Heist

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_machine

My ex-friend Dave (and a big "Fuck you!" to you today!) robbed the ATM of the bank he worked near his hometown in his own fucking car, under the camera he knew was installed, because his mom got him the job, and she also worked there as a manager. It was something so fucking stupid, I just had to laugh when he told me what he did, because it's such a Polish-Indian thing to do. Not familiar with that particular brand of local flavor? Okay, check this out: his parents took him to Polkas (http://www.huntermtn.com/summer/festivals/) and Powwows (http://www.crazycrow.com/New-York-Powwow.php) at Hunter Mountain. Uh, yeah....it could be that far apart in realities at times, which is fine if you're cool, open, smart, or even somewhat marginally curious intellectually-speaking, and Dave is none of those.

He's fun, and he used to be incredibly handsome, but on his worst days, he becomes a drunker, angrier version of Seinfeld's "Putty" character, only without the acting chops, strength, height, or athleticism. In other words, making fun of him only went so far at blocking out his insane static so we could all have a good time. It took an entire tribe of our homegrown Oneontans to make Dave feel whole, and in their absence, a vacuum formed inside of him that was almost bottomless in need. He was a dangerous mad dog off his meds, and he refused to go to a doctor to simply start the first step of admitting that he needed the white man's medicine, even after several convictions, but I already knew that.

What I didn't know how to do was cure my strange Indo-European friend because, back then, I didn't have the science at my elbow to give him that adequately explained the lack of a digestible enzyme for alcohol present in most Native Americans, not that he would have understood it anyway, because he's also seriously learning-impaired. When we lived together in Brooklyn, I had to hold his hand to go see a regular ole psycho-analyst, which is the neurotic New Yorker's version of taking a few baby aspirin, given the intensity of our lifestyles here. Lesser people go under very quickly.

But, when he plateaued health-wise, he could remain stable for a few years, and I knew that, too. Given the hysteria surrounding our parents' generation of mentally abusive marriages, the fact that I was actually marrying a good friend of mine from college (albeit a party friend, and not an actual classroom-attending one) gave me better odds of "making it" in a relationship than their disastrously disassociated version of reality. Doubt me? Watch any episode of "Mad Men", and you're right there in it with them. I felt a pit in my stomach after each show, which was confirmed by my mother as being authentic in tone and emotionalism for the time period of the series.

And so, as Dave spiraled downward in my native city, (he was so stressed out, he developed a painful rash of Shingles around his mid-section, a disease only older people typically get), that I knew I had to relocate him. His sister Shelley had enjoyed Colorado, and I loved New Mexico when my family and I went skiing in Angel Fire, so we zeroed in on that area of the country as ripe for the next construction boom he could immediately profit from, and it panned out exactly the way we planned it. He got a job right away as a construction grunt learning his chops in the business, while I answered ads placed for creatives. His people (and some of mine) hated my fallow time period of looking for full-time work (which is insanely hard to do), because back then, six months was considered a "long time" to be out of work, charming as that seems now to us as Americans.

They tried to pressure me into becoming a waitress like their drop-out kids (haha!), which was laughable, but I could take their peer pressure standing on my head. Next came their increasing insistence that I have a baby for them because his sister never wanted to have kids, also a joke to a fertile woman like me still in her 20s. Uh, why?! I can work for 20 more years, which is exactly what I did. When I finally got a "rock star" job as a freelance designer for The Denver Art Museum, with my illustrations lining the entrance of Denver's International Airport and hanging from the building's very facade, they backed right the fuck off. Average people are blown away or stunned by any kind of real success or celebrity, especially if there's an article in print, so it bought me the time I needed to establish myself in a totally new market, which also worked exactly as I planned it to be.

I knew book design work was scarce out west, even though I agreed to our adventure on the strength of securing an interview ahead of time in Boulder. I went there (after a brief bout of altitude sickness), but was extremely disheartened by what I saw. The job was a couple of hippie chicks printing some mags and the occasional book on brewing beer in your bathtub. Oh....uh, no. Hell, no. We also found the real estate market destroyed by the wealthy college students who artificially jacked-up the prices in the housing market for even a dilapidated shack, so we left Boulder for the more-inclusive town of Denver, and we were right to do so. It was a much better fit for us, as urbanites and New Yorkers, even mimicking the historical charm of Park Slope in some parts, with big historic Victorian homes with lots of personality.

