The Riot of 2012
Michael Greeley
| The point of it all was to find myself somewhere along the line, in the beating hearts of millions – but I failed. “Oh well,” the losers say. That is their rallying call – “Oh well. Better luck next time.”
I’ve traveled so far from who I am that there is no return. There is no blanket, no rose petals, no sunshine in this dingy corner of the earth – only the smell of rotting fish and the ripe mint of incense.
How cursed I must be to live the life I have. How alone & forsaken & ashamed & loathsome & vulnerable it all is.
I could find a way to bring you all together again, but you’d never listen to me. You would never listen to anyone but yourselves. |
The man was a qualified hippy, a stoolie jerk who’d consumed sheets of acid in the early porridge of his youth and never cared to stop.
| I could bring you all together in peace and harmony! In love and light so we could make it all work! Why won’t you listen to me? |
His name was Bob, Tim, something generic of the sort, but he’d since changed it, though not legally, to Baron De Wildefeather. And so, the college students filtered past him, some stopping occasionally to listen, but mostly just to peck their beaks at him in jest. He shifted his whereabouts from city to city on a whim, for he liked to feed off of the kindness of strangers and the drunken humanitarians who were his most faithful benefactors.
Long ago, he swore he would quit, the cigarettes, the booze, the acid. He had been a college student, too, you know, and had learned his delicate share of the intricacies involved in the nation’s monetary system, or ‘schema’ as he called it so obtrusively during one of his street side sermons.
His hair was long, clumpy, and almost always hidden beneath a moldy, Peruvian knit hat that only covered half of his cranium. He wore nothing as obvious as a tie-dye shirt, but did sport a number of humorous nature T’s with rapturous otters or moose on the back, faded jeans from the 90’s, and a set of black combat boots he’d acquired from a punk rock ghost who’d lost himself in the habit of heroin just a few months earlier. He didn’t necessarily steal the boots from Square Jaw, the anarchist chump, but considered them more an heirloom, an acquisition born through a kind of unwritten will between he and his chum, considering the fact the bloke was sure to be dead in a matter of moons from his overabundant intake of the substance, which he’d already overdosed on a number of times.
Yes, that Baron De Wildefeather, that diligent debutant of edgy, informal thinking, of ‘progress’, so they termed it, had become something of a staple along “M” street of the Georgetown campus. Bar goers chucked hunks of bread at his pigeon feet while he forcefully questioned the logistics behind the policies of the National Reserve. People offered him beer and weed cigarettes, coffee and cocaine amplifiers, which he all readily accepted as noble contributions toward ‘The Cause’.
He could not have been more than 30, though appeared no less than 50, as the years of abuse had stockpiled themselves inside his eyelids. His leaking guts hinted that an internal, nuclear holocaust of his very own could ignite at any given second. But, he did not care. He was a celebrity of sorts, a bona fide Ray Charles muckraker of the streets, who’d acquired enough necessarily potent reactions from both loving fans and avid Republican yahoos, alike, to make him feel somewhat important. He’d conjured enough heated battles with the latter-mentioned formulation (though he’d constructed a few with the former, as well) to quantify himself a veritable freedom warrior, a stoic lion- heart dynamo who battled the peons of some diabolical shadow government day in and day out for the good of all mankind for years now. As is much, he’d sequestered the conservative cattle into blurry images in his head: some young, over-privileged brown heads with slicked-over hair follicles, dapper, perfectly pressed shirts from the local high-end specialty store, khakis from Nantucket with the leather, built-in moccasins to match. How he loathed him, that archetypal ghost rider who represented everything his ego told him he was not. He spit at anyone who resembled this image in his head, and was often times cheered on by the surrounding personages who took share in his hatred for the prototype.
But one must be careful who he or she bemoans these days, must they not? For one can never truly decipher the complexity of those inner machinations that guide a stranger this way and that like a pilgrim. For even if an unknown appears as harmless as that of a ladybug on a dew-dripping steamboat, he or she might very well contain the rage of a fortified hound dog along the avenues of their overdeveloped Christianity.
And so it was that Thomas Andrew Bryant, III (son of Thomas Andrew Bryant , II, and Margot Adams), a seemingly docile creature, an aristocratic sophomore whelp, walked erroneously with a butt up his thumb from the Gulliver Library toward his quarters not but a few blocks away. He spoke candidly with an accompanying friend, Paul Matthew Pinderhorn, IV, as they climbed the luminescent streets of their forefathers as quacking ducks on ponds of acne.
“I am sick of school, and lectures, and studying, and all of the pointless drivel that comes thereafter. I do not know how it is that I was received and welcomed into this university in the first place, for it is obvious that my intellectual faculties are severely lacking when compared to the rest of you squawking geniuses,” said he.
“Oh, calm yourself, Thomas Andrew,” said Paul Matthew, who had shared his spotted youth with Thomas in an affluent Dorcester neighborhood located just outside Albany, NY. “You are being drastically over-dramatic, as is your custom. I am sure that this tumultuous professor of yours will grant you the extra two days you need to complete this silly project of yours. Just quit beating around the bush and tell him who your father is. He’ll understand completely, and then, perhaps, will shove his paw outward so as to allow a bribe.” Paul Matthew had a bit of a conquistador alien matrix inside him. So what? Who doesn’t?
“He knows it already, the irrevocable, steadfast toad,” said Thomas Andrew, who now fidgeted with a clump of umber hair that fell in a crossover horse swoop across his coconut oil face. “He knows it and he does not care. He’s told me as much on more than one occasion. The agitator. If I do not complete these remaining fifteen pages on the tenets of national socialism in relation to the implementation of microeconomics in southern Nicaragua by the end of the evening than I, to put it as non-verbosely as humanly possible, am screwed. For if I do not complete the paper, then I shall fail the class in its totality for the semester, and if I fail the class for the semester, my GPA will dip below a 2.0. Unequivocally, upon seeing the status of my affairs, the old man shall remove me from the university and stick me in some filthy local community college with the rest of the rabble, where I shall be forced to swap answers to 8th grade-level, English homework questions with the local Neanderthals – teachers notwithstanding. Such a fate is most certainly not a thing to which I will ascribe.”
