Initiation

I was hanging out behind the Big K, minding my own business, when I was approached by two middle aged guys. 

“What are you doing on our turf!?” the white haired man asked forcefully.

“Grrrr!” chimed the other guy whom had a goatee, glasses and a holy cross tattooed into his forearm.

“Well, fella’s, now take it easy, I’m just hanging out.” 

They looked at each other, and for a moment, I thought everything would be alright.  But as soon as that thought came into my mind the white haired guy unbuckled his belt and, with one swift tug, whipped the belt from his pant-loops.  The guy with the glasses began to chew his fingernails while making a terribly menacing growl, curling his upper lip and drooling from both sides of his mouth.  They started walking towards me.  The white haired man folded his belt over and took a good grip of it.  He was slapping it into his hand the way you would slap a rolled up newspaper in your hand to scare a bad dog.  Closer.  My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it.  I hoped that they could not hear it because I didn’t want them to know how scared I was.

“Do us a favor?”  asked the white haired man.

‘This is it!’ I thought.  ‘It’s about to go down!’  I planted my feet.

All of a sudden the white haired man shot his hip out and bent over.  He pulled his pants down so that his white-as-snow rear was exposed.  I tried not to look too long, but I did notice that there was a bandage over his right cheek.  He pulled at the bandage, slowly peeling it away. 

The bandage fell to the breeze.

“Oh poo!” said the white-haired, middle-aged man.  “Oh well!” 

He looked at me and said, “So do you think this looks like him?” pointing to the tattoo on his ass and referring to his goateed friend.

The tattoo was perfect.  The artist had created a fine portrait of his friend.

“Wow!” I said. “That is some nice work.  Looks just like him.”

“See I told you!”  he said to his friend.

“He didn’t think it looked like him and claimed that I had only seen it through a mirror so that I couldn’t really get a good look at it.” the white haired man explained.

“Why would this guy lie?” the white haired man asked his friend, whom was now kneeling and double knotting his Chuck Taylor’s.

The man with the goatee and glasses awkwardly reached into his jacket pocket and removed an old-fashoined bicycle horn and squeezed the big black bulb grip twice. 

This made the white haired man turn red.  He yelled, “Here he is hanging out by himself behind the Big K, I trust his opinion!” 

The man with the glasses tooted again. 

“Because!” said the white haired man, “I just do, alright!  We don’t have to get into this now!  It looks like you!”

I started to walk to my car, “Have a good one, fellas!”  But they were too busy arguing.

As I drove away my ears lost track of the white haired man, but I could hear the faint toot of bicycle-horn all the way over by the car wash.

This Drive Around Brockton took place in early Spring of 2007.

~ by brocktonthebush on February 21, 2008.