We set up household to begin our lives there, but not before I made Dave tell everyone around us the entire truth. For real, though. I had most definitely not forced Dave to rob his mother's bank for me, for something as average as a spontaneous road trip to my college town in Rhode Island, because as a RISD-oid working three part-time jobs with a full studio schedule of classes to fill (I'd completed my Liberal Arts studies at Oneonta, and my dad was riding my hump about money like he always does), I barely had time to maintain my hard-fought for equilibrium as it was, let alone randomly urge "Mad Dog" Dave to use his own car to take out money from the ATM of his mom's bank. Know that I'm sayin'? Look at me and my work. 'Nuff said. I was kind of busy back then.

He used me as an excuse because he knew he fucked up so bad that it outed him as a retard with our old crew, so he thought he could put the rap on me partially (thanks for that, BTW) for a little while after he left town in a panic. In truth, Dave missed the college lifestyle and his group of friends, which I totally understood. Even my supposed "friends" at RISD wanted to knife me in the back to eat me whole while roasting me over an open fire on some days, and these were supposedly gentle-hippie vegetarians. This was before the word "vegan" was invented, but douche-y for me, not before "lacto-ovum" and "macrobiotic", which are anorexics masking their eating disorders behind feel-good "save the whales" movements = total shite.

But whatever. At least with Dave, we could go to Club Babyhead (http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/deftones/1996/club-babyhead-providence-ri-73d866f5.html) and freak out to some ska or punk music. He was always down for that. We had a great time platonically, because I'd stopped dating by the time of his visit, even with Bart's insane "open door" policy of rotating characters. It was too much work, and those fucked-up rich white kids are sick weirdos, man. Dave was at least an Indo-European Catholic schoolboy from upstate New York, and that was a fuck lot more in common than anyone around me for many many miles, know what I mean? It's sort of like making it out of the 'hood as "baller" only to find weirder, more insane strippers at the top than those kinda nice kids from yo block who danced at the local club. Feel me?

Dave was like that for me. He understood some of the real shit I could never explain to an "Ivy Leaguer" on any given day, and at that point in my career, that's exactly what I needed: not his illnesses, or his disorders, nor his utter lack of a decent education that wasn't from a lack of trying. I just needed a real, down-home, New York boy without all the fuckin' crazy bullshit, 'cause I can bring the heat and flash on my own, just like I always been doin'. I needed someone who was "down" in our sense of the word, white man. Not yours. Never yours. Thanks, Indian! You're one crazy n*##a (especially on a full moon;) and I liked that about you, bro. You just ain't my husband tho', but we'll always be "tribe". It's time to bury the hatchet. Stay wild, man!


Click on the link, print out the info on the site, and take it to your doctor, Red:
 http://anthro.palomar.edu/adapt/adapt_5.htm

Rescue Me

People involved with animal rescue are a special breed of human, oftentimes not for the better, as I found out during several unique situations in my life. After my werewolf, uh, M'Loot Mal*, pulled me aside for a bagel bite early one morning, I was too fucked up to care for him anymore. I had promised Ted that if couldn't take care of him, I would always provide for him (ALWAYS), and as a woman of my word, I always keep the promises I make. Me and my mom placed him with a loving "empty-nesting" wacko; someone we would never trust in our day-to-day lives, but at that point, it was either some kook in upstate New York who used to kennel Mals, or we sold him on the open market like he was a car from Craigslist. Uh uh. Not happening.