“Oh Thomas, you are horrible. Though, at least your English seems roughly polished” guffawed his earthly-prince companion, Paul Matthew Pinderhorn IV.
It was early December, but not cold enough to snow. The dulled, orange-brick sidewalks were pasted in a layer of newly fallen rain as both young men hoisted the collars of their matching pea-coats upward across the backs of their necks so as to protect them from the chill of a firm wind.
The delicate streetlights from a number of quaint cafes and shops urged them forward past some groups of students who murmured to one another like sparrows. They were quick approaching a cozy bar, The Salty Fish, Paul’s favorite of its kind. “Shall we stop off and have a drink then?” he asked his friend matter-of-factly.
“What, are you mad?” said Thomas, who was known to have a slight problem when it came to his urge for rampant drunkenness. “I just told you I must write 15 pages by tomorrow morning on a subject I know absolutely nothing about, Paul Matthew. How could you be so insensitive?”
“It was just a lark, though, not really at all, I suppose. Firstly, a simple glass of wine will do you no harm. In fact, it will ease you into your studies with an ounce of class, dare I say. And, secondly, you’ve already stated quite confidently that you will not be able to complete the task before you. So, even if it did hinder your attempt, it would not do so dreadfully. Am I wrong?”
Thomas was one to be easily swayed.
He halted ever-abruptly in his tracks, so much so as to nearly cause a number of passersby to crash into him from his hind side. The anxious collegian stared ruefully at the twinkling sign to the pub through some erudite breath trails. “I am supposing you are right, Paul Matthew. I now count you as either the noblest of friends of the most perverse of enemies.”
“I’d be content to find myself somewhere in the middle,” said Paul Matthew. “Now come. Let us drink to our health.”
The pair proceeded to tiptoe across the cobblestone walkway, in fear, it seemed, toward their cozy, neighborhood watering hole, as the clacking of Paul’s heeled, leather dress shoes echoed quietly amid the churning wheels of passing traffic.
One Baron De Wildefeather watched them with a scowl of vilified repugnance from his sullen perch down the avenue. He gnawed at a fat lip filled with peppermint chewing tobacco (just another of the many drug-related habits he’d acquired over the years) and spat a large glop of the substance onto the pavement at the sight of the budding, young Republicans. With a few garbled misappropriations, he uncorked the bottle cap from the brown-bagged container in his right hand, lifted it to his bearded lips, and continued to take a long, slow draught from the palpable brew that was hidden therein. It was a cold, wet night to be sure; the kind of night where strong drink had proven itself a worthy ally in the war against nature’s cruder elements. Baron De Wildefeather began to feel quite cheeky, more so than usual anyway, as he clicked some mental snapshots of the young aristocrats as they entered their favorite dive bar.
As one entered The Salty Fish, he or she was met by a crooked, rectangular window that overlooked the mahogany bar below. A number of multi-colored Christmas lights hung like spider webs across the window’s opening, and a sleek, wooden banister led down a series of steps lined by the same toward the main portion of the tiny pub.
Christmas carol classics buzzed quietly over the jukebox. A gaggle of patrons dotted miscellaneous tables and stools around the bar. They chimed in for a hum near the more well-known verses of the songs.
The bartendress and her male equivalent, Romana and Stewie accordingly, adorned some timeless, knit holiday caps, the ones with the floppy, moppy poof ball on top and the symmetrical, snowflake dynamos sewn into the sides at all corners.
“Hey! Look who it is! The Bobsy twins!” Stewie yelled at the two college boys as they trolled into the room. “What can I get for you boys?”
“You, Stewart, are not going to be making my drink, for you always prove to skimp out on that most important of elements of which it consists,” said Paul Matthew.
“That being?” asked the bartender while fetching an empty pint glass from the front of a fattened customer. The man curiously sported a Washington Redskins football jersey along with a pair of khaki shorts. It was almost as if he believed it to be summertime still, that he was daft to the fact that it was currently 35 degrees outside and raining.
“The Gray Goose vodka in my martini, of course. Romana, would you do me the pleasure?” said Paul Matthew, referring to his drink.
“You got it Paul. You want it hardcore, you got it, baby,” Romana replied whilst shoving her comrade out of the way en route to acquiring the gigantic bottle of Gray Goose.
An old, brass coat hanger, the kind with the thick pole in the middle with the hook things that stem off it on its sides, sat next to an antique jukebox in front of an empty, unused pool table. The two friends did away with their pea coats and leather gloves, heaving all three articles, as pertaining to each individual, onto the pile of jackets that already decorated the overflowing rack.
“What of me? Is it of no consequence what I would like to drink? What kind of lousy, inferior service is this?” said Thomas Andrew aloud, half-jokingly, half-serious.
“Sorry sweetheart, I didn’t even notice you standing there,” said Stewart he bartender, “You’re boyfriend was blocking my view.”
“Hardy har. I’ll have scotch, Johnny Walker I suppose. And please pour me a cola beverage chaser, whatever abysmal, low-grade brand you keep in your spritzer,” said Thomas Andrew.
“I thought you said you were having wine,” said Paul Matthew to Thomas Andrew.
“I’ve changed my mind, as I am known to do from time to time. You’ve surely learned that by now,” said Thomas. “My head is pouring out incessant streams of negative thoughts, and I shall react heroically by shutting it up a bit, if you do not mind.”
“What label you want?” interrupted Stewart.
“Hm?” said Thomas.
“I said what label you want, numbskull. We got red, black, blue and green. You want the richest one or what?” asked Stewart.
“And which would that be?” asked Thomas.
“Uh, I don’t know. Blue, right?” said Stewart.
