Washoe Indian Community where I grew up
Brandon
Recently my friend Brandon Perelman returned from serving in the Israeli army. He isn’t Israeli, just some kid from Philadelphia who believed so strongly, that he volunteered for one of the toughest armies in the world.
Every time I got to talk to Brandon while he was serving, it usually went like this:
“How’s training Brandon?”
“Great! It’s grenade week, and tomorrow I’m climbing the ‘Hill of Tears.’”
Well, three years later he’s home safe and sound. No matter what your political stance on Israel happens to be, you would have to be a complete asshole to deny that someone who would risk their life for another country’s freedom is a true hero.
Welcome home, Brandon. I salute you.
I had an interesting dinner conversation, and thought that I might share it with all of you. It was fun to discuss, hopefully it will be fun to read. Maybe you can shed some light on the subject.
Kyle
So let me process your words slowly, so that none of your stupidity slips through the neurological cracks. You are staying faithful in the face of temptation? A sculpted Adonis is knocking at your door and you treat him like a Jehovah’s Withess with swine flu?
Victoria
I’m in a committed relationship. What can I do? Two years ago I got drunk and kissed a boy at a party, and I called Samuel up the next morning and told him everything. It was horrible. I felt horrible. I’ll never do anything like that again.
Kyle
Why did you feel horrible? Was the source of your grief truly that you caused your adolescent boyfriend pain? Or was it that you felt ill toward yourself?
Victoria
It’s true. I felt like such a slut; like a really poor specimen of human being. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, and I did it anyway. I was actively immoral.
Kyle
Let me ask you something. If I were to, say, kill that waitress that spilled your tea, would that be wrong?
Victoria (laughing)
Maybe not terribly wrong.
Kyle
But in the conceivable universe, what is the absolute worst thing that I could possibly do? Let’s say I became the ruler of a country, threw the world into war, and launched a campaign of genocide that would kill 100 million people. That would be pretty bad. It’s hard to imagine myself ever obtaining that kind of influence, but it isn’t in the realm of pure fantasy. After all, there are always despots. Someone has to fulfill the role. Why not me?
Victoria
Okay, so let’s say you become like Stalin or Hitler or Mao. I get it, cheating isn’t as bad as that but…
Kyle
DON’T rush me. So I rise to power, and kill millions. So what?
Victoria
So what?
Kyle
Let’s go back to the waitress. I kill her. Maybe I get caught, maybe I don’t. The world keeps on spinning, and no one will remember either of us within a decade or two. Fifty years tops. In a very short period of time, relatively speaking, it will be as though nothing ever happened. In fact, there were probably millions of murdered waitresses, all documented and witnessed, over the last century that no one will think of ever again.
Victoria,
So basically you’re saying that something really bad like killing that woman won’t matter in the near future.
Kyle
In a way. Let’s go back to Kyle the Tyrant. I reign, I terrorize, I die of cancer or coup de’etat. Let me ask you something. Have you ever heard of Hong Xiuquan?
Victoria
No, who is Hong Xiuquan?
Kyle
The leader of the Taiping Rebellion in China, one hundred and fifty years ago. Twenty-five million people died violent, horrible deaths at the hands of this man, who thought that he was Jesus’ younger brother.
Victoria,
You’ve gotta be kidding me.
Kyle
I absolutely am not. And it wasn’t all that long ago. One hundred and fifty years. It was around that time Los Angeles was established as a city. Twenty-five million deaths, and the entire fiasco is nearly completely erased. The Chinese don’t teach it in their textbooks. We don’t teach it in our textbooks. In another hundred years there will be 200 academics worldwide who will even recognize the name.
Victoria
I had no idea! Jesus’s younger brother?
Kyle
Yeah, long story. But wartime bloodshed is boring. Let’s look at something more fun. Human sacrifice. We don’t do it as much anymore. Although in Northern India it’s estimated that four children are sacrificed per year. Usually they’re tied down and boiling oil is poured over their bodies. But you’ve never heard of that. Neither had I, until I actively wanted to know if anyone was being re-gifted back to the gods these days.
But not too long ago, about 500 years, after Columbus had already landed, the Aztecs sacrificed 18,000 people in one ceremony. They would march the victims to the top of the pyramid, hold them down, cut out their heart, and hold it in the air while it was still beating.
And when we think back on that gruesome, bloody day, do we exclaim “Oh no! They killed Xitalli! Not Xitalli! He was history’s best bartender!” We have ZERO emotional attachment to ANY of those people.
And 500 years from now, ZERO people will have ANY emotional connection to us. To anything we said, did, or thought. And if by some miracle one of us turns out to be the next Mozart or Kandinski, all one needs to do is extend the timeline! Extend that timeline enough and no one is safe. Not you, or I, or Mozart, or Kandinsky, or even Shakespeare. There will come a time when either no one will remember Shakespeare, or there will be no one left to remember Shakespeare.
