Anarchy in F Minor

The clouds had stopped leaking that night and the dogs behind fences made new territorial squats for review by the King County Planning Commission. The space needle was again threaded with tourist staggering out of the 520 foot elevator shaft. They had tried to save 11 bucks for a ride topside by reserving a table at the Sky City restaurant, concretively ordering just under the legal limit of alcohol, not realizing that the revolving view of Sky City would cause dementia with wine. Now they staggered, thinking themselves drunk and hailed cabs while their cars awaited meter maids to rouse them in the morn. Over in the square the horse carriages gave the last lovers of dusk a chance to romance as pioneers. It was a couple cuddling tight on a windless night and a city mare that would fill her hind bag three lumps full. Such was the utility and fantasy.
     The tourists were tar-pinned down old skid row that night. If only the sawmills were still around to have the Madrona making that joyous thudding journey to the sea, perhaps there would have been no visitors at all. Alas, even on a Wednesday eve, the underground carnival had been filled with history buffs lining up to hang out in basements. The guides were still selling John A. Crapper as the chief influence of Seattle. Though the other chief was mentioned and he seemed like a nice enough native, the settler’s sons who ran the tour could not stop unloading Crapper in mouthfuls.
     Somehow the summit of Capital hill had been willfully infested. Though officers of the law swept the downtown mote like blue breasted janitors, though the ferry runs promised enough life boats in the event of a drunken captain—still the tourist scrambled up the alm! “Now you must be sure not to call you mommy. Call our legal people and they will stand on you.” Annette’s English wasn’t that good. None seemed to mind. She had escaped house arrest in France to lead us into protective imminence. “would anyone like to ask a question?” our hostess at the 420 Club looked like a nice mother herself. She had thick curling hair and squinted despite her glasses. I thought she would be offering cookies any moment. This would be fine, necessitated by the food lines which were longer than most homeless soup kitchens. The group from Eugene, Oregon had left their ranches and dorms in humble missionary style. They wished to spread the good word of anarchy. So they had tarried north without even a fork and now shared a commercial sized crock of beans. When the large Dannon Yogurt containers gave out among the corporate protestors, the anarchists were the first to offer their hands as plates. They did this in the fashion of an open handed prayer. The gent next to me palmed half of his helping over his lips, the other legumes spread to his shirt then the floor. He gave me a large grinny mouthful and wagged his head while he chewed: ‘YAAAAAAAAAA baby!’
     After we had been given chance at a meal, the delegation from France and New York instructed us how to handle the police “properly.” A balding forty something raised his hand and was called upon. “HEY, how do I get arrested?!?” The following noise infested the room like whoopy cough, The French woman looked down, mumbling, “oh my, oh my.” Just outside the door in the alley, I was offered a roach.
“Smells good.”
“Ya maaaan. You can have the rest for a dollar.” I was saddened that my joint brother was not taken with the spirit of giving. I just smiled as he continued to bob his head and exhale off the roach. I thought that the last hit would have at least knocked off twenty cents. No dice.
     It was nearing 9 o’clock. So I rounded the corner to the Coffee Messiah. There was a line to get a cup of Joe. Each cardboard cup was garnished with the creed, “Coffee Saves”. I grabbed a quad latte and whipped to the right for an outward-pull.
“Hey, where’d ya get the café man?” It was a nice looking girl in her early twenties with a wool cap and pig tails. I pointed behind me to the Messiah.
“Do they have any Seattle’s Best?” she asked hopefully.
I blinked.
“Umm.. you know that it’s based in San Fran, ya?”
Now she blinked. She didn’t get it.
“What do you mean. Is it really…San Francisco’s Best then?”
I smiled at this. She shrugged and said she just wanted a souvenir.
“Where’d you come from?”
“We’re from Vancouver.”
I asked if it was the Canadian or American version.