“Um, no, make it the green. Father will not forward this month’s installment until Saturday, upon news of the grade, of course. So I am forced to live life as a veritable hobo until then,” said Thomas, brushing some grease off of the countertop with his fingertips while doing so.
“Pity,” said Paul Matthew.
“Boo-fuckin’-hoo,” said Stewart, briskly gallivanting toward the scotch section of the bar so as to concoct his customer’s favorite poison.
“Honestly Thomas, whiskey? I dare say you won’t be writing a single word of that paper this evening,” argued Paul Matthew with sincere concern.
“And I don’t intend to,” said Thomas. “I tried my hand with that dreadful professor and failed miserably. What’s his name? Clayton? Who cares? I was even considering offering him a forthright bribe. But no. I know a freshman, some verified genius, space age guru, who writes papers on a whim for a mere $500 a pop. I’ll ask him if he is able, and, if not, I will readily accept my fate as a...” Thomas paused and gulped down some discomfort, “A community college alumnus. Oh Paul Matthew!”
“Get a hold of yourself! You’d also just as surely have to return to live with your parents, as well...” said Paul.
“Don’t remind me. So I’ll be spending time with a bunch of yokels, my parents and the failures who never left Albany, for that is what I am,” said Thomas.
Their drinks were placed before them underneath some square coasters supplied by the local brewing company, which sported Santa Clause enjoying a brew between two scantily clad female fans.
“I never took you for a slack-jawed yokel,” quipped Paul.
“I was referring myself to that of a failure,” said Thomas, who quickly lifted the polished glass of brown liquor to his lips so as to quench his diabolical thirst.
“Yes, I know. I was being facetious, you fool,” said Paul, who raised the martini glass daintily between his ring and middle finger. “No wonder you’re failing all of your classes. You are as slow witted as one of the monkeys on our illustrious football team.”
“What was that?” snapped Thomas, though Paul had already turned so as to look at the television sitting on a raised shelf above the far right corner of the bar.
“Oh. Nothing. Nothing. Nevermind. Act as though I said nothing at all. Just a slip of the tongue,” replied Paul Matthew, and the two sat in silence for a long while, both staring at the 7pm sports review as an older fellow inhaling a dark lager complained to a stranger on the adjacent stool about the Hoyas 2-7 football record.
Thomas took another sip of whiskey from his glass. “Because it sounded to me as if you were insulting my intelligence, Paul Matthew, and not as a harmless jest, I dare say.”
“Oh relax, Thomas. Jesus. Your inability to complete this paper of yours certainly has your sense of humor in a rut, has it not? Have another drink and quit hounding my sincerity, for Pete’s sake. Paul Matthew commenced to clutch at his martini glass with a pinky finger lifted outward like some sissy girl.
As Thomas watched his old-time friend sip from it delicately with pouting, pink lips, the sudden urge to strangle him with all his might suddenly overwhelmed his senses. “You suspect yourself to be better than me, don’t you - what with your father heading North Eastern’s premier investment firm, and-”
“-I say, Thomas! Would you let it go already? You’re father is as successful as mine. And must we really drag our families into the conversation? What is wrong with you?”
These lines caused Thomas to pause and catch his breath. He ground his teeth inside his head. Romana, who sat comfortably on a shelf behind the bar due to the lack of customers, noticed the slight scuffle occurring between the two annoying, though at least normally somewhat unassuming, friends across the way. “Everything alright over there, lovebirds? I ain’t never seen you two fight before. You’re not getting a divorce, are you?”
“Everything is fine, Romana. This one here is just throwing a slight hissy fit due to his inability to meet a relatively simple goal,” said Paul, as condescendingly as possible, it is worth noting.
“Whatever. I don’t really care. I was just checking for my own amusement,” she said, then abruptly lifted herself from the counter so as to check on her customers’ current drink statuses.
“A hissy fit, you say? What am I a child?” asked Thomas to his friend.
“If you act like a child, then you shall be treated like one,” replied Paul.
Thomas was relatively flabbergasted by his companion’s remarks. He gulped down the rest of his liquor with a manly flair, choked on it a bit because of its strength, then slammed the glass on the wooden countertop authoritatively. “Well then perhaps I should just go and write the damn thing, you – you – big bully!” he barked at his life-long companion.
Paul reared backward with glorious laughter. “ There it is! There is that spirit of yours! You hardly react to anything unless you’re mocked or pushed aggressively to do so, you old trickster!” said Paul. “You are like a stubborn, iron-clad horse, and always have been. You react to nothing but a good whipping!” Paul now took a long, delightful swig of his colorful martini. “Mmmm...this is quite delicious, Romana, a league above that of your companion’s, I dare say.”
“Thanks, Paul, I think so, too,” said Romana.
“Eat shit, Paul! I heard that!” said Stewart the bartender.
“So wait, let me get this straight,” said Thomas, returning to the matter at hand. “You’ve been blatantly insulting me just to get me to do my work?”
Thomas had placed a $20 bill on the bar and Romana now came swooping over with vulture drippings spewing out of her ears so as to collect the pittance that would allow her to pay rent on time. “You closing out already, Tommy?” she asked, her voice riddled with a tobacco-singed rasp.
“Yes, Romana. I’ve been tricked into writing this semester’s final paper, apparently,” said Tommy.
“By yours truly,” whinnied Paul.
“Good to hear,” she said while collecting the bill and shoving it into the register with a ching and a chang. “I went to college once, ya know. Drank too much. Ended up having to go to community college and became a bartender to pay the bills. Yada yada, few years go by, and I ended up here, still without a college degree...” her voice trailed off with an inkling to depraved sadness.
Thomas’ eyes bulged out of his skull as he swallowed down another gigantic toad within his throat. “Thank you, dear,” he managed to say to her. “K-keep the rest, would you please?” He turned to Paul Matthew sharply and patted his right shoulder with vim. “I shall finish the rest of this paper tonight, so help me God! Thank you, old friend. Thank you!” The words were spoken with a sharp sincerity as he rose from his stool and began toward the back so as to collect his articles from the rack.