So if there is some small, insignificant action that will make YOU happy, then sink your teeth into it. If this new guy who you can’t stop drooling over will give you sixty orgasms by the end of the semester, don’t make too big of a sacrifice to some nebulous, subjective moral imperative that doesn’t care about you. Think of morality as a neglectful parent.
And don’t worry so much about causing pain to your insignificant other back in Oklahoma. If he never knows, it can’t hurt him. And if it doesn’t hurt you, he’ll never know. And after you have turned to dust, no one will think any better or any worse of you based on your treatment of your first boyfriend.
Victoria
I’m still not going to do it.
Kyle
Yeah, it would be a bitchy thing to do.
T2M48WXED33X
Welcome to the 4th World Post. Bringing you street reports, uncut.
Network News is failing us, and newspapers are dying. Different forms of traditional and new media are merging, and we are becoming more and more responsible for our own news. Being informed, truly informed, is becoming an individual’s duty.
This project is an attempt to shine a spotlight on the gritty underworld that exists in every city, in every country. My name is Kyle Cashulin. I am a Sojo (Solo Journalist), and will work to bring you news from wherever I am.
I want you to help me. Hell, I want you to surpass me.
Every person knows a story that could impact society. An arc-welder in Alabama knows that the union boss is corrupt. A high school student in Nevada knows that the local sheriff has a personal agenda against immigrants, or beats skateboarders whom he catches with marijuana. A college student from Sivakasi, India knows that the factory in his town uses child labor.
If your city has corruption, abuse, poverty, crime, drugs, or disease you have an opportunity to document and spread truth. Bring to the world the reality of these conditions. Take pictures with your cell phone. Tape interviews. Make us see through your eyes.
There is an argument that unedited, “street” news is inherently flawed-that it is impossible to keep opinions and editorial out of our stories. This is perfectly true. But we acknowledge this, and read these stories knowing that we are looking through the eyes of another human being. We are individuals, from different worlds. We will definitely not be immune to editorial.
This is not a call for gossip, but a call for unity and truth.
These are your stories. These are our stories.
Information is power.
The whole crew was in Bali, and we decided to eat mushrooms on the beach. Wyan knew some kids that picked the right mushrooms in the rice patties. The cows defecate in the water, and the mushrooms grow out of the damp stool. So we each kicked in a few Rupiah and bought a salad-bowl of the small mushrooms.
Francis insisted on saying a short prayer to Mother Gaia. Francis is known as the Gay Prince of Bali. He obtained a decades-long lease on a palace from the bankrupt royal family, which he then decorated with a large collection of handsome Balinese men. My dad (who doesn’t have much patience for the New Age after a particularly dippy girlfriend) said “To hell with that! Let’s just be honest and say we’re gonna get really ripped on shrooms!”
It was a fine day. The mushrooms made the sky an intense blue, and the forest the greenest green. My stepmother Barbara ran around taking pictures of everyone while the children frolicked in the waves. We ate barbecued fish burgers, and swam in the ocean. The water was clear, so we could see the coral garden on the bottom.
The next morning I woke up feeling a little out of sorts. My stomach was squirming like a toad, and my head felt screwed on a bit too tight. Barbara was in a cheery mood and asked how I was feeling. I stuck my tongue out in the “blech” expression. My stepmother did a violent double-take. “Sticking out your tongue one more times.” she commanded. Her Italian accent was very thick in those days.
My tongue was black. I stared at myself in the mirror in mild disbelief. I brushed my teeth, and wiped my tongue on a towel until it was dry and rough. Dry and rough and still black. By now my headache was getting worse, so I popped two of the Vicodin I always carry with me when traveling. A doctor had prescribed a bottle for a nasty ear infection, but I hadn’t used them all, and you never know when you’re going to need a strong pain reliever.
My father insisted that David, who was a medic, take a look at me. David said to watch the symptoms, but that since I wasn’t in too much pain (thanks to the Vicodin, but I neglected to give them that information), there was no emergency.
The headache got worse as the day progressed, and by nightfall my entire spine was on fire. I tried to lay perfectly still on my back on the hard teak floors. If I moved my head even a centimeter in any direction it sent agonizing bolts of pain town the whole length of my spine, and my head felt like someone was hammering a railroad spike through it. My tongue remained black.
We called an ambulance out to the remote village of Jasi, and six hours later it arrived. The ambulance was a red Volkswagen convertible with a hitchhiker in the passenger side. The ambulance driver waited while my dad and David carried me on stretcher to the car and bundled me in the back seat. I’ve been in auto accidents, been bitten on the face by snakes, and had an accumulated 11 hours of tattooing, but nothing came close to the agonizing pain of the ride to the Denpasar hospital.
