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| 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
