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 Weathered
Graffiti

Galia Binder

    I know I got fucked over. It’s the second time they put me as a regular at Venice this year, and God knows who is cut out for it. I guess the slime balls back at the station are. These are the guys whose testing officer back at the academy was probably their cousin, and they know everyone in the streets by first name. The murder rates are off the chart and they pretend they don’t have anywhere to be! I can’t do a thing about it, but I just wish the chief of police could see it. This morning, one of the guys told me it’s been months since his units have been here. I can’t wait for the day when they get what they deserve. In the meantime, I avoid the station as much as possible. Me, sitting at my desk probably looking like something is stuck in my throat, while they brag about the women they scored the night before.
    I know the real story behind it: after their shift is done they hit a bar around Vine, show up in the big blue uniform, scaring the bartender into giving them extra drinks, and a sloppy drunk girl into coming home with them. When we get calls, they sniff a lot, and react slower than they should. If they’re in a good mood, they ass-slap, as if they’re going on a buck hunt instead of going out to shoot a man.
    They think I’m a stiff, a candy-ass. They probably gave me this shift as a joke, just to get me to lighten up. Maybe they think I’ll hire a stripper down here and they’ll catch us in the patrol car together, and they can have a go at her. Maybe they think I’ll take a bong from one of the street people and I’ll pass out at the station, like some kind of idiot. Then they’ll draw all over me in permanent marker like the time at that party in college, but I promised to forget that time and I know I should.
    I don’t belong here anyhow. I never have, even though I was born here, which surprises everyone I tell. The people here are always covering something up or showing too much. They can never sit still, because they’re trying to get an angle, to act like they know something you don’t. The something is waiting up there in the Hollywood hills, where the blondes sit in mansions with sunglasses on, waiting for their executive husbands to come home and do God knows what to them. Its in the bullets exploding in the barrio streets. Maybe the bullets have been paid for by the husbands. Maybe the man sits with his wife on the balcony when he gets home. They watch the small boys with black hair gun each other down in the streets, who are always shocked by each others’ blood, I know because I’ve seen it. The blonde gets nervous or bored, and suggests they go inside and have some drinks. The husband agrees after watching for a few more minutes, without a smile, or anything on his face.
    These thoughts are starting to make me feel depressed ... but it’s nothing. I guess I just really want my shift to be over. I have to focus on the road so I don’t run over any of the slobs lying in the gutter. Once I would have felt horrible if that had happened...I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. I like to think I’ve been working as an officer for too long and that I’ve seen too much, because now, I don’t know if I would care. They ask for it, lying in the middle of the street, getting up again and fainting, killing themselves with drugs.
    The bearded men and tiny women with dark glasses, all they talk about is death, carrying around notebooks that are probably filled with pages of stupid made up words. And the ratty girls with their long hippie skirts and bony hips, shoving incense in your face, skipping and twirling as if no one was watching them! I get so embarrassed watching them, sometimes my stomach turns. The fat, lazy ones glowering at you in their sweatpants like roosters fattened up big so they could fight, but the farmer didn’t choose them so they spend the rest of their lives getting lazy in the same old coop. They have red eyes and they talk as if they have to sneeze, and when they do sneeze blood comes out of their nose.
    Going there is like walking into a zoo, where a weird chemical got into the animals’ food and mixed everyone up...it’s like being in a dream, probably one I could never even think of myself. I start to sweat, not because I’m afraid, but because I can’t stand them and I can’t do anything about it, I just have to keep walking. They always ask me where I’m going and coming from and would I like this, or that, or do I like anything at all! It’s indecent and inappropriate. Of course I like things, but why would I tell any of them about it?
     The worst thing is, they’re all a bunch of fakes. That’s what I can’t stand. They’re just losers that couldn’t stick with their natural place in society. I bet none of them were poor or messed up to begin with. They got that way because they didn’t have the guts to make an honest living like any normal person. Some are bums who messed up their opportunities, and some are weirdos just trying to get attention for their sob stories. It’s indecent. There are people starving in Africa every day while these freaks are trying to draw attention to themselves. I’d rather have them die than those poor people in Africa.