My dad had kicked the hitchhiker out of the front seat and talked to me the whole way. I told him about the Vicodin, and he was angry and suspicious about where I had obtained such a controlled substance. Between bumps I told him about the ear infection, but he didn’t believe that any doctor would think such a trivial ailment would warrant the Vicodin. I told him I’d show him the bottle when we got back.
The avocado-green hospital room very large, and almost empty. The doctor did a test for spinal meningitis, and after I tested negative, he said I had typhoid. This didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I was too tired to fight it. They wanted to pump my stomach, so they stuck a thick plastic tube up my nose and down the back of my throat. “Now you need sallow.” The doctor instructed me. “Keep sallow. Yes. Sallow, sallow, almost done…”
After the contents of my stomach were in a plastic bag, which the nurse took away, they pulled out the tube, which burned my throat and sinus. I had been asleep for a few minutes when I involuntarily rolled over, jerking the IV bag off its perch. It fell, yanking the tube out of my arm. The nurse put it back in its place and scolded me for moving too much. I didn’t care. Morphine revealed the humor of the situation.
The next week in the hospital was very touching. I never spent a night by myself. Katut, a good friend and local cop, stayed two nights in a row. He sent his wife to stay with me when he finally went home. He was feeling awful that Balinese mushrooms might have made me sick. Though marijuana is punishable by death in Indonesia, mushrooms are perfectly legal and a source of local pride.
Several months later my dad got an ear infection from surfing and driving home in a convertible. The pain was driving him crazy. He apologized for being suspicious about the Vicodin, and apologized for wanting to see the prescription bottle. He said if I suffered ear infections like his all throughout my childhood without ever crying, I was a tough bastard.
It was 1988 and my father was shooting “The Serpeant and the Rainbow” in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It was a miserable shoot. At any given time most of the crew were sick with typhoid, dengue fever, or diphtheria. More than a third of the crew elected to leave the country early, forgoing the rest of their salary. Some got too sick to continue working; others couldn’t cope with the reality of daily Haitian life. A supporting actor left the country after seeing a half-exposed corpse. The rain had washed the soil from his shallow grave, revealing the dead young man buried in his baby-blue Sunday suit.
Others left for more personal reasons. The key grip, for instance, had a thing with a local beauty, who happened to be the daughter of a voodoo priest. One drunken night the happy couple was blessed by the old priest in a simple ceremony. There was much drinking and dancing and lovemaking. The next afternoon when the poor grip groggily came back to reality, his beloved informed him that they were now married and tied together for eternity. The grip went out of his mind and tried to break it off. The words “You’ll never escape me.” were the last he heard from her as he boarded the next plane back to Los Angeles. Upon arrival he got onto his motorcycle and was promptly run over by all 9 left wheels of a careless semi.
But my dad stuck it out, dealing with problems as best a young producer could. He replaced the crew with Haitian workers, and tried to keep everybody happy. Their time in Haiti was winding down, and they only had one large-scale scene to shoot before they could pack it up and finish in Jamaica or the Dominican Republic.
The aforementioned scene featured a true Haitian tradition. Thousands of Haitians parade from the city up, up, and deep into the mountains. The ceremony starts out looking very catholic, with people carrying shrines and flowers and great big blue Blessed Mothers. But as the thousands of singing families proceed deeper into the mountains, it slowly shifts to the other Haitian religion. Voodoo. The religion that came from Africa with the slaves and collided with the local Caribbean cults. In the mountains the Haitians dance and chant and beat on drums for hours and hours. The dancers become entranced, and then possessed by gods. Men eat coals and glass and stick needles into their eyes. Chickens are slaughtered and their blood is smeared on bare chests.
Wanting to capture this miraculous progression, the crew set up recruitment tables and budgeted for one thousand marchers. Each Haitian extra would be given a voucher, which they would turn in at the end of the day for five dollars. The vouchers ran out by the end of the morning.
Five dollars in Haiti was a big deal in 1988, when the average income was less than a hundred dollars per year. The extras told their friends about the financial opportunity, and those friends had told other friends, and by the next morning fifteen thousand extras showed up for the parade. They shot the scene, and it was very beautiful. But when it came time to pay up, and only one in fifteen extras had their vouchers, they got mad.
