I have one last chance in life to change the world. I was born in the late 1950s. I am a humanitarian, even if I don’t believe I come from the same planet as all of you. I don’t. I have no idea, nor ever have, what the fuck is wrong with you people, not since I was a child in diapers. But I love you, to a fault.
This is personal, spiritual, moral. I’m old enough and wise enough to care, old enough to not give two shakes of a lamb’s tale. You have no idea of who I am. And I don’t want you to know.
My memory is long. I don’t know why I can recall when I was two years’ old. When JFK was killed, I was but four years old, and I will never forget my older sister crying her eyes out in the hallway where we lived on Daneland Street, Lakewood, California. Mom cried, too. When I was all but ten years old, I remember hearing about the Tet Offensive at the start of a very bad year of 1968, and then MLK got killed, and then Bobby, and then the police riot at the Dem Convention in Chicago, and then my little mind woke up to the fact that 1968 was a truly fucked year. Only later did I find out that 1968 was completely horrible across the world, including nearby Mexico, where horrible shit also happened.
But I digress, because no one wants to listen about the horrors of a time when too many people thought us hippies/protesters were having a good time. You know what I was going through? Not nearly as much as others, but I lost a brother horribly. You want to know why we took drugs to ease the pain? Fuck off. While I was watching my brother die, I also tried to join the revolution. Me and my pals were just too damn young. Hell, we were born in the Goldilocks Zone of boys who were not only not drafted, but never registered (ended for males born on or after January 1, 1960). We were both blessed in history and damned. Boo hoo.
So now comes a time, where we in Southern Calif. got rid of the smog, but we can’t get a break. I’m third generation Californian, or if you count Dad, a son of an Okie out of the Dust Bowl. I really don’t give a shit about your problems. I can have sympathy. But the blood of my experience and family history hold forth beyond it.
I have no notion of where you all come from. I’ve been given shit from the day I was I born. Oddly, I was an Ugly Duckling, and even more strange, every other year in my upbringing, I’ve been treated as either an ogre or prince. You want to know how I get treated today? I get treated like I’m James Fucking Dean. Two years ago I was fucking shit. Four years ago I was a king. I shit you not. (I’m talking socially, reflecting on my odd experience of alternating acceptance). Today, without any purpose of my own, the mere fact that I drive a rat-rod of a Baja Bug, primer grey spotty, true yes 2110cc bad boy in a ‘74 Super Beetle, I get treated like I’m driving a Shelby Cobra or a ‘68 Mustang, or any of the late ‘60s muscle cars, like the GTO with a small block. My Baja isn’t going to match those high-centered 4x4 trucks or jeeps … unless you get me on craggy terrain and a granny-gear incline, then your ass is mine. Why would I boast that? Because. Everyone thinks I have a great machine. I don’t. I own a particular sort of vehicle -- custom and rat as it may be — that is only superior in a limited set of circumstances ... which has way too much money poured into it, and requires more attention than a Jaguar. And those Jags have at least eight cylinders to my four.
I simply have no idea what the fuck is up with you all, especially you fellow white people. I have never trusted you (except you women, who seem to have a lot of nice souls, thank the lord). The only white people I came across in life who were cool were gay men. With the exception of my father and myself. Them gays seem (except for that one asshole) to be the nicest people on Earth. From my experience, white men are dangerous. I say this as a white man. I have met two bad women, one insane and the other a narcissist. I have never met a bad black man, or woman. Perhaps I am insulated. I suspect that black people have met more crazy white people that me.
If you are a black person, you might think I’m bullshitting. Well, I’m not good at bullshit. Back in the 1980s, I was invited to, ahem, the hood. By a black friend. Them guys thought I was a unicorn, because it seemed odd, a straight up white guy, would be smoking the jay and drinking the whiskey as if I were in Compton. It was in Riverside, CA. Myself, I didn’t see a problem. Indeed, the brothers had to make sure no one knew there was a lily white boy in their crib. Me, being from the planet Pluto, was clueless, and told them a joke to beat the band. It involved a skateboard.
It is a lot easier to ease anxiety among minorities than with white folk, be they liberal or not.
So I tell a joke. It’s not a white joke, or a black joke, but otherwise you could slice it however you want. My late brother (not my younger brother who died, but Mark who died later from overdose), told me this joke. This joke is better than what those comedians talk about, as per The Aristocrats. It is a tame joke, except for the other parts. Which means I cannot type it. Not even the punchline.
As for the rest of you, I love you. You just don’t know it, yet. So we should listen to some Van Morrison and chill out.
Vote for the Bern. Don’t make me whore out my Baja Bug. Because I will. For all that is good and wholesome. If the shit comes to Calif., baby going to have to pay for her keep. Free rides be coming, I’m saying.
Also, this rendition makes perfect sense to me. I don’t know why you don’t understand history, friends.