“Do not mention it!” Paul said after him. “It was my pleasure, to be sure, as I was being admittedly truthful in most of my remarks,” said Paul bashfully.
Thomas was quickly dressed and heading toward the exit. “I’ll forget you said that last part, you devil. Good evening...”
And he was out the door.
“What was that all about?” asked Stewart the bartender. “He was outa here quicker than he was in...”
Paul finished off his martini. “That’s what the girls say...I do believe Romana scared him, as females are prone to do.”
“Me? What did I do?” said Romana forcefully, her thick, townie accent shining through radiantly.
“Romana, my love – you are willfully beautiful, a lion amid house cats, which can be a tad intimidating to those lesser men among us...Now, if you will, fill me up, for I have nothing, no papers, no responsibilities, to hinder me from perusing languidly among the peasants.”
“The who? The peasants?” said Stewie, who’d taken Paul’s glass so as to fill it.
“Never you mind, Steward the bartender. And, please, leave my martinis to Romana, for she is more fun than you...” joked Paul. He would go on to become heavily intoxicated that evening. He would also go on to share intimate relations with Romana the bartendress for the first of many times.
Predetermined penguins
Are all lined in a row,
Fornicating blindly along the sinews of power
Only to disembowel the chief!
How long it’s been since mother has truly loved father!
All else is a farce.
You are all shivering faces roaming in the dark.
First comes college, then there comes a job,
Then there is a courtship, 7 children, a garage!
You are all infantile! With no minds of your own!
Sheep!
You’ve made life boring for the rest of us,
Because you’re the ones calling the shots!
What a bunch of maroons! Morons! Slaves! |
Barons De Wildefeather clutched a copy of the Tao Te Ching tightly in his right paw while providing his nightly sermon to a disinterested crowd of upper class 20-somethings who, unlike Thomas, seemingly did not react in a positive fashion toward blatant criticism. Baron had not read from the book of wisdom on that day, nor did particularly ascribe to any of its tenets, but, for whatever reason, he desired to do so, and would peruse its passages until the day he died without believing in any of it in the very least. He was strange in that way, this Baron De Wildefeather.
The wayward vagabond had recently finished annihilating his 40 ounce of malt liquor in the time it took both Paul and Thomas to finish a single drink. It was his first of the evening, though ,as was stated prior, liquor best served him when things were cold and wet, which was certainly the case this fateful night.
Thomas Andrew pried a silver cigarette canister from his coat pocket, the one his ex-girlfriend had given him 6 months prior after he’d lackadaisically picked up the habit after attending 5 or six festive keggers. He preferred his hand-rolled, and was quite adroit at the craft, if it could be called that, for it was seemingly one of the only creative talents Our Lord bestowed upon his person – other than paper writing, that is!
Jokes notwithstanding, the boy was in a funk, but found himself now at least somewhat determined to give life itself the old, well...the old college try.
But first, he must partake in the pulpy indignation of some shagtastic tobacco inhalation. He audaciously whipped out a golden zippo lighter his auntie had given him 3 months prior, as she was the only other Bryant who’d accepted habitual tobacco use as a welcomed ritual into the charade that was her life. Smokers stick together, especially due to the fact that they are a dying breed, and so Aunt Mimi (which was her name) cordially planted cigarette packs and attractive lighters next to the boy’s proverbial pillow so as to maintain his interest upon discovering that he was taken by the hobby. Besides, she was doing exceptionally well, even by her doctor’s standards, and she’d been sucking down a pack a day since the ripe age of 15. Some people could just handle it. It was those sissy, poser phonies who succumbed to the cancer that gnawed their throats and mouths off and turned their innards black that gave it a bad name. Nevermind that there were millions upon millions of them.
Anti-smoking infomercials notwithstanding, the young aristocrat pulled out his golden lighter from A. Mimi, flipped the top of it backward with a cool whisk of the elbow, and guided the flint across the bottom portion of his coat in the same, fell swoop, thus igniting the contraption with all the flair of some super suave movie personality that is presently dead or insane; a result of which most likely occurred from his, or her, too, I suppose, rampant drug and alcohol abuse.
Baron De Wildefeather watched all such happenings from his stinking hole about a block and three-quarters down the road. The scowl his face exuded while watching the young republican do such would be reminiscent to that of someone who’d just eaten a chunk of rotting dog shit, if anyone were so foul so as to partake in the act of such.
Now, as Baron stood spouting forth his jargon concerning the idiocy of a complacent middle class, Sizemore Oliphant, a homeless black fellow who carried around with him a severed goat horn donated to him by a devout Muslim woman who’d been fully immersed in a black garment and veil while in the act of such, spoke to anyone who’d listen about the impending apocalypse, the return of Jesus, and the judgment of all mankind by our Father in heaven from his tattered heap of a cardboard house sitting next to a McDonald’s wall. This brave, young go-getter was first touched by Our Lord after ingesting nearly 21 grams of heroin through his upper, right ass cheek. The drastic amount caused him to drift into a 72-hour long coma of sorts while by himself in an abandoned crack house on the outskirts of Washington D.C. Upon awakening from his excursion into the blackness of non-existence, Sizemore viewed a blurry apparition fluttering above him that he later identified as one of the holy angels, though one of a lesser degree – Verubavel he later named it while in the midst of yet another heroin-induced psycho-cerebral splurge.
Following his first coma, the one in the crack house, Sizemore immediately craved 2 things: 1) Water, and plenty of it, and 2) Eternal redemption from Our Lord Christ.
Sizemore had since quit the heroin, or the shit, as it is often, appropriately called, and was now preaching as best he could regarding the gracious benefits of accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as one’s absolute and holy savior, while, in the same sentence, pointing to the diabolical tricks and traps of that entity known as Lucifer, who, invariably, controlled the world, and was attempting to configure those ingredients necessary to ignite none other than the infamous WWIII.
