You Can't Lose If You Don't Want to Win: ~Memoirs of a Charming Loser

LOSER

LOVE IS DEADLIER THAN BEING A WHITE BOY IN THE CITY OF WATTS

LOS ANGELES 10/8/2011~ A place that shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be where it is...It is a stolen city. A city ground into its foundation by years of bloodshed and treachery. A city weaned on the tapped veins of the Colorado. A Megatropolis of deceit and terror and sex!

The ghosts of the native warriors, whose graves were desecrated and drudged up by the tractors and rakes of the settlers who built this town, haunt and torment us today. Their demon souls, angered and unsettled, taunt and chastise us in unseen shadows and corners of our city. The incantations of which cause us to rape and knife and shoot one another. They makes us swallow pills and inject poisons into our blood streams. They makes us rob banks and produce porno films. Their ghostly, shrill, vengeful laughter, whispers in the high winds that sweep through the basin around this time of year.

Four a.m. my eyes open to the darkness of my room. I rent a studio apartment in Long Beach. All the ugly reality of my life woke me from my wretched excuse for a nights slumber. It shook me awake with an evil mocking jolt. I had only mercifully fallen asleep four hours earlier. I pray for that sleep and dread awakening. However, since there is obviously no God in the sky answering any prayers, anywhere, for anyone...sleep is sad and terrible and fleeting....why?

A woman....why else? To call her a woman doesn't really do her justice. To say that I love her is not a strong enough statement to describe my feelings for her.... Marina~ The music of the mere mention of her name is the song that shudders my foolish heart....I am a fool. Did I forget to mention that?

I had to be up in a couple of hours anyway. Mark is a fella I met through my uncle. He's an old convict who grew up in Missouri and came to California with drug-addled dreams and got caught up in the prison system. He is a big strong farm boy type. About fifty but as fit as a much younger man. He had called me the night prior to see if I wanted to work with him loading some appliances onto a U-Haul truck.

You meet me at my place at seven a.m. and we'll get the truck. It's a big one which is why I thought of calling you. He knows that I drove big rigs for many years.

You'll be done and back home by one o'clock bro. I'll pay you sixty five bucks. said Mark.

'What the hell' I thought. I was already feeling dreadful. I'm in Dutch with Marina. She has been on the fence about our burgeoning love affair from Jump Street and her disinterest was starting to rear its ugly head and it's honestly had me terrified. She hadn't returned a call, text or email from me for the past two days. I figured I might as well torment myself physically to distract from the mental and emotional term oil.

I got up and went out the front door onto the walkway in front of my place. The sky was painfully clear and sharp with the autumn air. You could smell the ocean. I only live a couple of blocks from the shore. The high winds were out and the stars were like the biting teeth of some black cat. Pointed and in focus. At half past six I put my dog Mona on her leash and walked her down the street into the rising sun.

It was so breathtaking. The colors were surreal and blue and orange and the sun had a warm glare that wasn't too abrasive and it mixed nicely with the cold fall wind.

I stared eastward and thought of my beloved Marina. Her with black raven hair.

Asleep on her pillow in the faint light of her room, breathing deeply. Her beautiful lips parted and her dreams fumbling around in her crazy head.

I went to text her. I wanted to tell her that I wanted her to have a restful weekend and that it was a beautiful morning and it made me think of her. I hesitated....'she doesn't want you anymore you stupid cunt!' I thought to myself. 'She hasn't contacted you because she sees right through you. She knows what a piece of shit you are. She doesn't want to hear from you.' Those thoughts were as loud and clear as if one of those angry native demons were screaming them right in my ear.... perhaps one was. Like the fool I am...I sent the text anyway.

I met Mark and drove him over the to U-Haul on P.C.H. He jumped out and got the paperwork for the truck from the woman who hired us. She was a black woman in her fifties. I parked my car and climbed into the truck. They walked up to my window and Mark introduced us.

This is Leslie. She says her place is off the 105 and Central. Do you know where that is? said Mark.

"Yeah, that's Watts isn't it?' I said.

Boy, what you know about Watts? asked Leslie with a sly grin on her face.

There aren't too many parts of this city that I haven't busted my ass in Leslie I said with my own sly grin.

We started out up the 710 to the 105 west to the Central avenue exit near Mexican Plaza and the notorious Imperial Gardens Projects. We turned right up Central about a half mile, then left down Leslie's street. Watt's, while having many run down areas, especially along its thoroughfares, has many housing tracts that are at first sight, well manicured, quaint little neighborhoods.

It's only upon closer inspection that you see the ugliness beneath the surface. Bed sheets instead of curtains covering the windows. Broken down jalopies on front lawns. Chipping paint and sagging foundations slanted and warped. Overall decay and neglect.

So what are we doing again? I asked Mark.

We are moving a washer/dryer, a fridge, a stove and a few other things.... as far as I know. Just back up into the driveway.

The driveway was narrow and the truck was the biggest model U-Haul rents out. But for me it was like driving a sports car, having spent many a lonesome night backing up Semi's into way more impossible holes, in the dark and half asleep all the while.

'Watts.... No sweat' ....I thought.

We opened up the back and pulled out the ramp. Mark went in the house with Leslie. I sat on the back of the truck and soaked in the morning sun. It was still very early. Leslie had two dogs. One was a Poodle mix of some kind. It was white but its paws were filthy and black. The other was a Dachshund, brindle colored and with the strangest eyes you have ever seen. They were white. The purest white, with two little black pupils. They barked at me and chased each other around behind the fence at the back of the driveway. The barked and barked and barked....

Their barks got quieter and quieter as I began to wonder where Marina's response to my text was. She hadn't even responded to my morning greeting.... nothing. The response I was really waiting for though, was to an inquiry I had made a couple of days earlier regarding her feelings for me and her hopes (if any) for our future. We had already been down this road twice before and the back and forth was literally killing me. I already suffer from high blood pressure as it is and the stress I undergo when we are on the outs has really aggravated it. I felt as though there were a thick leather belt pulled taught around my head. Intense pressure.

Mark hollered for me Christiaan, can you come in here please! I walked in the front door and was appalled to see the most atrocious excuse for a home that I had ever stepped foot in...Leslie was a hoarder! Now to know me is to know that I have a particular phobia about such things. If someone has that goddamn show on at their house, I will get up and go outside. That is how sickening it is for me.

The first thing that hit you was the stink. Do you know the kind of shit you take after you have been in Tijuana drinking all night and stop for a goat meat burrito and a horchata to sober up for the long ride home? That is the kind of shit this whole place reeked from. Not dog shit. Goat meat burrito, human shit!

There was food ground into the carpet and stacks of magazines and little t.v.'s and v.c.r.'s stacked in one corner. The kitchen had dog food all over the floor and the sink was full of dirty dishes with old food caked on them...a fucking bloody awful disaster! Mark sat on the filthy couch with Leslie and her mom Pat. Pat was Leslie in twenty years. They were smoking pot.

We ain't got that much stuff to move baby. Just everything in here, the kitchen and the bedroom. We should be done by about six, don't you think Mark.

Mark sat there with his head down, trying to avoid eye contact with me.

Mark can I have a word with you out front.... Excuse us ladies

Mark walked past me with his eyes to the ground....

What the fuck have you gotten me into man?!?! I asked him.

"I'm so sorry man, I had no idea. I thought we were gonna move a few big items but she want us to move everything. If it