goes on your record as a misdemeanor.

  I was by myself one night, I don’t know where Syd was, but I asked two frat boys for change at the red light. I was being nice about it but they were just dicks. They said something that really pissed me off so I just spit in their faces. Oops! The two of them got out of their car and beat the living shit out of me. Till this day I haven’t took a beating this bad, they really fucked me up.the cops ended up coming and almost took me to jail for being drunk, but they ended up letting me go. The frat boys were long gone by the time the pigs got there, and I wasn’t going to press charges, so they just fucked off.

  We had a nice camping spot down by the river in the bushes downtown and the day after the beating I could barely move, so Syd had to go out and make money herself. When she came back she was with Lance and one of his buddies and they had a 60 oz. of whisky. I’m glad Lance was being cool with me because they could have really fucked me up again. After we drank the whisky, you could say my pain went away considerably. There were a bunch of kids that had a house in east Austin at the time so Syd went back there with Lance, andI stayed downtown. I ended up getting into a fight that night with some stupid bouncer and went back to jail for public intoxication.