So, one afternoon, a couple of uneducated hicks from rural suburbia picked up my Mal at a boarding kennel in Brooklyn, but before that, they sat at my mom's small kitchen table, giving me the final sales pitch about why they would be good "pet parents", watching me avidly with greedy beady little eyes that tracked my signature across his breeding papers granting them ownership, with my crutches leaning conspicuously against the chair I sat on, but not without first asking me if he really was "free". If you don't know what Snow Dogs represent to me in my culture, try this one on for size: ask a professional working cowboy to part with his favorite work horse, or the barren cat lady next door to give up her little "Snuggly Wuggly" with all the cutesy-poo outfits, too, and you've got it down pat. I spent many hours creating the perfect companion, of a kind that brought my people to this land from very far away. They gave us this life we have, this destiny that we are so blessed to receive daily. It's, like, "way spiritual"**, in Anglo terms.

It hurt, but it would allow me to keep tabs on him through them, and that crazy-ass woman cared for him until the very end, because I saw the pictures she posted on social media (almost in real time), as she sat in the backseat of her car saying "goodbye" to one of the most rockin' spirits this planet has every seen, her eyes red from crying, but he was dying, and that was that. Honestly, I'm glad it was her and not me, though I offered to pick him up for her, or be there to hold her hand. I was sitting in another car when my mom and middle bro had put down my Samoyed many years ago, and it is one of the most excruciating pains I have ever felt in my life, but that's the way real life is. It hurts so good, you know? I wouldn't trade the love of a childhood best friend, so special to my particular ancestry, for all the tea in China. It means everything to me. I owe them my life.

But, that's not how fucked up people treat animals. They don't come from animist cultures that revere them as part of the Holy Spirit powering the entire universe, sacred fellow life forms that are a crucial part of this biosphere we all live in, worthy of our respect, just like we do it. Crazy Euros are no different in this "new" world sometimes than they were back in the old countries that place objects far above people, for no good solid reasons that make any real sense, other than their own rampantly unchecked ill health. I worked with such a violent, foaming-at-the-mouth bitch, who told me she rescued just one type of dog that she liked (letting all the other types of dogs die in "kill shelters" or puppy mills, if they weren't "her" special little breed), because, like I said, she's a real fucking bitch. She wanted me fired for getting injured, not once offering to shelter my type of dog, the very ones that brought Indo-Americans to this world across the Bering Land Mass many moons ago.

No, that fucking cunt wanted me and my dog dead, but she pretended to be a typically "bleeding heart liberal" to get free passes for her psychotic behavior openly manifested between calming doses of Valium at this particular wacky family business. Yeah...like that. Another no-talent dipshit even went so far as to tell her in front of me that she was, like, the best person ever, for using animals like pawns in her fucked up game of "madness played to look like pure chance". She justified her hatred towards her fellow humans by telling me more than once that she liked her terriers way more than me (and her beautiful, orange shorts-wearing daughter), because her parents (who met at the psychiatric institutional facility) "never showed her affection". That's right, this bitch tried to kill me because of her neurotic wealthy parents from Connecticut. Makes sense, no?

No, it doesn't. But that's not all. She went on to tell me (within clear earshot of the entire small company, because she yelled all of her answers by deliberately neglecting her hearing loss), that she adopted a terrier to a family with toddlers after finding out that the dog she "rescued" had eaten the face off of an elderly woman who died in her apartment alone. Wait a minute...what they fuck did you just say to me? I was baffled by her intentional neglect towards people. It was positively shocking. What about the children now left alone with the animal? How long had the dog been alone?! Dogs don't just start chowing down on old dead people unless they're absolutely starving to death. Well, she explained in a condescending tone, she didn't "have to" tell them by law, because dog rescue doesn't work that way. OK, bitch, fine, but don't you think this family has a right to know? Jeezus, you had small kids once, you fucking horror show. What about that?

Even without the cursing in my head (she'd use that as leverage against me, if I dared to use "unprofessional" language in front of her), my intent was perfectly clear. She narrowed her eyes at me in obvious disdain, and typically at this point, she would either A) clam up completely by turning her back on me, so she could play the "deaf card" and/or B) gloss over my point by waiting a beat, to make it seem like I did something wrong, then continuing on after a moment or so: "...anyway...", like I hadn't just made perfect sense, which I did. She closed her eyes halfway to telegraph her dislike for me, then said "Well, the records are sealed", turning her back to me completely, like the conversation was over. Except for this, Lisa. It's not over, bitch. It's over when I say it's over, or until I prosecute you for every legal infraction you've made. This conversation is still on the table, because now I hold all the cards. Is that clear enough for you? I think it is.