    Sometimes I think about arresting all of them, or beating one of them up against the wall, with all the others watching. I take a satisfaction in these thoughts that is probably bad. But I’ll never do it, and they know it. Besides, they all have lawyers up their sleeves, and what do they have to laugh about, I should be the one laughing, I have a job and self-respect and they sit there with snot running down to their mouths and flirting with everyone and death. I’ve seen some of the other officers out here, the new guys, take out their frustration on them, but they learn pretty fast that it doesn’t help anyone. It’s obvious that they’re looking for a reaction anyway, because people like that are always looking for a reaction.
    Me, I don’t like to call myself “different”, but I guess I’m what an officer’s supposed to be. It doesn’t make me better, but sometimes, in the moment right after I make an arrest, when I am sitting up front and the guy is in the back, I feel like I’ve found a special place. There is a little special place in me that feels calm in the middle of the flashing lights and the squawking radio. It’s as if I didn’t even have to steer the car anymore, as if a horse shoe magnet was hidden inside the wall at the holding center, all secret and gleaming and beautiful, and it is there to pull me alone. The magnet would take me anywhere I wanted, I could go to the moon, but I tell it to go back to the station, because I know the meaning of honor and duty in this job. I get this swell of pride, and also this weird feeling that I am the only man on earth. I always wonder if any of the other guys feel it too, but I wouldn’t ask them about it in a million years.
     I don’t know what makes me do it, but I have to look back through the divider. I wish I could paint how the window looks behind me, the way the light comes in all around it, as if it’s a tunnel in the midst of all the chaos, a tunnel leading to me and my calmness. But then I get this awful bubbling feeling in my stomach, a mixture of sad and angry and maybe something else, when I see the sneering bastard sitting back there and ruining the whole thing. As if he can tell what I’m thinking and is laughing at me in his head.
    God, if I just had a wife and kids I could think in times like these. All I’ve ever hoped for since I was 17 years old was someone to settle down with, just to have pictures in the picture frames of places we’ve gone. We could have outings and picnics. I would never mind going to the zoo or sitting for hours at parent teacher conferences and violin concerts, the things I’ve heard a couple of other guys complain about. Her hair would smell like vanilla and they would be messy eaters. For vacations nothing fancy, just some place green, with lawns for the kids to run around on and cool air in the morning. Maybe, when we’re a lot older, she’d decide that we had to go somewhere like Paris. Europe has never appealed to me, because it seems snobby and un-American, but I would save up my money and take her. I don’t know the first thing about Europe, but she wouldn’t be the type of woman to mind.
    Well, I guess I know one thing. About France, actually, which is probably why I thought it’s the place she would want to go. I know some painters, the names of them. Renoir, Monet, Matisse. It’s the type of thing I always thought I could use at a dinner party, but I haven’t gotten around to it. In high school I took an art class ... everyone had to, to graduate. I would go to the corner table every day so I could look at a book with the names and the artwork they did. I could have looked at it for hours. I want to go to France with my wife and we will come back with a painting in one arm and the other arm around each other.
    I like paintings of fields and rivers, men and women, done in gold and blue. It reminds me of looking at the valley during the day, driving, with all the purple flowers along the sides of the highway, not all lit up at night looking like it does in the 21st century blurb they always show before movies. It reminds me of swimming on the hottest day of the year and the way a woman’s hair should feel between my fingertips ... God. Please, help me. I’m stuck in this fucking car and none of it is true. If I can ever find a woman, she’ll be a bald hag who is blind so that she can’t even see the pictures are done in dull shades of gray.
    The truth is, I’ve never been invited to a dinner party in my life. But my job is to protect and serve, which is why I’m here instead of on a date, and probably the reason why I haven’t gotten one anyway. I’m better than the rest of them. Anyway, they would laugh at me if they knew. They’re all laughing now: the dicks back at the station and the low lifes in the street, laughing at me and hoping I’ll run myself and my annoying patrol car off a cliff on the PCH and be done with it. So I might as well do my duty and to hell with it all.
    I’ve got to get away from this car, it’ll only be for a little while. I’ll take a walk on the beach...I know they’ve got a few guys on there, but no one will miss me, and backup would probably do them some good, come to think of it. There are a lot of suicides at night ... people overdosing and walking into the ocean, or just staying on the shore, letting the tide go over them.
