I’ll be the first to admit that my track record ain’t so good. Worse, my track record barely, like, exists. The problem up until now, you see, is that I just haven’t been able to find anything worthy of my attention. Once in a while I get an idea that seems really great, but then, y’know, when I really think about it, maybe the idea ain’t so good after all. It’s frustrating ‘cause I feel like I’m wasting time, and I know I’m not gettin’ any younger or smarter. You see, I truly believe that I’m on this earth to do something special––something that people will, y’know, remember later. And I’m not talkin’ about gettin’ rich or being world famous or anything; I just wanna get off my ass and do something. Something different.

“Thanks, ma’am,” I say, taking a loonie from a pretty girl in a green Toyota Tercel. The UK Subs blare from the window as she drives away, and I laugh to myself, thinking punk rock seems to be everywhere nowadays. A yuppie in a shiny new BMW tries to run me down as I dash for the curb. Business, ‘y’know, as usual.

Slats glances up as I reach my post. He’s looking worse than ever today, and I wonder when the last time he slept was. Narrow cheeked and gaunt, only his permanent grin gives him the illusion of life. With his sallow grey skin and eyes like pools of red ink he looks like that painting of Dorian Gray, y’know, at the end. “Ya gotta smoke?” he asks, running his tongue over cracked lips in a feeble attempt to wet them. The street is hell on skin conditioning.

I dig a cigarette from a crumpled package of Export “A” and toss it to him. Poor ol’ Slats. He’s like a sick dog that you should take out back and shoot, only you, like, can’t bring yourself to do it. The light changes and I dart out between the rows of cars, lookin’ for likely prospects. A fat lady frowns at me and locks her doors while a hip-hop dude in a red Subaru merely gives me the evil eye. It’s getting harder and harder to, y’know, hustle a buck, and the competition is getting younger and younger. Some of the kids crowding my turf are only twelve or thirteen and they make me look slow in comparison. I appreciate that some of them might come from broken homes, y’know, like I did, but sometimes I wish they’d go back and like, give family life another try, just for my sake.

I wash the window of a battered Malibu even though the driver, a scruffy guy who is like, missing part of an ear, shakes his head negatively. I know the dude has no money to spare, but it looks good for other drivers to see me plying my trade, and maybe next time they’ll feel guilty enough to accept a wash themselves. Or maybe it’s just my way of giving back to a society that has given me so much. Not fucking likely.

Back at my post I light a smoke and watch the cars go by. At least I can take a break when I want without some cunt of a boss breathing down the back of my neck. The cigarette smoke joins the exhaust fumes in my lungs and produces a decent buzz. I could probably skip the cigarette and get just as much smoke from the traffic, but what the fuck––I’m only, like, gonna die, right?

Slats lifts his head and looks at me. “D’ya ever think about how much shit comes out of all these people in one day? Think about a million-point-five anuses in the Lower Mainland all pinching off logs. Even if they only took one dump each, that’s how much shit? Just think about the different colours of shit: runny shit, pellet poop, or loaves twelve-inches long, bumpy or smooth. All that shit flushed down toilets and traveling along miles of sewer to the sewage plant. And what happens to it when it gets there? How can they keep up with that much shit? How can they possibly treat it and get rid of it before the next day starts? And that’s just the Lower Mainland! Just think about how much shit the world produces every day. Imagine if you had to smell it all …. Yuck!”

I stare at Slats. Sometimes I think, like, his batteries have completely wound down, and then, right out of the blue, he’ll say something totally whack. His brain is a wondrous, magical place where the normal rules of logic and reason do not apply; where strange thoughts and ideas, like, come and go as they please. “What would you know about pooping?” I ask, almost angrily. “You have to eat before that happens! And why would you even want to think about somethin’ like that for? Haven’t you got anything more important to occupy your thoughts, like the origin of the planet perhaps? I dunno…”

Slats rubs his whiskered jaw contemplatively. “Naw, who cares about how the planet got started. But think about caveman shit. Wouldn’t it be mostly fur and bones and stuff? And what about dinosaur shit. Wouldn’t it made out of…cavemen?” A horrified look paints his dirty face.