Sizemore was not particularly averse to the message behind Baron De Wildefeather’s sermons, and considered the drunken ‘white-boy’ an ally of sorts, though he could and would not tolerate the young man’s susceptibility to intoxicants of all varieties, as it was no longer a viable part of his own life, and so, accordingly, it should not be a part of anyone else’s.
There had been various complaints set out for their removal, of course (Sizemore and Baron’s, that is), and they’d actually been forcibly extricated from the locale a number of times by the Georgetown Police. But they always returned with a steadfast vigilance, helped in large part by various sects of budding, activist jokers who championed the homeless bastards as a university staple that was to be protected under the blessed canopy of the Second Amendment herself.
And so the police, and everyone else for that matter, put up with their antics (mostly Wildefeather’s), almost anticipating that moment when the cork finally blew, the homeless man would lose his marbles completely, and he’d end up killing a number of people with a shotgun, or, perhaps, he’d be killed by someone who insulted him or he insulted, respectively.
Wildefeather’s temper tended to grow exponentially during the Holiday season, as he was often times forced to guzzle more extraneous amounts of alcohol than normal so as to hinder the memories of his verbally abusive father (whom he unabashedly projected onto the innocent masses as they passed) from entering his aching noggen. The prolific, consumptive rate at which he inhaled the various poisons would leave Lao-Tzu, himself, an irritable, raving loonytoon.
And so, Thomas Andrew Bryant, the young aristocrat, approached, cigarette in hand, toward his supposed foe, that being Wildefeather, without knowing that the free-spirited vegan witchdoctor had plastered an imaginary target on his head from the moment he’d first laid eyes upon him. Baron tried to play nice at first, doing his best to turn the other cheek and not judge the book by its apparent cover, that being Thomas’s Brook Brother’s Pea Coat, his $400 leather gloves with the moccasins his grandmother had given him to match; not to mention some slicked back hair and an heir of pompous superiority in his step.
“Hey man, do you have an extra cigarette?” asked Wildefeather longingly.
Sizemore could be heard across the road: “The devil don’t care ‘bout cha! Devil don’t love you or care for ya. Devil don’t give a good God damn if you do or if ya don’t! Devil just want his fee-ill. Devil on top of that pyramid, son. Betta recognize that!”
“Um, no, sorry, last one,” said Thomas softly to the bum who’d just asked him for a smoke, as he was doing his best to pass without delay, for he had a paper to write.
“H-hey, c-c’mon man, I know you g-got one.” The stuttering was due to the fact that Wildefeather burped while saying the words. He threw up a bit in his mouth in the process of doing so, though held in the waste for the time being. In the meanwhile, he jumped sharply from his enclave so as to block Thomas’s path along orange-brick sidewalk. The homeless man, that being Wildefeather, was somewhat sizable, and arched his shoulders outward so as to construct a formidable, human wall.
“Look, I-I-,” Thomas could hardly find the words as he tried to swerve past the beast, but Baron sidestep-parry-moved him so as to block the way. “Now, l-look here! I just-,” Thomas stammered while veering quickly in the other direction with all the stealth of Georgetown’s premier running back Cory Graveling. But, alas! Wildefeather’s defensive sidesteps were mechanically adroit, and he was able to impede Thomas’s passing once more. Thomas was now stuck facing the lurid statue of stoic hippy madness that now loomed before him.
“Please now, sir, I said that I do not have any cigarettes. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to pass, for I have a paper due on the morrow, one in which I am admittedly tardy upon completing, or even starting for that matter, if I am to be perfectly honest with one of your kind. And, if I must be brash in my communications toward you, I daresay that this aggressive display of yours is an undeserved roadblock upon my quest to accomplishing such. Do you dig, or jive, or are you feeling what I am currently saying to you?” Thomas said, doing his best to conform to the lingo he thought appropriate among street-beggar, acid-sucking, festival-rock folk.
Wildefeather stood there without a word, leering downward at the plush, young, well-to-do with the face of an angered dog.
Thomas grimaced with displeasure at the arousal of this bullying hindrance and raised his hand with the cigarette in it as some sort of substantial peace sign. “Here. Please, take this one. It is all I have left. Won’t you? I carry no diseases, not that they can be transmitted through saliva, anyway, or so I’ve heard. Though colds are another matter. But, who am I talking to here? It’s not like you’d mind...” The flippant remark left his lips before any realization that it was about to do so. Baron’s stare hardened drastically.
“Th-that’s not what I meant,” said Thomas, outwardly expressing his vocally insensitive error. “O-of course you’d care if I were diseased. I-I mean, not diseased, but if I were carrying a viral infection, for that’s what we were talking about, no? Not that I am-carrying a virus, that is. And who wouldn’t care? I most certainly would, and we are not so different, are we? Please, go on. Take the cigarette. Take it. I do not need it. There is still a half of it left. G-go on. Here...”
Instead of clawing at Thomas’s outstretched arm with indignant gratitude, as most of us would have predicted would happen at such a point (as Baron De Wildefeather had quite the addictive personality, as we all know), the bum took a long look down at Thomas’s tan moccasins, that cuddly pair of booties Na Na (which was Thomas’s cutesy-wootsy pet name for grandmother) had given him, as we’ve already heard a number of times (though the booties were more gray-brown in their demeanor than tan, and were lined with the finest lamb wool at their center - not that it really makes a difference, I suppose). The vomit in Wildefeather’s mouth had lost its taste somewhat, but not its bite, or so he guessed. In a moment lost entirely in the intoxicating realm of astute, rebellious resolve, Baron let loose a stream of the pungent stew down upon Thomas’s poor, little bootsies, his favorite footwear, which, or course, were a gift from Na Na for his birthday just 3 months prior. Or was it six? But, of course, she had not given him the moccasins themselves, just the gift certificate associated with the store where he’d purchased them according to his own peculiar taste.