*   http://omalmalamutes.com/omal/kotzebuevsmaloot.htm
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism

Bark at the Moon

Me, Robusto, and "Dangerous" (a.k.a. Mad Dawg Dave), wandering around Cambridge in the early evening, lost and high and young and having fun.

Back in college, I didn't openly speak about being Native American, because it wasn't something I was accustomed to talking about. Like our old Dutch and British Colonial roots, we had assimilated a long time ago, or so we thought. Being Métis often cropped up at the oddest times, and the most inconvenient ones, too, like partying with the boys back in college. New York State has some very large, powerful, and highly public native societies, a lot of which center on being a mad, bloodthirsty Mohegan, which are not my roots. Most Americans get their ideas about "Indians" based on bad Kevin Costner movies about beautiful hippy chicks with feathered white-girl hairdos, who just happen to live like the natives do in their peacefully quaint pot-smoking tents, where free-love and lots of nudity reigns. Nothing could be further than that about the fucking Indians I know. Promiscuous and alcoholic, yes. Nice? No. Not particularly.

It should be noted at this point in the piece that you really have to judge each tribe individually, and every individual separately, which really sucks if you are manic-depressive and learning-impaired, like my retarded friend Dave was, and still is to this day. He was also very drunk and extremely handsome back when I first met him, which didn't help him out at all as a retarded Indian. He's one of them Half-Breeds where the Euro and the Native just don't quite fucking mix right, especially if that Euro part is part Polish. Some days that fucking kid doesn't know whether his jacket is on frontwards or back, or if he's got armholes in them or not. He's that fucked up. It's actually really funny to watch, if you've managed to skip the ten-day drunk he's on.

Oh, he can plateau for years on dry land, but then he crashes and burns for years, too; trapped in a wetland he can't get out of by himself, without someone else to pull him out of the dirty bog waters he happens to be stuck in at the time. You know? He's got a really small territory, one plain boring chunk of suburban upstate New York that he can handle...and that's barely manageable on some moonlit nights as well. It's like he was made badly out of several types of clay with different firing times that just don't meld well together, and on really bad days, he splits apart at the seams. If you've ever met a New World American with mixed parentage who's really fucked up, then that's it, with some extreme Indian shit added for extra fireworks. He's a wild drunk, but he's also funny and charming at times, too. It's changeable, based solely on his unique blend of chemistry, same as his sister.

Some days she's this gorgeous Native American Cindy Crawford who's also a gourmet chef, and then at other times, she's that desperate middle-aged chick trying to act young, making out with a teenage guy in the back of the bar to prove her worth, still. They're heart-breakingly superficial, and it's a truly weird mixture, man. Just when you think they're soulful, they puke on your shoes. Just when they even out their looks, they go meth-addict skinny on you, smoking and drinking and drugging for days and days on end. Something inside of them never gelled right, and too much time with them can drive the wrong "whitey" mad. It didn't work with me, but then my genetics formed a healthy, stable branch of Indo-European the first time out, creating a strong generation of Métis that thrive in both Old and New World soil. 

Genetics are great if you think about it, but if you half-ass it, you get them: my part Mohegan, Cayuga, Irish, Italian, German, Polish friends who never set into a clearly focused picture, just blurry fleeting images of your fun night out, when you may or may not have made out with one of them. I'm proud that I chose a native blend my first time out, but like the new wave term "starter" suggests, I'm glad I half-assed that first fake marriage so that I could get it annulled, because there's no way a boy like my old friend Dave could ever fully bear the weight of Holy Roman Catholic vows, made in a sanctity that will always escape him. He tries, you know? He tries. And that's about it. He's a half-boy, half-man, wild child of the night, as depressively manic as he can be, and he's not the one for me. Hang in there if you're still seeking your moon-mate. He or she is out there. You just have to look harder...

For you, Fiona

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohegan_people 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayuga_people