    The sky is cloudy black, and you can still see everything. It’s probably darker inside the apartments than it is out here. I almost wish I couldn’t see anything...it gets even worse at night. The tourists aren’t here, so none of the street people are putting on a show. They’re more desperate, frightened. If they weren’t such pathetic assholes, I might even feel bad for them, like you’d feel bad for a little kid who’s having a nightmare and can’t wake up. I start thinking about how glad I am to be alone right now, when I trip over something hard, and it moves with me as I catch myself.
     I hear a weird squealing noise, maybe someone laughing, and then a man’s voice, lazy sounding, but scornful, too, like he’s having a hard time holding back his anger... “Shit honey...why you always make that noise for? I told you ...”. He is breathing hard, and I think he’s listening, so I try to hold my breath. I don’t want him to hear me just yet. He starts again, even slower than before, like he’s saving his breaths for something else. “...Well shit, honey...you got yourself another customer... Isn’t that fine...”. I don’t like the way he said “isn’t”. It doesn’t feel right, so I take out the flash light before he can say more and shine it to where I think he is. The beam comes out right on his stomach, and her hand is there too. He is a black naked man, scary thin, and he seems relaxed while he covers her face. She is naked too, the face moving beneath his hands, struggling, and I’m not sure if she wants to get away from him or me. He starts laughing. ... “Ain’t that right honey....the officer is going to get you next...hoowee....” He tries hard to keep laughing while he talks. “...Ain’t the both of you all lucky?” I switch the flashlight off and walk away. Maybe he doesn’t want to test me, because he keeps talking to her... “Ain’t it? Ain’t it so, honey?” Her squealing starts again.
    I am still walking and thinking, let the patrol car be stolen. Let them take a shit on it. Let the man I just saw lay there against the shivering woman on its roof. Let it be an example...and example of what? Every step that I take seems strange and impossible, like my legs are moving through a liquid I have never touched before and I don’t know what it will do to me.
    The fact is, I have just seen a rape. And now I am walking off onto the beach like a street person. But he called himself a customer, and she was just shivering because of the drugs. She was asking for it, anyway, I mean what are any of them doing on this street out at night, they should know it’s dangerous. She just wanted some attention, and she got it, so the bitch can’t complain about something she asked for. I mean doesn’t everyone, isn’t that why we’re here at all!
    It doesn’t matter, because the point is, the pimps and their whores will eventually mash themselves into the dirt, burying deep down when they get sick of breathing, and more crack addicts will grow out of them like weeds, growing as tall as orange trees until Venice starts sinking.
    I’m laughing again, feeling the power of laughter that I’ve watched everyone else keep for themselves, well now I’m having mine, but I’m not laughing at my own expense. I’m laughing at all of them, the good ones, the evil ones, with their schemes and plans, the way they care, the things that link them. They feel and know and I do not, so I can laugh. I feel like I could leave everyone behind and just keep walking into the sea like one of those junkies, and stay there. It is a lonely place, visited from time to time by a bit of sunlight or a piece of seaweed, but I don’t try to make it stay.
    I will be the rock, the reject, the unlikely. While the rest of them spend time making new societies and crying over the old ones and trying to save each other with guns, I will not move. I’ll have my house and car and refrigerator full of food, and money for movies if I want it. I will be the example of the good life, the life we all want. I’ll sleep enough, eat enough, talk just enough to get by, go to the movies alone, but I won’t be embarrassed. I won’t have to judge between right and wrong, because there will be no black and white. I will let the sea bring me its blues and greens, like memories of something beautiful a man lost a long time ago.
    I think they will come to me eventually and get down at my feet. They’ll ask me again and again, what have I seen all this time, and what is the answer to their universe. I’ll wait a while, because it’s all the same to me, and then I’ll laugh and tell them nothing. They will feel despair, the despair of learning to accept. Then comes the nothing. They will have the nothing that now my life is full of. The moon is out. I’m not embarrassed to nod to it like it understands me.