“The dinosaurs died off hundreds of years before the first cavemen appeared, you dummy! No dinosaur ever ate a caveman! Why can’t you think about something else, like how cool it will be to open our own boozecan? Won’t that be a lot more interesting than thinking about human excrement? Shit, I mean, fuck, man, I think maybe you better lay offa that speed pipe!”

“If the dinosaurs never ate cavemen, what did they eat?” The horrified look on Slats face changes to one of bewilderment.
“Fuck the dinosaurs!” I say. “And fuck all this talk of shit! Just think about something else besides poo for a while. Jesus, who cares what happens to all the shit, just so long as we don’t have to step in it.” Cars whiz past us––career opportunities lost.
Slats is quiet, and I think he has drifted back to wherever he was before all this talk of feces got started. I squirt a water/soap mixture onto my squeegee from a plastic bottle, but before the light changes, Slats speaks again.

“Donny,” he says, a dreamy look on his drug ravaged face. “Tell me about the boozecan.” Steinbeck could never have envisioned a scenario as twisted as this.

The light changes and the cars screech to a halt, but instead of, like, dashing into traffic I decide to humour my wasted pal. “Okay, Slats, here’s how it’s gonna be. Soon we’ll get a group of investors together, see, and then we’ll rent one of those empty storefronts on East Hastings. We’ll build a stage, put in a P.A. system and, y’know, fix it up a bit. Before long, all the best punk bands will be dying to play at the hottest new underground spot, and we’ll just sit back and rake in the cash. And when our pals come, or if we see a pretty girl, why, we can wave them right in, just like that, with no questions asked. We’ll sell beer, but not at five bucks a pop like all those rip-off joints downtown, we’ll sell our beer cheap, like maybe two or three bucks. All the girls’ll wanna fuck us, and all the guys’ll wish they were jus’ like us, ‘cept they’re not, of course, and whenever we, like, go to another club, they’ll let us in for free, as a club courtesy. We’ll be the swingingest dick motherfuckers around, end of fucking story.” I’ve been reciting this fable for so long that I’m almost able to, y’know, believe it.

“Tell me about the free drugs,” says Slats, his eyes closed, his head a million miles away. Dreams are still free.

I sigh. He knows the details better than I do, but he likes to hear them from me. “When dealers come in and want to sell dope in our club, we’ll tell ‘em we want a sample before they get started. And you can be in charge of screening the dealers to make sure they ain’t tryin’ to pass any bunk off on our customers. That way we’ll make sure our customers get nothing but the best dope, plus we won’t have to spend none of our own money. If the stuff is no good, why, we’ll tell ‘em to hit the fuckin’ road, that they can come back when they get some better shit. The dealers who do qualify will be happy to give us some free dope, just for the chance to work unhassled. Wherever we go, people will nudge each other and whisper, ‘cause we’ll be it.” I watch the traffic roll on by, bitter that I’ll never have enough money to make this pipe dream a reality. I’ve been trying to find people to invest in my vision, but who am I kidding? I’m doomed to wash car windows the rest of my life.

Slats still has his eyes closed when the cops double park in front of us and get out of the squad. To my dismay, I see our visitors are none other than Constables McKinney and Bleek, two of the worst dickheads on the force. An encounter with these fools can really mess up your day.

“Well, well, well,” says Bleek, hitching his thumbs under his Sam Browne just like a real cop. “If it ain’t my two favourite scumbags. I thought we told you assholes to go wash windows on someone else’s beat. We don’t like you scruffy freaks!”
“That’s okay,” says Slats with diplomatic aplomb. “We don’t like you none, either.” The movie Barfly has helped us on so many different levels.

Constables McKinney and Bleek aren’t noted for their sense of humour. “Oh, a tough guy, huh?” says Bleek, stepping forward. He kicks Slats’ ball cap with seventy-three cents of panhandled change in it out onto the street where a passing bus instantly squashes it flat.

“Hey!” says Slats. “That was my best hat!”

McKinney kicks him in the middle, where a normal person might have a gut. “Oh? And was that your best stomach?” He looks pleased with himself, but no one knows why.