“Can’t you tell?” she smiled coyly, then explained, “aboot two hours north.” “ah”
“don’t you mean ‘eh’?”
I tried not to giggle then wondered if the Messiah might not serve something a little harder on the drink list.
“So how many of you are there?” I asked.
     She had come down with a film crew of six. It was the second day of the WTO protest and she was going to film it. I could call her “Steph” just not “Stephanie.” Steph grabbed her chocolate mocha minus the whipped cream. She ordered it by ounces, not pretending the Starbuckisms of ‘Grande’ or ‘Verde.’ We walked together.
     Through the front entrance of the 420, stoners were ejected for cigarettes. Inside, the carpeted foyer was crowded with tables. There were rows of presentation booths with every cause known to civilized man, from Green Peace to Save the Pet Rock (S.P.R.). I was checking into a study of fighting hermaphroditic worms when Steph said she had to go find her crew.
“The loser has to bare the babies.” I looked up to find the voice’s owner. It was a squeamish looking guy with thick glasses and a hunching stance. “Say what?”
“The worms—they are infamous for their penis fencing.”
I winced.
“The loser has the bare the babies” he repeated.
“So what… you figure that you can prove male dominance by worms?”
“Well…” I gave him a look to ask ‘well what??’
Not wanting to seem rude, yet not wanting to be indoctrinated by the gender worm seer, I took a few extra breathes and then a step back.
“ok.” He said in resignation.
“ok?”
“I can tell by your proxemics that your not into it. So never mind.” He turned his back and fiddled with the outlet strip. I had a chance to escape but a professor voice en cogito was reminding me of a lecture on the subject.
“you mean PROXEMICS like when people stand back at an ATM?” he nodded.
“So you meant, like an unspoken rule.” I looked at him hard trying to tell if we were connected.
“Some people buy desks based on their willingness to be close to people on the other side. “ he rummaged through his yellow copy paper of worm research. “Sooo… big ego, big desk?” I smiled.
He nodded and seemed over all saddened. The lines of the bathrooms were longer than any of the information booths. I looked down at his desk. It was slim and long.
“Looks like ya got an eight footer there.” I tried to lighten his mood. Nothing.
Just then, Steph returned and put her arm around my shoulder. I was thinking of proxemics and milking the gesture in my mind for all it was worth.
“Hey!”
She introduced me to Paul, Terry, Glo, and the twins. Brian was off checking e-mail. The twins were never introduced separately. I liked Paul immediately. He was a Canadian of Japanese decent and the three of us took to Pine Street leaving the twins to sound checks, Terry to some interview rewrites and Glo to the camera recharge. They had been filming for only half a day, arriving late on the first night. A local network had made tentative agreement on green light. Thus they came.
“So you have yourself a story to sell?” I asked Paul.
Paul told me that the deal wasn’t finished. It would have to wait till editing. Steph laced her arm in ours and we found ourselves pacing as a talking triage.
     It was four blocks to Pine without incident. I asked their thoughts on the WTO.
Paul explained that he thought it was impacting parts of rural Canada. I had thought it mostly affected smaller countries by using the power to sue. “You ever read Hotel California?” I told him that I hadn’t. He explained it briefly as an oil story. “See, some of your professors from M.I.T. came up and told us that our oil would last forever.” He paused. “ Then they offered us money. We were mostly farmers back then and I guess we got sold on a Beverly Hillbilly’s episode..” Paul smiled at this.
“You yanks want to make us your parking lot” Steph blurted. She released my arm and I felt bad.
I told her that I just wanted to be frisked by a pretty Canuck border guard once in a while. She raised her brow. “Oh?” I told them how I became Mr. Random Inspection every time I went up. They found this funny.
     We turned the corner on Pine from Olive Way. There was a crowd flaring and we realized that the show was starting. Across the street by the New Machiavelli, a crowd of shielded police had lined up. The news had said they would secure the downtown. They were ten blocks off target.
     “They must have needed….

