Personal

It said something about zombies.
Something about a zombie plan but it was buried in a long list meant to scare off any potential spamming or stalking, maybe a real person sat at the other side typing each entry on the list and then submitting it to craigslist, either way I bit.
I was alone, burning some kind of midnight oil in Lake City. Away from the action and life of the city, in the outer limits of Seattle drinking cheap beers then watching someone get tattooed meant a Friday well spent. Walking past the crumbling facades of the main drag, car dealerships closed for the night, down steep hills to my house but not before buying a few Steel Reserves from the Shell on the corner. The late night cashier joking with me about buying 4 and planning a busy night. Laughing trying to convince myself I wasn’t ready to venture into Rick’s. Pay to see some boobs and have some girl feign interest but looking for a tip. Instead I held out hope that I could find someone for free.
No dice at that point.

I was too young for the girls that go for a guy renting a room and out of work. Hunting for jobs but being too picky for most. Barely talking to people but trying to be around them. Hoping after hope my phone would ring and things would turn around and something would change. Or an offer would be in my inbox and suddenly I’d have somewhere to go that wasn’t the library, bar or coffee shop. Ignoring the looks of people that wondering what I was because I couldn’t be homeless and being in the wrong place to be rich. Maybe a student? Who else would need the coffee and the library?
Yeah that kind of woman was still a decade or two off for me drinking cheap wine ‘til dawn and finding solace in being together back then I had to settle for being alone.

On craigslist personals I saw the ad and responded. By then it was just like looking for a job or getting a dresser. Give some details, interest, and send it off. Hope there’s a person on the other side and wait.
Always waiting.
Eating gyros and looking at model trains. Anything to waste time before I headed home to find an empty inbox and then it was too late to make calls or maybe there were no new jobs to be had. Watch tv and wait. Look busy and cook up some dinner and catch the news.
Act like I wasn’t out of work and bored, questioning my choice. Wondering was someone interested in my zombie plan instead of posting for a late night amusement some last laugh before bed.Either way I drank my beer, watched the news rebroadcast and went to bed.
I never got a response.

Dreams of Midget Town

Most kids that grew up in Long Beach, Lakewood, and other outlaying cities have heard wild tales of a town with houses meant for tiny people. Some even went looking for this place only to come back with wild tales and a night gone. My story isn’t too much different.

It began at Bolsa Chica, like a lot of summer nights, with a bonfire burning and the boredom of a night spent hanging out in a parking lot doing the usual shit that teens get up to on summer nights or perhaps back to someone’s house for a few movies and then home by the time the sun rises. When the beach patrol rolled by saying the beach was closed and to get the hell out we piled into the whale that one guy drove, chucked our cups of coke and whiskey and he started driving. Leaving the beach and turning onto PCH, we end up at a parking lot sitting on car hoods listening to Rodney on the Roq, bumming cigarettes and being bored. We get to telling ghost stories and legends and someone brings up Midget Town and says they know the way. So we follow.

Fueled by youth, excitement and black velvet we head into a wealthier part of Long Beach. With the promise of glory and midget sized town stop at the Ferris Bueller house, ring the bell and run away screaming ‘Save Ferris’. Dashing through the dark streets and back alleys, we follow our guide and his strange directions. Stopping in places to double back and finally coming to a hedge ‘On the other side’s Midget Town’ he swears and we climb the thing. On the other side is the manicured grass of a golf course. He shrugs saying him and his cousins came through and there was Midget Town.

We start to argue.
The sound of a car pulling up stops us and we take off across the grass. All swearing it’s the cops come to get us. Through another set of bushes and doubling back through the streets we pile into the whale and take off.

A bit later at Denny’s we talk about the night. Like adventurers come back from fights with head hunters and pygmies, the weird and exotic inside the boundaries of the south land. Our waitress isn’t impressed with our round of cokes and sampler, our tales of near arrest and saving Ferris. Putting down the bill she tells us in her day Midget Town was up in Hollywood.

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