I wanted new shoes, and an urge for drinking came upon me and my friend. Time and time again when I drink during dinner, I take pride in drinking my grape wine I have in front of me. My senses among food and conversation light up and everything scary, sadistic, pessimistic, and ethically questionable in the world leave my senses. The more knowledge I gather the more I start to gather that constrains and other inhibitions, both economical and mental amongst the cavernous minds of most that walk, are what are catapulting me into correct situations as others dip and watch. I dream of various things, and sometimes I will dwell on these thoughts on the train as cars upon cars pass.


     The whiskey that I got for my birthday was gathering itself on the shelf. I remember through the nights I scavenged, or tried to scavenge the alcohol selection that remained among me: Jager, Coors, Svedka, Rum, Bourbon; they all wanted to overwhelm my senses and affectionate situation of touch among the sexes, heightening my senses and eavesdropping on all the insanity I wanted to involve myself in, for hope of some kind of clarity within myself. He would come over and I'd sneak the two bottles of whiskey into his trunk after making the decision to go to Payless.



     We hit the road towards the mall and hit a red light. On the opposite road, two cars wanted to go through the intersection to turn onto the cross street to our right. An Acura was in front of a monster truck-like Ford F-150 pickup truck. He would say sarcastically,"that's not close at all" in response to how the truck was so close to the Acura's bumper that we thought they were connected. The Acura goes into the left lane, and my friend would look back onto the road to pay attention to driving. My senses dived into skepticism.

     In a fury as I watched the two cars, the truck rams into the Acura on purpose with an intent to smash. My eyes grow in shock and I point for him to look and as he was willingly just as shocked. We followed. The Acura was highly damaged. They turned right into the residential neighborhood and pulled over. We parked the car in the middle of the intersection and watched the swears and the like take off. A big-buffed short stereotypical redneck steps out of the truck while a longer blond guy from the Acura go off. We choose to stay out of it and watch. Soon after I'd call the police and meet the police for the third time within those two weeks.

     Fuck you, fuck this, fuck that was constantly heard. We stayed in the shadows at an angle not feasible. I talked with the operator trying to get the license plate number of the individual but we were too far off. The truck starts to leave and it looks like there was paper exchanged. I told the operator so as we then decided to move in on the Acura. He immediately thanked us and I handed the operator to him. As we waited in the middle of the street for the police to come, the side of the car was completely black and rammed in. The fucker in the truck was out of his mind. The guy's name was Jeff. The more we talked to him in the calm we started to realize that the trucker was tailgating him and he moves to the side. Fingers are exchanged and as Jeff turns, the crazy trucker decided to retaliate by actual assault with a deadly weapon. I was amazed that I witnessed such with my own eyes.

     Jeff's family friend came with his car from down the street. He was a middle-aged man with a regular build. Kind and informative, saying "you should never let the guy leave, because if he's drunk and leaves, then you've lost him." One of my family's former employees was walking her dog as we were talking. I would soon realize that Jeff and our former employee were related, that he was our former employees son's teammate on the golf team. I was amazed again by how small a world it was. The cop from my former high school came and he sat there talking with Jeff while we stood off to the side. Mother and her two kids from a house across the street would see the damage to the vehicle and come out.

     The cute kids with their caps would ask question after question and I laughed. The officer took our statements and with every character on the scene I took in stride of their words, the temporary, self-serving memories of their presence. I took a kind of stride in the kind of fun this all entailed. We would be told that we'd get calls from insurance companies and with our bourbon still in the drunk we took off to the mall. I bought my shoes and we immediately went back home to where we would stash everything while Xavier was watching television in the other room. The house quiet and everyone out and about we brought people over and they poured in one by one. We'd sit to television and alcohol while tempting Mahdi to drink.

     After an intense trip of road rage and assault and shoe shining scavenger hunting, I poured the vodka into a mug as everyone else childishly pressured one another to drink. The orange juice in the other mug, I took a self-righteous, individualized gulp of my own desire. The strength showed smoothness, and I drank that tonic piece of melted gold artistically. I slowly poured the second. Waited ten minutes to let the mellow poison sink in, then taking in another gulp. The girls were forcing him to drink the sugarcane wine, and everyone lived within this annoying nagging, including myself, for half an hour to an hour. Soon they would leave. The night wore down as our things to do became limited. He would drive me home and I was thankful for him. Driving through the empty suburban homes transcended my own perception of what I see is called home. I then compare it to the paradise that is Berkeley, and the world that I've always imagined myself to be immersed in as something real of cafe ambiance and well-dressed individuals from diverse backgrounds, all bright and truthful towards the future.