The Haitians started rioting, and suddenly there was a machete, shovel, pitchfork or lead pipe in every hand. The crew retreated to the police station and barricaded themselves in. There were only eighteen cops in the station, and they were terrified that if they used their weapons, everyone would be swarmed and slaughtered. My father used the phone to call the base production office and screamed above the cacophony outside to empty the movie vault and take the cash by helicopter to the police station. It was a good thing he called when he did, because the mob outside cut the phone line before he hung up. The rioters didn’t want the police to call the army; hundreds would probably die.
The mob was starting to break through the barred windows, so everyone hurried up to the roof. Just in time, the helicopter arrived flying low. The production coordinator dropped a duffel bag filled with fifty-eight thousand dollars to my father, who began throwing handfuls of money into the seething crowd that had completely surrounded the building. The rioters’ attention shifted from attacking the crew to attacking each other to get at the money. Slowly, very slowly the violent crowd began to disperse.
Photo by Peter Rivera
Photo by Peter Rivera
Twenty-five wishbones hung above a bar. You have to look closely to verify that they are, indeed wishbones. 90 years of dust hangs on the old bones like dead bayou moss. The turkey bones were hung on the ancient brass gas lamp by enlisted men departing for Europe in 1916.
Behind the bar you will find not an inch of unoccupied wall space. Thousands of curios spanning 200 years collect dust and rust and water damage. A wanted poster for the “Murderer John Wilkes Booth” sits beside a photograph of Abraham Lincoln himself. Abe was a patron. As were the men in the frames next to his: Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. The last photograph taken of Babe Ruth hangs partially obscured by an original sketch by John McSorley himself. A pair of unassuming old handcuffs sits on a cabinet. No one would guess they once meekly attempted to restrain the great Harry Houdini.
The light is very dim, but there is great warmth in the bar. You spin around slowly taking in the information that hits you like a sandstorm. Freshly strewn sawdust grinds under your heel as you turn to face the large pot-bellied stove. The stove is black, but the coal is red. You summon the ghosts of great men who stared into the same stove and warmed themselves. And I say great men because women weren’t admitted to the bar until the 1970’s.
You walk to the back room, away from the stifling coal heat and embrace the cool air on your skin. There is an hour wait for a table, but that just gives you more time to take in the bar. A cabinet reads “CPR kit.” Maybe it’s a bible. Finally, you take a seat at one of four enormous wood-slab tables. Alcohol flowed in this back room during prohibition. This alcohol has always come in only two varieties: light house ale and dark house ale. A wild-haired Irishman in a blue shirt takes your order and returns holding 24 cups of ale in two hands. He slams the lot down on your table with a wonderful crash and clink. You help divvy up the ale by sliding light or dark cups down to your neighbors.
A fat man with a “Yankees” cap stands on a chair and starts chanting at his friend. The Irishman runs over and screams “GET OFF THE FECKIN’ CHAIR! I’M WARNIN’ YEH!” But the fat man doesn’t listen, and is dragged to the ground by the smaller but much stronger waiter. The man is then dragged to the door screaming uselessly and literally thrown out onto East 7th St. His hapless friend follows him out throwing dirty looks and half-hearted insults at the staff. The waiter walks back muttering “I warned him” under his breath. The man should have observed the scorched-wood plaque and bar motto “Be Good or Be Gone.” The waiter walks over to a shocked looking college couple and politely says “A seat just opened up. Follow me.”
Edited by Kyle Cashulin
I was living in an SRO, which means a single room occupancy hotel, which the city of New York pays for. They have an organization that’s called HASA. That’s the HIV and AIDS Service Association. And people with HIV and AIDS who need emergency housing, like for some reason you find yourself out on the street, they house you automatically that day. They’ll find a place for you to go. They don’t want you to go to the regular homeless shelters because, you know, you have exceptional circumstances. Or whatever.
So I was living at this place at 101st and Broadway called Broadway Studios Hotel. And I was smoking crack, because most of thethose buildings are basically just crack houses now. And I was hanging out with this guy named Amado Penia who lived down the hall from me. It was the day after Thanksgiving, and he had two Jack Russell Terriers, a male and a female, and they had just had pups. Now this is in the afternoon, I was in my room, my ex-boyfriend at the time, and another female friend, and Amado came by. He said “What’s goin’ on? What are you guys doing?” And I said, “Well, we’re hanging out.” And he wanted to get high, and I said “Listen, I don’t have enough drugs to give you.” Then I remembered that he had puppies, and those Jack Russell terriers, those things are expensive. I could never afford one of those. So I thought, “Why not take advantage of a crackhead?”
So I said “I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a hit of crack for one of those new Jack Russell Terriers that you have!” So he said he’d be back, and he goes down the hall to get the dog. And he comes back twenty or thirty minutes later. And then I told him that in the meantime I had smoked the drugs and I didn’t have anything to give him. So I said “I’m sorry, but the deal’s off, I don’t have anything to give you.”