Thomas could smell the foulness of the liquid directly upon its exit from Baron De Wildefeather’s purple-stained lips (wine, perhaps?). The goop spattered in blue-red glops at the well-to-do’s feet, which were now veritably covered with the homeless man’s lunch, that being a mixture of some barley soup and a cucumber sandwich he’d purchased at the local, organic grocery just a few blocks down the road. An inquisitive mind may interject by questioning how a bum could afford such luxuries: two forty-ounce bottles of beer, a bowl of barley soup, and a cucumber sandwich (from one of those snobbish organic grocers, no less) all on a single day’s allowance, which, most assuredly, would not be so ample. The simple answer is that the man had gradually cultivated an innate knack for grifting over the course of his homeless stint, as he’d been ‘living off the land’ for just over ten years now. If one does anything for ten years, he or she is sure to become at least halfway decent at it, even if they are incalculably inebriated during the span of time in which they were doing that very thing. Baron had become such an impressive grifter, and acquired such an aptitude for ‘street living’, as it might be called, that he even had a bank account, and not a mere pittance at that! He’d amassed a sizable amount through his years of begging, mostly, though there were also elongated stints when he’d sold self-made jewelry made of soda-pop caps and various, interesting-looking pebbles he’d collected along the course of his travels. He’d even resorted to robbing a number of richer-looking businessmen over a period of months using an old, rusted butcher knife he’d discovered underneath a dumpster after passing out beneath it following a night of heavy carousing. He did not feel particularly guilty about the robberies, but, rather, viewed them as heroic feats in line with those Robin Hood would have undertaken if he were still alive today. “They did not need the money, anyhow,” he muttered to himself while depositing their cash into his fast-growing, Sovereign Bank savings account. “It belongs in the hands of the poor.” Words which were referring, of course, to none other than himself.
But such escapades were ancient history, in his own head anyway, though, obviously, his habit of bullying the rich was still making itself apparent.
So, where were we? Ah, yes! Thomas Andrew was looking down with horror at his vomit-covered booties, the gift from grandma. The young man was already in a state of ‘great upheaval’, or anxiety one might term it, due to his term paper’s deadline and the indelible consequences he must face if he were unable to complete it. The smorgasbord of emotions wrought by the pressure of such, the booze, the cigarettes and the fact that this derelict had just upchucked all over his favorite shoes was a little more than his subtler sensibilities could withstand, though he looked up toward the wretched homeless man considerably calmly, considering.
“What? What you gonna do?” said Baron De Wildefeather with a lurch in his step, as if he were about the slug the rich boy a good one in his periwinkle eyebrow sockets.
There was a number of collegiate sassafras perusing past the budding seen along the sidewalks, in each and every opposite direction possible, though none hardly cared enough to stop, for it was finals season, and the children must put mommy and daddy’s money to good use or they’d all be fried in rich, buttery oil. None stopped that is, until Thomas Andrew Bryant III threw his hands into the air with a sudden exuberance and a emitted a primal yell, an anti-cacophonic catastrophe, directly into the ugly bum’s zitty face.
Everyone on either side of the road instantly stopped their goings-on and turned toward the rich boy as he slammed his hands down upon the free spirit’s shoulders with great force, and continued to drag his newfound enemy toward the curb with great violence, using nothing but his bodily weight, which, as many recalled later, he did with a skillful, though still amateur, capacity.
In a matter of moments the pair were ‘going at it’ quite insatiably, wrestling inside the rustling sputters of a thick puddle that had collected next to a gutter nearest them. Hints of those colorfully vibrant oil splotches that were emitted by the passing vehicles danced around them as they began to punch, kick, scratch, and even bite one another in a tangled mess for all to see.
Sets of passing college students now stopped alongside the road so as to enjoy the maturing disaster. What is more, automobile traffic also came to an abrupt halt, not to watch, really (though they certainly were), but more to avoid squashing the warriors in action to a mooshy paste, for their makeshift wrestling extravaganza had now made its way into the middle of the road. Horns blared, the screeching of tires did sound, and the burgeoning yelps of an excited audience began to bubble like an impending volcano.
In a weak defense of the Georgetown student body (those members of which hardly even considered breaking the fight apart at its inception) it was finals time, and so all were readily accepting of the violent undertakings before them with opened hearts, for it was an escape of sorts, one that allowed them to vicariously release their building frustrations with regard to the pressures of ‘study time’ and making a name for themselves in the corporate paradigm of the modern world. Such an excuse is void of substance when taking into account those humans who composed the rest of the traffic, for they, too, exited their metal canisters so as to gaze upon the opposites at war without so much resistance as a simple, “Hey, there, young ones! Refrain from your egregious endeavors!”
Nay. Instead, the populace formed a corroded, ring-shaped crowd about the fighters with arms raised and fists clenched, all the while exuding a crass selection of hoots and hollers that would cause a clan of wild, silverback gorillas from the Congo to stand at attention with sheepish awe.
The only person who thought to separate the two for the good of humankind was that saintly dynamo by the name of Sizemore Oliphant, who, immediately upon noticing the ardent display of aggression between his fellow brothers, decided it should necessarily be he who saved the day, considering that he was, in all seriousness, not just a good Christian, but a decent humanoid, to boot. And so this secondary, though not inferior, homeless man of “M” Street, quickly hiked himself upward in a squat against the red-bricked McDonald’s behind him, that same one which played home to so many heavenly, crowd-pleasing sermons, and fumbled quickly toward the center of the avenue, pushing gawking witnesses from his path ever so gently from his path in order to do so.
As the masses parted before him like the Red Sea did for Moses (an analogy that his Biblically-focused mind immediately clung to in the process of such) he was able to catch a glimpse of the gladiators writhing atop one another on the grizzled concrete. Both were visibly dreary with adamant fatigue, yet continued to flail around on the pavement in what might be called ‘combat’ to anyone who’d never seen a fight before in his or her life.