BOOOOOOOOOOM! The street exploded. Gas singed the eyes making us Homers, the sound deafening us to Bach. “WATER!” I lost a grip on Paul and Steph as the smoke filled the road, a canister ricocheting down under a car and popping. The apartment complexes above shook on their sills, a hundred car alarms simultaneously wailing emergency, the smell of a thousand basements in spirometric provakation. The feet must’ve seemed a stampede to those on their bellies. The runners were blind, pepper fogged, awoken to Beirut in America. Mother land using her marshal hand to perform a cesarian—
An elderly lady of the Great Generation was not impressed.
“Get out of here, all of ya!” She called from her Repunzal flat.
The dark blue chain of men started forward. Already a group with their shirts over their faces took to dislodging a large rolling dumpster. They aligned it with the yellow dashes in the road. Twelve men started the push for inertia with schoolgirls filing in kind to the hobble and push positions.
Once past the curb they would be advantaged slope. The riot squad dropped to their knees with shields before them and baton cracking in palms. Sharp shooter stepped up with rubber bullets and fired repeatedly.
{You are ordered to evacuate the premises. Curfew has started.}
The bull horn blared but none seem to listen, scurrying as we were to avoid the gas and bullets. I found myself tucked away in a doorway with a man and his notepad. He scribbled notes and told me I should best go home.
“Why don’t you leave?” I accused back. He explained he was a reporter for The Times. I felt like an unemployed vagrant. I was there to be .. to be part of something. That was the best I could come up with.
     He repeated his leave lecture. I was already bored of his company, stuck between Mr. Sack-of-wet-mice personality and a shower of tear gas. My eyes still burned despite my own saliva to rinse them clean. The dumpster was coming down now. It was going to get worst. I decided to sprint while the dumpster trudged down a block of hill to the cops that waited like bowling pins. A canister fell to my left during the dash and a screaming youth ran to it and pitched it back a few seconds before it gave birth. Up, Up.. I hoped that Steph and Paul had found cover. I kept running despite the police lines creeping through the in-between blocks, marching forward like storm troopers, silent and ready.
     “You police man aren’t helping” the old lady called from down the block. Her daisy printed nightgown shimmied in the breeze.
                                 BOOOM!
                                              Cha cha shwiiiiiiiiiink
     Bombs and bullets hitting pavement, people and panic. The reporter was lost to a cloud of smoke reenacting Francis Scott Key. The little lady was yelling that none was listening; changing her curses from the cops to the protestors. I was walking fast now. Looking for an out, and looking for friends and some stand less we find ourselves unable to walk even the street.
{You must evacuate. Leave at once.}
     I tried to take a breathe and squint for water. There were Earth2o bottles in the street and in the sewer, mostly empty. Slapping it in my face between unwanted tears and arm wipes, we were sneezing and running and loosing our ears even in the calm alleys when escape seemed an option. Up by the Community College, I rounded a corner into the chest of an officer. He looked tired, his moustache hiding his mouth in a burly sheath. I supposed he had a family to be with and for a moment I felt myself to be a trespasser on his life. There was not enough overtime to pay for his being there. Then, to his right, a fat kid with a badge and a stick beat his palm with malice grin and hopped on his heels. A sergeant on horseback used the bullhorn.
{Steady.. steady…}
     I turned and saw a line of protestors daring them. Steph was on her knees with Glo, fidgeting with the camera that seemed not to work. Paul was talking to some exchange students. They didn’t understand why he didn’t speak Japanese.
{This is your last chance to disperse…}
     I tried to get Paul’s attention, to tell him that higher ground was a better option.
“higher? Where?” We looked around and realized we were only a block from Broadway. We weren’t going to get much higher. Up the block, some Eugenians played catch with a bench and a window. The window never returned the bench.