And he got pissed. Later on he was on the elevator and had the mamma dog, the bitch, on a leash. And he was furious. He was big, like 6’5” and must have weighed 350 pounds. And he was yelling at me, screaming at me, cursing me out. And I was getting off the elevator at my floor, and he had the dog on a leash, and he was so busy yelling at me that he didn’t realize that the dog was behind him and the doors of the elevator closed on the dog! And the dog was like “YELP YELP YELP!” These high-pitched screams! And he just “WHAP!” bitch slaps me up against the wall. And I’m like “What the fuck?” I was shocked. And scared.
So I go back to my room. And I’m in shock. I was really angry. And I’m sitting there and for the next hour I’m furious. Fuming. I couldn’t believe this guy slapped me. So I go, with an omelet pan and a serrated steak knife and a can of mace. And I went over, and I bang on his door, and ask him to come out. And he was like “What do you want? Fuck off!” And I say “Open the door! Come out! You owe me an apology!”
So he comes out, and he starts beating the shit out of me! Just kicking me, and pounding me into the ground, you know. Not even caring, just really livid. So then he goes back in his room. And I make this mistake of banging on his door, and I bang off the door handle. And he comes out and comes at me with this table leg. A wooden table leg. Like two feet long. And I had my can of mace, and I try to mace him. And….and it’s empty! So he beats me down with a table leg. He has me down on the ground, and he’s choking me out. I stop breathing, twice, and I can’t breathe, and I lose consciousness, and then he lets up, and then he chokes me and I lose consciousness again.
And the second time I woke up I look over and realize I had this steak knife in my hand, and I reach up and WHAM, WHAM, and I caught him twice in the shoulder. And he takes the steak knife from me and he’s holding me down with one hand this time, and I’m screaming “NO NO PLEASE DON’T KILL ME!” But the knife was broken, it had broken when I was stabbing him with it. Hahahaha. I guess it was a flimsy knife. It wasn’t like a Bowie knife or anything. It’s not that violent of a tale. Hahaha.
So I got charged with attempted murder. In the first. $75,000 bail. Then they reduced it to assault. First degree assault. $50,000 bail.
And I got sent to Rikers Island prison. I was being sexually assaulted left and right. Knowing that I was HIV positive, this one guy, a notorious rapist, kept cornering me. He got me in the law library bathroom and sodomized me. He was hung like a mule. I said “Fuck it, okay you bastard! If you make me bleed, if you catch AIDS, it’s your fault! You deserve it, you fucking rapist!” That happened a couple times.
My first night in jail was a nightmare in itself. They didn’t know what to do with me because I had a psych history. So they were taking me around, they took me to Queen’s House, which wouldn’t take me ‘cause I was on psych meds. Then they took me to Brooklyn House, which wouldn’t take me because I was on psych meds and had a seizure disorder. Then they tried to take me to that boat in the Bronx, that floats, and they wouldn’t take me for some reason. Then they take me to Rikers Island. There’s this policy, they have like 24 to 72 hours to have you in a bed somewhere. Or else you can sue them. So they exceeded that time. I was scared. I was petrified, it was horrible! Rikers Island is the world’s largest penal colony! They have tanks there, and helicopters, and riot gear, and tear gas, and they have their own boats, and ferries, it’s horrible!
It’s called “Gladiator School.” And they don’t call it that for nothing. You go in, and you’re in this dorm room called Broadway. And anything can happen. Guys get their bed linens set on fire with them in it, or urine and feces thrown on you. Or a blanket party, where you’re tied down with your blankets and everyone beats you up. You go to the store once per week and people steal everything from you. They’re selling drugs. The trans-gendered ones are selling themselves, prostitution is alive and well. Selling blowjobs and ass, and whatever you can afford. Everything’s for sale.
I got mixed up with leaders of the Blood gangs. I was having sexual relationships with Bloods, Muslims, Latin Kings, Nation of Islam, 5% Nation, Jamaicans, Caribbean African Unities, all these guys. I was running, I was hiding in this prison. All these guys were coming at me all the time wanting to have sex, sex sex. Unprotected sex. Sex. Sex. That’s why they should hand out condoms in prisons, because it’s happening! I mean it’s STUPID! It’s HAPPENING. And guys are either giving it up willingly or some guys are gonna take it from you. And it’s not like they prey on someone who’s meek or a little guy. Anybody’s game. But what did they expect? I’m a homosexual male in prison with a thousand other guys, so what? I’m as happy as a faggot in Boy’s Town.
I was in Solitary for fighting. It’s not preferable in any way. It’s sensory deprivation. You don’t know what time it is, you don’t know what day it is. You don’t know if it’s about to be sunrise or sunset or what. You know. It’s horrible. It’s horrible.