We all look at McKinney, even Bleek. “Who writes your lines?” I ask foolishly. It would be smarter, like, to keep my lip buttoned but sometimes you just can’t help it.

“You idiots picked a bad day to get lippy,” says Bleek. “We already beat the shit out of a scumbag rapist today, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t add a couple of mouthy punks to the list.” He slams me against the squad to apply the ol’ stainless steel bracelets.

I must learn to keep my big mouth shut.

Soon me an’ Slats are in the back of the squad, speeding along to, like, an undisclosed location. Wherever these bozos are taking us, it definitely ain’t for dinner and drinks at the Tiki Tiki Club. After several blocks I can viddy where we’re going. “Uh, listen, officers. We were at Stanley Park last week, and they ain’t got nothing we haven’t already seen. So if ya wanna drop us off at the corner up here, we’ll go find somewhere else to hang out.”

“Shaddap,” McKinney says gruffly. He ain’t much for talking.

Slats doesn’t look very happy, but seems to have resigned himself to whatever fun and games the cops, y’know, have in mind. That’s the thing with Slats: when the shit comes down, he just puts up with it, then goes straight back to whatever he was doing before the trouble started. Usually I’ll try to talk my way out of a bad situation, but I’ve already blabbed too much today. This won’t be the first time Slats and I have been the guests of honour at a beating.

As I suspected, the cops drive to a secluded, heavily wooded area of the park. This is an ideal spot for, y’know, illegal activities of any nature, and has long been a favoured place to dispose of bodies. Who knows how many corpses are buried out here, rotting silently beneath the towering cedars. A shiver runs down my spine.

“Okay, assholes,” says Bleek, swinging open the rear door. “End of the line.”

I ease myself out of the squad and the rainforest tickles my nose. I love the smell of rotting cedar and growing vegetation, the endless cycle of life and death. The beauty of the place is enough to take your breath away, and I wish Slats and I were visiting under different circumstances. It’s hard to appreciate the wonders of nature with your hands, like, cuffed behind your back.

McKinney slips on a pair of black leather gloves, just to be a macho prick. “Can’t we talk about this?” I say, taking a step backwards. But there is nowhere to run.

“Shaddap,” says McKinney as he drives his fist into my stomach. I bend over, gasping with pain as I try to catch my breath. A blow hits me on the side of the head and flashing red lights explode in my skull. More punches thud into me as I fall to my knees before flopping over on my side. Now McKinney puts the boot in, grunting with exertion as he works. I feel something give, and a sudden sharp pain tells me the cunt has, like, cracked a rib or two. A world of suffering opens up and I fall into it, pinwheeling hopelessly on currents of throbbing agony. Why does it have to hurt so much to be beaten? Mercifully, I soon black out.

It’s almost dark when I wake up from my little nap. A grey squirrel stares at me from the edge of the clearing, wet black nose twitching curiously. I get up slowly, wincing in pain. My head aches horribly and my whole body feels like it has been worked over with a ball peen hammer, but it’s my ribs that, like, really hurt. It feels like I’ve swallowed a couple of knitting needles and each breath is a stab in the lungs. Thanks, Bleek, you prick.

Then I see Slats. He’s lying lifeless and still across a heap of dead brush, his dirty face rusty with dried blood. “Slats!” I shout. When I rush over to help him, the sudden movement hurts me so much I nearly pass out. I lift his bloody head and search urgently for signs of life. Nothing. The bastards have killed Slats, and as useless as he was, he was still my best friend. A giggle escapes my lips, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is I’m laughing about. Although I never suspected for a moment that Slats would die of old age, it just seems so crazy for things to, y’know, end this way. I continue to giggle, but now I’m sobbing a little as well.

The scrawny little fuck has taken his last shit.

Slats opens one eye and regards me suspiciously. “What tha fuck you laughin’ about?” he says. “My head hurts.”
I look up at a tiny window of blue sky framed by big trees. You don’t have to be a fuckin’ genius to see that a career change is more important than ever. This is, like, the beginning of the story, not the end.