    I am in the big graffiti area, coming up from the beach, when I hear a noise in one of the dumpsters that hold the spray paint cans. I am sure it sounds like the pimp. I get another surge of crazy, nauseous energy that makes me move. I don’t know what I’ll do if I find them.... I am only about 2 feet away now. I decide I will play a little joke. Maybe handcuff them to each other and leave them naked for someone else to find in the morning... nothing too serious. I am surprised at how calm I am when I lift the lid.
    I close it and step back, turning away so I don’t have to look at the dumpster. What I have seen makes me think of some drugged out dream, like I fell asleep on the beach. I think about what it will be like to be crazy. I had to have suspected it was going to happen, I guess, after everything going on tonight. I’ve already started seeing things, so soon I will wake up lying on my back staring at hospital lights that will hurt my eyes while a doctor who is just in it for the money will be listing off all the things that went wrong in my brain. Maybe a couple of guys from the station will be standing there and then maybe I will no longer feel so much like laughing. I stop thinking about it. I go back to the dumpster. What else is there to do?
    The breathing noises have stopped, because the woman, creature, thing, whatever she is, inside the dumpster has closed her mouth and instead is making sharp little sniffing movements with her nose. Now she is thrashing through the cans, almost like she’s trying to swim. She can’t be any bigger than a couple of salmon, or maybe she’s the size of a teenage girl, I can’t tell when she keeps moving like that.
    Something awful has happened to her. This idea is mixed up in my mind, because a minute ago, I decided that pain was not real. I could watch a woman getting raped like it was a play so bad you can’t pay attention to what’s happening in it. You feel embarrassed for the author sitting in a small closed up room and staring at the world outside, trying to catch it and put it on the page, and wondering if he was right.
    She seems trapped, but she wants to stay. She is looking for something, but I don’t think it’s in there, not like she lost an earring. It’s inside her. The sniffing makes me nervous. It’s as if her nose controls her, because the rest of her body is so limp and soft, like it has surrendered. The nose is looking for something. It is not strong, but it is trying, and it is getting underneath everything. No one would suspect it, but one day it will come through all our walls and windows, and what it is looking for, God knows.
    The back of her bald head is bruised. I don’t know if it’s the moonlight or if her skin is always grayish green. She is like a barnacle, wrapped in a blanket stained with paint from the cans, with scrapes on her neck. She is naked underneath the blanket, but looking at her body is like when my grandmother came to visit and fell asleep in her clothes, and I put a nightgown on her. I looked at all her wrinkles and wondered how anyone could be so old. I tried to be careful when I touched her, as if my youth could somehow destroy all the soft pieces of skin just staying in place.
    She sorts through the bin of mismatched colors. Her eyes are closed but blinking very fast. Her neck is covered in blood. I want to tell her that the cans are toys, that they won’t hurt her. I’m glad she can’t read what people write with them on the walls. I try not to panic. Who knows if they know that we are here tonight or if they set this up themselves. Who knows if happiness exists for us. I hope we’re free or that we have time. There are so many hours left in the night, and I want them to come. Maybe tomorrow I’ll listen to someone else’s idea of what the world has always been, but for now, I think it was probably built by people like us.
    I will give her all that I can, whatever food and possessions I have, and more. I give her my hands, as if I want her to cuff them. I lean all the way over into her pit. I want her to stand above the rim of the dumpster and see the sky. Her lips are moving in and out, like she is blowing a bubble underwater. It looks like she is balancing the air between them. My tongue is tasting spit, like saltwater, and my mouth fills with it. I let her sniff my hands, but I don’t ask her if I can do what I will do next.
    Slowly I lift her to a standing position, like the priest who lifted me out of the waters of the Santa Rosa Street Pool as a baby. I keep my hands on her, feeling their strength, not thinking about whether or not she’d fall if they weren’t there, but just keeping them there.
    I feel her ribs in my hands and wonder how heavy she would be if the moon were not pulling her up. Right now, with my vision all blurred, I am thinking that this is what an artist must feel like when he touches the canvas. There is fire engine red and yellow green, some swatches of dark blue. I keep holding her there, trying to feel out the rest of the painting, changing my grip when it becomes too difficult. There is nothing but the sky, always falling, always rising, no matter how you look at it. And my hands.



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