     Then they were on us. The fat kid seemed to float in his determination. I saw the mustached dad hesitate. Grabbing for my friends, trying to grab hands to run. The exchange students weren’t laughing and not all of the group was retreating. Rushing insults and feet, the crowd worked against itself, trapping the center between two rushing sides. Then the rubber bullets started again from a cop on his car. He shot over the riot squad and onto the protestors. Steph had given up on the camera. Paul had given up on the story and again we ran. Neighbors that had come to see their property safe were muted and herded into the activist. The little old lady flipped off the cops and some people cheered.
     Up Broadway, down side lanes, anywhere there was a hole of escape. Then Steph grabbed my hand and I had no time to enjoy it. Paul was helping Glo run with the camera and trying to keep the college kids from trailing while the rifle fired off sinisterly. The footmen didn’t let us leave though. When one of the Nihonjins tripped and Paul bent they were already a part of baton swarms with Steph and me thirty feet ahead, looking back, the rifleman squinting and lining up on us.
“PAUUUUUUUUUUUUUL!” Steph was screaming and tearing and the gas flowed on a night with no rain. I was wearing Docs that night and my puppy had chewed the lining. For some great reason, the uneven running had finally tripped me. Just in time as the homing bullet hit a kid in front of us with Steph and I on our bellies still holding hands. She tried to look back and I cradled her face not to look.
“Get in…hey…GET IN!” A neighbor had taken pity on us. We crouched and crawled between two parked cars and entered an apartment building behind the Community. There were some asphalt pebbles taking my elbow for a free ride. Steph had scraped her cheek. The neighbor opened his door to us. We went into the bathroom together. I splashed water on a cloth and caressed her face.
“What about Paul?”
I didn’t know and I was so very sad to see her hurt.
She looked in my eyes. “your crying.” She tried to smile, instead forming tears herself. Though I was going to blame the gas and not realizing that my eyes betray me…
It was alright.
     We thanked the good neighbor and exited a side entrance, nervously walking half a block. Broadway was clear. The noise was simmering. Ambulance sounds in the distance. There was a Texaco on the corner, again we walked with a palm lock. Mindless of a street without traffic, looking straight ahead. Entering, the clerk was bewildered. Sixteen year olds went straight to the beer case and then right to the door. One called out, “the goddess thanks you.”
Inside we found Glo. He was in line to buy a coke.
“Glo!”
He looked up in weary recognition.
“Where’s Paul? Is Paul alright?”
Glotheri shook his head slowly. “The Japanese kid got it real bad. Paul went with him in the ambulance.” We took a moment of silence and missed the movement of the line. The clerk didn’t seem too concerned though. At least we were paying. I walked out with Glo, listening to his version of what we missed. We sat on the curb for a while. Minor acts of anarchism bled their need to clean. Steph stepped behind me and lowered a Green River Soda to my lap.
“Local?”
I looked at the old style bottle. “Yep.”
She wearily sat down and put her head to lean onto mine.
“7-up use to be local” she mused.
I looked out at the smoke clouds and wasn’t sure if it mattered.

 

 
cait's hole
as posted on the grafitti board by nco -2/14/2002, 3:24 pm

it's so dark and damp
I know there is a lightswitch
perhaps it's a clap-on light
or maybe one of them old gini lamps
rubbba rubba

the anal walls fidget as I grope for a light
there are large follicules prodding visitors like antenae
I see a bit of lunch
was that a reuben sandwichy?
the corned beef was naught digested
pleading
"can ya help a brutha?"
I tell him back that the special sauce
was his ticket
if that aint work'n
nobody would digest the fucker
not even the irish
drunk on their own euphoria
with empty bellies
craving hand slam'n bites

there are no stalagmites here
just a dripping sound
so
far away

I hear puddles birthing rings from drips
far ahead
past the membranes and cartalage
past the calcium brigades
the philopian slide
THERE IS A PROMISE LAND
on the other side
of cait's hole

I wish I had a fuk'n ark
instead of this sinus problem.

Nco
Philipe Nicolini. Enjoys writing about his rural upbringing in California's San Joaquin Valley. Once sold into educational slavery in Tokyo, now rinsing his days in Seattle; Nco works by night. In the night there is calm.

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