The worst thing that I witnessed in prison was when they beat this guy up. Lit him on fire and threw feces and urine all over him. And when he was screaming and screaming, the guards did nothing. Nobody does anything. He offended the Bloods. It’s always the Bloods.
Dogs
There is a singular dog seen most places. Her ears are tattered; her fur is rusty and mottled with black. Her teats hang close to the ground and sometimes drag on the dirt. Though she is a mean and fearful dog, she belongs to everyone. One day she’ll get a rock to the ribs. Another day she’ll get a skinned rabbit. Sometimes she’ll get a round of buckshot to her face.
Cars
The Dodge Ram is the most beautiful object, and only desired in Inferno Red. Subaru doesn’t end up on the yard, because it survives winter after winter after winter. Most cars end up on the yard.
Noses
Richard Blackowl has a flat nose. No bone. Fetal alcohol syndrome. Not uncommon among the Blackowls. Looking at the Punt, Pass, Kick competition you can see bone, bone, no bone, bone, no bone, no bone, bone, no bone.
Tobacco
If Tobacco is the Red Man’s Revenge, then two holes must be dug. Tahoe brand was my favorite when I was 10.
STPUD
South Tahoe Public Utility District. Condemned land that encompasses Diamond Valley, which holds the reservoir as well as the res.
The Reservoir
Treated sewage from beachfront houses in Lake Tahoe, slushing down Snowshoe Thompson’s irrigation ditch to pool in the big cement reservoir. In the summer we jump off the bridge to swim and cool off. Occasionally swallows leave their mud nests to black out the sun. They dive and intimidate us.
Cats
So many cats. Under every house you can hear the mewing of the next generation. Coyotes come and eat them, but they don’t have large enough stomachs.
Bears
A gunshot in the night means Greg shot another bear. Mean black bears that eat up all the camp food in Yosemite that the nice people brought from San Francisco. The ones that ate too many bags of marshmallows; they’re caged and released less than one mile from the Res. Killing them would be inhumane.
The Reservoir
Maybe swimming in treated sewage causes some of the noses to be flat?
Res Ball
Full-contact sport. The rules go:
Houses
Built decades ago with promise of renewal. Without foundations, they slump to one side or another. It’s a good thing building code violations aren’t applicable on Reservation land.
Sheriff
He’ll stay out of your business unless your meth lab explodes.
Skippy
Ask why she’s called Skippy and, smirk wink, you’ll hear a story about a dog and peanut butter.
The Walker
You’ll see him along 95. Picking up cigarette butts. Every day; walking and picking up cigarette butts. They say he lives with his aunt.
Cal-Trans
The savior of us all, California Transit employees and feeds the community. You need to buy your own reflective vest. Avoid drunken drivers.
Non-Serrated Knife
Never leave home without it. And make sure it isn’t someplace hard to get to, like in your backpack. Tape it length-wise to your belt in the small of your back. They won’t wait for you to fish it out of your backpack.
Indian Tacos
Dale Bennett’s Indian Tacos would have ended the first and second world wars. Frybread, sour cream, rabbit meat, chilies, diced tomatoes, lettuce and cheese. Once a year she makes them for everyone at school. After that, you need to wait for Christmas, David or Nicole’s birthday, or the Candydance. But definitely not Thanksgiving.
Groping around in my camo cargo shorts, I pull out the roll of athletic tape. As an amateur fighter, I need to wrap my wrists myself. The tape feels very different from the cotton wraps that I use in training. It feels solid and impermeable. Next I look in the mirror. I smear Vaseline over my face so that any blows will slide off instead of rupturing my skin. My only thought is how bad this will be for my complexion, which makes me laugh. After a few minutes of shadowboxing and working on the bag, my friend tells me it’s time. Anxiety blossoms in my stomach, but I shake it off. Why am I nervous? I’m going to win, god damn it! I’m going to impose my will!
The private gym is high-ceilinged, dirty, and only has a few metal folding chairs strewn around the ring. It’s an underground fight. Two-dozen people mill around the ring. No one sits. Everyone here is an amateur fighter, a trainer, or both. It’s the best kind of audience, but a tough crowd to impress.
My nerves might be a little frayed, but I’m confident and composed. The same can’t be said of my opponent. He looks shaken. Head bent, he listens to his trainer give some last minute advice. I notice that his tattoo, a simple tribal arm band, is smaller than mine and isn’t colored in. For some reason this makes me smile, I know I’m going to win.
My first fight happened when I was 12, after my mother moved us to Northern California. Markleeville, a depressing town of 200 residents, sits in the dark foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Completely isolated, the nearest grocery store was a 20 mile drive through the woods. We decided to live 10 miles outside Markleeville next to the Washoe Indian Reservation.