     I think the future was going to get me into this university anyway. The day in high school when I asked the career center lady to hand me the informational brochure for Berkeley and how I heard the wow within adjacent people's breathing. In the end, I found a way to get in, and I still can't believe how I'm here despite all odds and akk decisions made. With all the changes that have come inside of me, another major change has come within my change in loving alcohol and business proposals, along with media and political analysis and language assessment. I plan to make myself one hell of a entrepreneurial lawyer. The night ended correctly, as I choose it too.

     In the end, Jeff's insurance agent would call and I condemned the truck driver with perfect detail. The words from the agent saying that he "has no choice but to put the truck driver at fault" brought me a great satisfaction that the cocksucker is going to be getting what's coming to him, although both the agent and I were still shocked as to how he wasn't arrested for battery. I would get a call from the truck driver's provider but I didn't answer. Being a justified jerk is a euphoric role to be in, as the world plays into your conforming palms and the like, the satisfaction destroys any restraint to do something this sweet as revenge, even though it wasn't directly upon me. I hope he's still getting fucked. I had a stellar night. Workload's piling on me. Good night.

Life hits at me from all sides.
I walk with my own resolve.
I've become more independent.
I hide disgusting, ecstatic truths.

It's now that I realize my own progression and liveliness is what's keeping me and everyone truly alive.

And it's now that I realize my language, international, indie, political, social, experimental-oriented, techno house, lavish life-associated worlds of mysterious tendencies keep me from moving out of reality.

It's not something of a life that I will reveal. Neither is it something I will let take hold.

In all of this light comes assertion.

            I sat there on my laptop, two o’clock in the morning, talking with whoever I could find. I’d regularly check Xanga entries and Facebook statuses of those close and those of whom I’d never spoken to in a very long time. I’d talk with Yves for the entire night like others, trying to laugh about the funniest situations and increase our intellect. Sometimes I’d stop the conversation to talk to someone else quickly, while also secretly wishing distant people who never come online would somehow randomly pop up just to talk, which has happened on some occasions, mainly on Facebook chat, and I can’t get enough of. I’d love talking to these people who pop out of nowhere just to talk.

            Suddenly I would start to see statuses of disbelief, fear, R.I.P. insignias, and thought to myself whether if such a moment has come again. I went to his Facebook, only to see comments of worry and the constant speculation of chaos, worry, and the frantic shock surrounding a lot of people I knew started to come true. I became worried and called whoever I could think of first. He would pick up the phone and I asked if he was okay and if everything wasn’t the way it was truly being presented, as I chose to never receive its face value.

“I probably shouldn’t be saying this…”

I waited for the pause to end for three seconds only to hear,

“…but he really is gone.”

            The conversation brief, all else I would hear was the smooth sound of a car engine through a freeway of lights, seeming as if he was trying to find some kind of accord. I imagined him in that light as he spoke to me on the phone. I was shocked out of my innocence. I would be so shocked that someone so close in all of my social interactions would disappear again. I didn’t cry. I never did. Back when Danielle passed away, I took everyone else’s sadness to excel in my own way. This time I was in such shock I was unable to sleep. I would talk to others and ask if they wanted company over. I was getting ready to leave the house at four o’clock in the morning for support and my own sudden insomniac ability.

I would wake one of my parents up about the situation and would instead just move about to just cancelling leaving the house at all. I sat there shocked instead, surfing the net like a forty-year-old otaku trying to make sense of the magnitude of what had occurred three to five hours ago. I would eventually sleep peacefully, but not without thinking about the multitude of other people going through their own situations as a result of a death, as I sat there in my room with others online in my own isolated incident. I would continue onto my own source of mental attempt to grasp the situation. Suddenly, I got sleepy enough to be able to go to bed. I looked from the center at the ever-changing landscape of my room in solitude from my taken-down posters to more worldly settings. I would look at my bookshelf and everything else in between for my own fascination. I knew this wasn’t going to end, this story in particular, I mean. And that I would have more to learn in the future. I closed my eyes and went to sleep, hoping to eventually get a cup of hot chocolate at Starbucks in my suit and tie during my eventual morning drive.