The headlights of the surrounding cars provided adequate lighting for the affair, as the two seemingly performed in front of an audience amid a string of well-placed stage-lights.
Wildefeather was winning. This was obvious enough, which was not at all surprising considering his totalitarian demeanor as compared to that of the aristocrat. But, Thomas was putting up a fight, truth be told, though many of his tactics might be described as belonging to a grouping of a ‘dirtier’ order: hair pulling, fish-hooking, biting, pinching, clawing, with an occasional punch thrown in here and there. In other words, Thomas was fighting like a girl.
Regardless, Wildefeather had him under control as Sizemore made his way toward the center of the scene. He had now successfully pinned both of Thomas’s shoulders to the ground with his knees, thus freeing his upper appendages for a free round of pummeling. He began to pound the helpless aristocrat in his face with a single, clutched fist while holding his chest down with the other, a position that afforded him a great deal of luxury when concerning the accuracy of the placement of his whomping knuckles upon Bryant’s meaty head.
Yes, he was doing just that, when suddenly an animated Sizemore Oliphant blasted through the crowd with great verve, “Holy Vigor” it might be called, and tackled the depraved hippy scoundrel from atop his mountain peak, so to speak, toward the pavement, in a single, powerful, diagonally-lined, swoop. The sudden blow derailed Wildefeather’s confidence with the totality of a deflated balloon. He turned to find the culprit, his supposed chum – Sizemore “The Saint of M Street” Oliphant. The tree hugger was livid with suppressed rage he had toward the other bum.
“What on – what on earth? What do you think you’re doing Oliphant? I-I thought we were friends?” he said, as the two rolled upward into a sitting position on the pavement. The crowd moaned with pleasure at the theatrical curveball that’d just been thrown into the mix. “Who the heck is this guy,” Bill Quaffron, a Sigma Lamda Pi pledge, yelled to his soon-to-be frat brothers across the way.
Sizemore was breathless as he centered himself and rose in a clumsy somersault to his feet. “I-I can’t let you be doing that, Baron De Wildefeather. It ain’t right n’ you knowin’ it!” The child of God brushed the crumbs of loose rock from his beard and gathered himself in a flurry of spastic wherewithal. “Dat-dat boy dere...you ain’t ‘sposed to be fighiin’ wit him!”
“Says who?” asked Wildefeather, who still sat upright on the ground with chunks of concrete and blood plastered to his face.
Sizemore was unable to look him in the eye. “Say who? Say me! So sayeth the Lawd!”
The crowd moaned some more as Baron De Wildefeather lifted himself slowly from the earth, his lanky body visibly torn up at the knees and elbows.
Thomas had since accumulated enough sense so as to wiggle his way from the limelight of the show with all the quietude of some long-lived garden mouse. He went on to complete 7 pages of his paper that evening, received a D- in the class, and was able to resume his studies at Georgetown University, where he graduated with a 3.1 grade point average, a result which made his father particularly proud, though he still made it a point to chide the boy for never making Dean’s List throughout the course of his four years at the University.
“So sayeth the Lord, huh?” Wildefeather continued. Most of the car-honking had ceased at this point, and an eerie silence swept over the sky. Not but a few witnesses of the event correctly asserted that such an emptiness could be viewed as and was a foreshadowing of those abysmal festivities that were to erupt henceforth. Biff Quaffson of Sigma Lamda Pi broke the silence somewhat with a solitary, raised fist: “Kick his ass Wildefeather!”
Ignoring the comment, Baron continued: “You know what Sizemore? I-I-...you’ve become a real wimp. You stand here, talkin’ about Jesus, talkin’ about the devil, but you don’t do squat around here, man! You’re just a-just another cog in the machine! You don’t do a damn thing!” Wildefeather began to circle his ally with a funny spark in his eye.
“Oh- oh yeah?” Sizemore’s shoulders began to slouch. “And what do you do, man? Huh? You sit and bark at people all day! So what? Nobody listen to you! Tell me, what do you do that makes you better than me?”
Baron De Wildefeather stopped pacing. It was quite obvious to the crowd that the middle-aged loser was quite drunk, and even he realized the profundity of his intoxication at this point in time due to his inability to stand upright. Still, he continued onward with the show. The bum turned to the older homeless man with as much attitude and vigor as his person could harness. “What’s the difference between me and you?” he chuckled. The effervescent charisma with which he delivered the following word was reminiscent of some superstar action hero about to destroy his arch nemesis pointblank with a sawed-off shotgun.
“THIS.”
Now, it must be stated here that Sizemore Oliphant was an African American male, and Baron De Wildefeather that of the Caucasian race. Tensions between the vernacularly opposed color groups, those mostly associated with economic statuses, job quality and stereotyping, had grown to a palpable head. Extraordinarily disparate groups (rich people in white suits and poor minorities in jeans and sweatshirts) were now gathered round merrily as a unified whole to watch the clumsy wrestling match between the two Caucasian numbskulls. But, as soon as an African American entered the scene, a new dynamic did present itself into the equation, as the black and white persons inside the mob now did unconsciously view each another as being on separate ‘teams’ or sides’ with regard to the color of their skin.
Hence, when members of either ‘party’ or ethnic group saw the pair speaking somewhat heatedly toward the other, hairs were raised on end, for the unspoken discord reverberating inside the skins of those carrying that same malice, which was a great many on that night for whatever reason, now did begin to unsheathe itself in physical form right before their very eyes.
So, when Baron De Wildefeather, a white man amongst white men, threw the first glorious, drunken punch into the face of Sizemore Oliphant with pristine gusto, a trigger inside the surrounding public could said to have been pulled as well. Sizemore, himself, fell to the ground immediately after accepting the cold-cocked, strategically placed sucker punch along his jaw line, which knocked him out with not just a miniscule amount of authority.