As a chubby white boy from a wealthy family, I was a dead boy walking. The first day a tall kid threw me to the ground and kicked my face, knocking out two of my teeth. But I’m a fast learner, and wanted to be tough as much as the Res kids. I choked back tears, stood up, and spat a wad of blood and mucous on the ground. This impressed the gathering crowd, but I knew that adolescents’ memories or short. I had to learn how to fight. The strength, toughness and will were there, I just needed the skill.
After a few games of Res Ball (a combination of basketball, football and boxing), the tall kid who kicked my ass decided that I wasn’t a bad guy, and we became friends. His father was once a professional boxer, and between rounds of drunkenly beating his son, taught him how to fight. This tall Indian kid would smoke my cigarettes, and teach me boxing and streetfighting. I became passionate about boxing. After five years of training and living on the Res, I completely forgot what it was like to be the underdog.
It was during the summer after my freshman year in college that my interest in fighting was rekindled. My father’s friend, a screenwriter, was doing research for a film about mixed martial arts, and so got the three of us tickets to the Ultimate Fighting Championship 63. Mixed martial arts (or MMA) is a recent phenomenon that has become the world’s fastest growing sport. It allows fighters of different disciplines to test who has the most effective style. Previously, matches were only held within respective styles. A fighter can discover whether his Karate is superior to another man’s kickboxing. For many martial artists, it is the ultimate truth. And the Ultimate Fighting Championship is the place to find out.
Many people compare professional fighting to football or hockey. While these are both intrinsically violent sports, they are fundamentally different in spirit and practice. Other sports have a set objective, such as carrying a football to the end zone. There are rules, regulations, and players act as a team. In fighting, there is no team. When the fighter is in the ring, he is completely alone; he has only himself to rely on. I have heard it referred to as “the most unfiltered form of human competition.” People often refer to sports as a game. A man will say “I’m going home to watch the game.” It’s rare to refer to any kind of professional fighting as a game.
The UFC event was held in the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The tickets cost more than a thousand dollars a piece, but it was courtesy of Universal Studios. Just walking to the seats was a show in and of itself. Dennis Hof, owner and operator of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch (as seen on HBO’s “Cathouse”), sat next to us accompanied by three stunningly beautiful prostitutes.
A portion part of the crowd were obviously fighters. Every fifth person seemed to have a swollen nose or cauliflower ears. In the restroom, one amateur fighter was serenely draining his cauliflower ear with a hypodermic needle. The beer flowed at a constant rate. Fighters danced with their gorgeous girlfriends to high-energy rock, and everyone was generally having a fantastic time.
The fights were incredible to watch. We were very close to the octagon, so each connecting strike sounded like a baseball bat hitting a hunk of meat. After each fight the opponents would hug (if both were still conscious), congratulate each other, and retire to drink beer and watch the next battle. The most anticipated fight was between Matt Hughes and Renzo Gracie, two of the most famed fighters in the UFC. Gracie made the mistake of giving his back to Hughes, and the fight was over quickly. Gracie was on his stomach on the ground with Hughes mounted on his waist. Hughes cocked back his arm, paused, and let loose a barrage of knockout punches to the sides of Gracie’s head. It was electrifying to see such professional fighting in person. These men were one hundred percent efficient, and showed me the obvious difference between a real fighter and a street brawler. More than ever, I wanted to improve. I decided to try a real fight, in front of a real audience. The question was, how?
I started training in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is a modern martial art that is a hybrid of streetfighting and wrestling. It is just as technical as wrestling, and as a sport, has its own rules. It is a technique that is favored by many professional fighters in MMA. My trainer once made a great observation: “If someone who knows Brazilian Jiu-jitsu takes another fighter to the ground, and he doesn’t know Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, it’s like falling into a lake and not knowing how to swim.” This is very true. A skilled Brazilian Jiu-jitsu fighter will have his opponent tapping out before he even registers that he is totally incapacitated. It teaches you how to move on the ground, and how to maneuver your opponent into submissions. If a fighter is trapped in an arm bar, for example, it only take two inches of motion to break their arm at the elbow.
I also took intensive Krav Maga (Hebrew for “combat fighting”). Krav Maga is best described as systemized streetfighting. It is designed to be utterly efficient and wholly destructive. Rather than trying to submit your opponent, the goal is to kill him. Krav Maga was developed by the Israeli Defense Forces, and most professionals regard it as the most effective no-holds-barred fighting system. This method is not accepted in mixed martial arts fights, but gives excellent training on the fundamentals of fighting. It teaches you how to move, hit and punch in all their variations.
