What goes around can include a tangent

Okay it's story time. But it's a long one so brace yourself. This one takes place outside of Little Ceasar's Pizza. Mostly there. It started on the inside actually, after hours. I worked there, it must have been 83 or maybe 84. It was on Goldenwest street, across from the college. I wonder if it's still there. the pizza place, not the college. I worked there about a year, I am going to say in 84 because I went to college across the street. dated a delivery driver, hung out and played spades in the cafeteria with her and some others. I was a small time dope dealer. Real small time, if I am honest about it. Until I get to talking about it in meetings and I realize, even among sober alcoholics, not so many of us were dealers.

We got hold of an eight ball that night. I think I was one third in or so and another kid who worked there had the money for the rest. Come closing time we were inside the pizza place dividing it up. Doing lines and going out back to smoke pot. Awesome skunk bud, i remember. Pot is so much different nowadays but when I see the rare pictures of it, from dispensaries in california and now in Colorado and such, it was that kind of sticky buds. Then dividing it up again for sale. And more pot. We were stupid. and no that's not justa metaphor for how high we were. We went out to the car. It wasn't mine, so this would have been those same couple of years I quit driving. Quit bumping into things with other people's cars. 

Can you picture it with me here? It's a strip mall. Goldenwest is a pretty active street, north to south. It's now maybe one thirty or two in the morning, and deserted. Except for our car sitting in front of the little take out pizza place. We were not yet high enough. One more joint should work. Here lets put a little more cocaine on the tip too. The baggie goes back into the glove box and the bindle into the cigarette pack, which is beside me in the passenger side door handle, that little opening some cars have to lose change into. And now comes the knock on the window.

It's been what, thirty years now since then. I can still almost picture the officer. Or maybe I can't. i got a ticket a few weeks ago, mad at that officer, and maybe it's his face I picture now instead. I know the car we were sitting in was blue, but not the make or model. Lyle and his brother owned the Little Ceasar's. For all the fuzziness in my life, for the short term memory failures I have now in my later years, there are moments in time I can revisit unchanged. this is one of them. He was on my side. I rolled the window down. It was straight out of that movie with Sean Penn in it. They get out of the VW microbus surrounded by smoke. "That's my skull, I'm so wasted." In a movie it would be awesome, thinking the character is screwed, better him than me. Except it was me this time, in person, red eyed and suddenly pulled into reality, looking up at the cop looking down into this haze of smoke at me.

I have another officer related story here, too, from the same period of time, that one year of drinking between high school and adulthood. I told you this was a long story, a full circle with a tangent. The same delivery driver, we dated sort of a few times. I was 19, all my college friends 21. And maybe a bit older. I took them to see the band. The high school band, jim still a year or two younger than me. They were playing another pizza place this particular night. It was the juxtuposition of my two worlds. I brought the girl and five or six more of our friends from that college across the street. university Behind Levitts. there were some tarot card readings, too, before we went to the show. But there we were, one table of college kids, sitting near the back a room full of underage kids I knew from high school, drinking pitchers of beer and rocking to the band. I had my back to the exit, so I never saw the officer. There were three or four inside all of a sudden. Everything was growing quiet. And this particular officer walked past everybody and straight back to me, as I am swallowing a swig of whatever it was on tap. Wanted ID and I had none and I was taken to jail. Only me, the oldest minor in the place, going to jail for underage drinking.

This was all before the drinking got bad, by the way. just as you know, these were the fun years. So back to the other pizza place, the blue four door in the strip mall parking lot, the window rolled down and the blue lights lit up behind us.

"Ok go ahead and give it up." Those were all the words he needed. we were busted and there was no wweaseling out. So I opened up the glove box and handed him the baggie of weed. That was good weed, too. It was a loss. I don't know yet if I am going to jail. This was the eighties. we were locals. Anybody from Los Angeles was definitely getting locked up for the night, but local boys got warnings.
"Okay, come on out of the car." he opened the door for me. He pulled out my pack of cigarettes, opened them. Pulled out the bindle. I am no good with the math any more, but about 1 third of an eight ball, I am remembering two or three hundred dollars worth of coke. The rest of which, remember, is sitting in my coworkers pocket, bundled for individual sale. This was about to be serious. So he pulled me aside and he asked me where I got it, and I lied. And I told him he could go anywhere in Santa Ana, and he wanted to know where this came from. And the dude is in the driver's seat and I lied again and he made me dump it out.

That doesn't happen any more. That didn't happen then, i don't think. All my cocaine floating to the pavement in this parking lot. Then we did the marijuana shuffle, his words, not mine. He dumped it there, next to the car, and told me to rub it into the concrete with my shoe. i am assuming it was supposed to crumble up and dissipate. but this was sticky bud. It just kind of rolled up in itself and imbedded into the cracks in the parking lot. And I walked away. Well, drove away, with the kid whose pocket was full of cocaine and who was never even asked to get out of the car.

So where is the point? What's the purpose of this little tale? I keep wanting to think it's not real, that doesn't happen. But it did, it's who I am, now, based on those events. I let things slip to my son now. not to much yet of the drug use. Told him a bit about the carnival. About being homeless and eating from trash cans. I want him to experience life, but not like that. And I can stand here now and see what I put my parents through. It amazes me. How did I make it out? Where once I thought I was being picked on by god I can see I was being guided, pushed, toward the only solution available. If you know what I mean you get it. But to explain that sentence might take another ramble.