Deronius Lambeau, a 31-year-old, stout, African-American male United States postal worker, was instantly, horrifyingly offset by the violent act, for Oliphant had reminded him of his deceased grandfather who’d passed away just a few years prior from the gout (together with some unknown illness, of course), and who’d been quite active during the civil rights movement as a member of the Black Panther Party-a fact which he’d proudly announced to his grandson on more than one occasion throughout the course of his seasoned existence.
So, upon seeing this ghastly, abusive display that had been delivered from the hands of a white man toward that of a black (particularly an elderly) African American, Deronious instinctively took it upon himself to act as that noble policing force which would incur justice upon the wicked, not to mention ‘cheap-punching’, white man.
“Aw, hell naw,” he said under his breath. He squeezed his knuckles tightly into fists so tightly that his knuckles cracked in a most intimidating fashion. He charged toward the white villain expediently, vividly, and with the utmost haste of purpose.
“No! Wait! Deronius! Don’t!” a number of friends called out from behind him, though, knowing him as they did, they knew it was much too late to stop him with mere words when he’d reached that visible level of aggravation.
Deronis Lambeau did not wait to sneak up on the white menace, but, rather, ran like a charging bull toward his target, as he had always been more of a brawler-type when it came to armed combat than that of a stylistic martial artist, or a boxer even. Baron De Wildefeather, pleased as pie at the result of his inglorious sucker punch upon the old man, turned just in time to see a clenched fist now being waved with a haughty diligence toward his direction. He carried enough presence so as to avoid the brunt of the blow by ducking slightly, though a large portion of fist still did graze his upper right cheek, enough to send him flailing backward in a panic. In another breath, he was upon Deronius with a few weaker swings of his own, and another scuffle was born as the pair began exchanging a more raucous ensemble of blows than had been exhibited earlier between Wildefeather and Thomas Andrew Bryant III.
In a fit of loyalty, Deronius’ group of friends, who could all be characterized as belonging to a tougher, more militaristic lifestyle grouping, now did approach the scene as well so as to aid their companion in his quest for vengeance upon the sickly-white hippy bum. Just to remain on the topic of ‘grouping’ a tidbit longer, if one were to categorize the impending catastrophe as that of belonging to a specified group, one might consider the branch as worthy of adorning the title ‘Relative Mayhem”, though things became extravagantly more amplified when a local gang member, one Hester B. Sanchez of the 51st Street Kings, who’d happened upon the event with his homeboys while walking toward his cousin’s house, wrongly identified one of Deronius’s friends as a rival gang member, one in whom, he told his cronies, needed to be dealt with at that particular moment in time.
The crowd now began to disperse in relative fear and screams as Deronius and company threw Baron De Wildefeather to the ground and commenced to beat the living shit out of him with great and furious vigilance. Their tirade was cut short, however, as Hester B. Sanchez and his fellow gang members entered onto the scene with fists flying of their own.
Edwin Leonard Glockinblouse, a Georgetown dork is there ever was one, recognized a bully, one Lawrence T. Stroudberg, who’d humiliated him at a recent party, racing toward him as the audience dispersed in great cacophonous waves. He’d never fought before, but, amid the intoxicating panic, he now saw this as his premier opportunity to smash Pre-Law textbook he held in his hands across the unsuspecting Junior’s face. And that he did, thus breaking the jerk’s nose in an irksome explosion of brown-red blood.
Delores C. Prajnapal, a relatively poor Indian girl with a taste for finer clothing that she could not afford, came face to face with that pair of shoes she really wanted in the front window of the store where the clerk had snickered at her when she walked in the door the other day (because of her low-class apparel, or so she’d insinuated within the construct of her own psyche, anyway). She did so while in the midst of the maddened, passing cattle herd that had been created by the violent spectacle just mentioned, as sirens began to blare with a shrilled urgency in the distance. An unrelenting rush came over her as she unconsciously picked up a small, nearby trashcan and tossed it clean through the breakable glass on her way to acquiring not only the shoes, but a purse that had really caught her eye, as well.
Upon seeing Delores’s example, Valerie DuPont, a Russian crook who enjoyed robbing unsuspecting students of their computers while they went to the bathroom in various cafes around the neighborhood, took it upon herself to heave a loose rock through a jewelry store window in order to obtain a slew of pricy pearl necklaces, which she later pawned on Ebay so as to earn the cash needed to feed her growing Doberman Pincers, whom she loved quite dearly.
Strings of like events spread like wildfire through the Geortownian streets as sirens blazed with diligence in the distance, though the police were unable to pull their automotives directly into ‘the line of fire’, the flowering ring of chaos, because traffic had built to such an unnaturally congestive degree.
Some policemen arrived on foot, their fashionable, black, riot gear fatigues twinkling boldly in the streetlight, as round after round of strategically placed tear gas canisters were pumped into the innocent crowds of college students who scampered like rodents into the dead of the night.
Johnny L. Bastwig, a teenage skateboard dropout punk with a knack for starting fires, took the opportunity to ignite a ring of paper towels he’d stolen out of a Starbucks bathroom earlier that day with a golden Zippo lighter he’d just found near the birthing point of the now-budding riot. It is worth noting that this was that same lighter that had been given to Thomas Andrew Bryant III by his Aunt Mimi upon her discovering that he was a newly proclaimed initiate into the habit of cigarette smoking, and that it had fallen out of his pocket through the course of exchanging heated blows with Baron De Wildefeather just minutes before.
Johnny, the shitty little rascal that he was, took the homemade fireball he’d just concocted using the aforementioned materials and threw it into one of the shattered shop windows that had just recently been broken. A slight tinge of guilt arose within him as the flames of the thing immediately caught, thus igniting the wood-walled ‘Antiques’ shop instantly via the 200-year-old Armenian rug that decorated its floor so ostensibly.
And so also a mighty fire also arose throughout the city borough, thus adding that final, wondrous element of which all good paintings do consist – a haughty, heated red.
These are those details of how the initial riot of 2012 did erupt, and there were a great deal many more to follow...
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