I returned to college in New York State, and found a great gym. I committed to training for a real fight. It’s quite difficult to train at the level of intensity needed for a true MMA fight when you’re a student. Real fighters train up to six hours daily, and keep to a strict high-protein diet. Such a regimen was quite impossible for me, but I did my best. Every day I would practice striking for an hour. I would deliver a seemingly endless stream of knees, kicks, elbows and punches until my muscles screamed. On alternate days I would lift weights and develop core strength. Taking a 45 pound plate in each hand, I jogged laps around the school sports center to build a “death grip.” For cardiovascular training I ran from my apartment up a long steep hill that I dubbed “insano-slope.”
My diet consisted of fish, red meat, protein supplements, and gallons of water. The hard work paid off. My strikes became harder and my grip stronger. Most importantly, my endurance seemed endless. I felt that I had tapped newfound inner physical strength.
Finding a way to fight in a controlled setting proved to be difficult. The big problem being that it is illegal to fight in New York without a permit, which means submitting to an endless process of physical examination and bureaucracy. This was impossible for me, as licenses are usually reserved for professionals. A stroke of luck came when I was chatting with a new friend after a workout at the gym. With some reservation, the man told me that he knew a group of amateur fighters who, faced with the same dilemma, organized a monthly fight night. I told him that it sounded like the book “Fight Club,” to which he responded: “Jesus, I knew you’d say that.”
This man became my go-between and found me a place at that month’s fight night. This took more than a little convincing on my proponent’s part, but he vouched for me and I was granted a provisional membership. My assigned opponent was a first-time fighter as well, which was a great comfort. The prospect of fighting a seasoned mixed martial artist was daunting. I thought that if he was a first-time MMA fighter, and didn’t have previous streetfighting experience, I would have an edge.
When Jason said fight night he wasn’t kidding. The night of the fight I was told to meet my friend at a parking garage at two-thirty in the morning. There he handed me directions to the gym where it took place. Thirty minutes later we arrived at a sizable craftsman-style house, comfortably isolated from neighbors. Next to the house was a garage that could have served as a hangar for small aircraft. Cars were parked outside, so I assumed it was the right place.
There is a difference between believing you can win a fight and actually fighting. I’m locked into a staring match with my opponent across the ring. My confidence and adrenaline are spiking. I should have avoided this mental showdown, but it’s too late to back out. I try to make myself badass and intimidating, but the head games seem pointless. We’d see who was tougher in a minute. The referee calls it, we bump gloves, and begin.
My opponent is over-anxious and come out throwing fast, chaotic punches. Several of these connect, and I feel rage swell inside me. Ignoring the attack, I start throwing my own strikes, and we trade punch for punch. But this is a rookie mistake. Swapping punches is like playing “chicken,” where the last man standing only wins because of the thickness of his skull. The unprofessional turn this fight has taken is reflected in the catcalls of the audience.
Backing off, I clear my head and keep my guard up. Advancing cautiously, I throw a few jabs. His guard drops for a moment and I swing for a knockout punch. But before my fist reaches halfway I find myself on the ground, scrambling backwards. My stomach is throbbing. He must have landed a side kick to my abdomen while I was concentrating on the knockout punch. Another rookie mistake. My eyes should have been on been on his chest so that I could see his entire body movement. Instead, I was concentrating on his head and lining up punches.
But he obviously isn’t comfortable on the ground, because I scramble to my feet without any interference. We circle for a few seconds, and I focus on keeping my eyes from looking at where I want to strike. Without thinking I lunge under his guard, grip his right leg and shove forward driving my shoulder into his stomach. My opponent goes down, and the fall knocks the wind from his lungs. He doesn’t raise his legs in time, which allows me to mount his waist. Unable to buck me off and unable to effectively strike, he freezes into a protective guard. By this point I know the fight is over. I throw hard, heavy punches and elbows around his guard until the referee pulls me off. My gloves are smeared with blood, and sure enough, my opponent has a cut across his forehead. Some blood drips from my own face as well, but I couldn’t care less. I throw my arms out, my head back, and breathe deep. I have the option to stay and watch the last fight, but I’m too sore and too full of adrenaline. I drive home, smiling like a maniac the whole way.
The next day everyone I see asks what happened to my face. I dismiss the subject with vague but taunting replies like “let’s just say it’s been a rough night” or “well you should see the other guy!” But I don’t want to publicize my night’s exploit. This is partially because I want to avoid uncomfortable questions about where and who I fought. I can’t bear the thought of my friends patronizing me for doing something they can’t possibly identify with. Growing up in a fight culture has instilled in me, for better or for worse, a mindset that is completely alien to most students of East Coast liberal arts schools. But it’s alright. I didn’t fight for bragging rights. I fought to become a better fighter.