Venice Beach Drunk Cunt
For ten years I’ve headed out to the circle to pound air and sand as Catalina’s reach-arounds pummel the filthy Venice shore. And in this whole damned decade of drinking, smoking, howling and skirt chasing, I’ve never gotten more than a shove-off from some dude I’d probably gotten too close to. Until last night. Not surprising, it was a fucking Persian who nearly got me teeth shoved down my pants and my nuts crammed into my ears. His name is Ouri.

First off, I have to mention that the fault really lies with Persian, that strange language they speak in Iran, Afghanistan and some other stan I can’t think of at the moment. Every Persian speaker I’ve spoken with – Oh, and if you ask them, What do you speak, they say, “Persian.”, but if you ask them Do you speak Persian, they say, I speak Farsi – has led me astray from the outset. From their gurglings, I always mistake these dark-skinned persons for mutes of deafs or otherwise speech inpedimenteed. Now, I dig languages, speak about four of them, but these Persians, they speak with a mouthful of olive pits and their tongues never manage to move as it should to get the words out in time. I spend a lot of time nodding, trying to decipher what the fuck they’re trying to say… guessing, really. Anyway, there I am, holding candlelit court on my West African djembe, with my tribe of fellow tokers and drunks and noise makers and lovers when I’m suddenly tapped rather pointedly by Ouri.

Hold on, let me tell you about Ouri. He’s this 70-year-old fellow who a decade ago crossed the world of Tehrani Islam and negotiated the maze of Middle Eastern byzantry to get some papers probably in Amman or Damascus to get his aging ass over to the great Satan, the West. God knows what this speaker of about six English words with a back that’s curved and broken in about fifteen places does to pay for his grub or his ironed Sears pants, but I’ve known the guy a couple years now since my lending him my drum some afternoon when I needed to dance and chase sand. It was one of those lost in space afternoons in which I drift off from circle to smoky gathering to open sea and then repeat for hours until goose flesh finally reminded me of my mortality and the ever stretching of my goatskin head from under unknown palms. Shit, I must’ve thought, I’ve been gone half a day with all my crap somewhere in that swarm of drunks and lechers… After odyssies such as these, being able to return home to find the kingdom in tact with the drum faithfully faithful to me awaiting the embrace of my bloodied fingers, it can make a man weep for joy and I have done just that. I had one such reunion with my djembe after 4 hours of separation while she was in Ouri’s care. I think I’ve loved the guy ever since.

So, last night, the gnarly pointy finger of weird, mute Ouri pokes me sharp in the ribs and I look to see this great, beached drunk cunt lying smack against the kingdom’s bulwarks. Fine, I think. Some marine carcass has washed up on our shore, it’s the price you pay for beachfront (I mean, drum circle-front) property. I’m not getting involved in this. Fuck her. Eventually, she’ll get her rotting fish biscuit ass up herself (hopefully before puking), or some wolf will drag her off and devour her under a lifeguard tower. (It was nighttime and the guards had long driven off in their yellow pickup trucks with sirens flashing to alert would-be swimmers they’re on their own.) Fuck her, I thought. Stay in our presence and behave yourself and enjoy our community of drunks and stoners, or get lost. Up to you, drunk cunt. I nodded to Ouri, as if to say, “It’s cool. Let her lie there and pass gas. Fuck her.”

But I had missed something and another jabby rib poke made me aware that in conjunction with drunk cunt’s arrival, our fine line of candles had been completely extinguished and the night felt cooler and darker. In a mute plea for justice and retribution, Ouri’s finger fingered the cunt.

“Hey! Why’d you blow out our candles?” I asked with King Solomon like fairness.
“Fuck you, asshole!” and a handful of sand from her fatty flesh mit squarely showered Ouri’s bent spectacles and jabbering incoherent mouth with stinky cunt sand. Ouri sputtered and I raised my voice.
“Hey! Hey! You have to go now. You have to—“

But before I could punctuate this command with an outstretched hand, to point her back to the ocean from which she rolled, a fucking gorilla fell from the sky, leaping and barking at me from behind a wall of muscle armor, You! You muthafucka! What the fuck you think you’re saying to my girl, huh? I’m gonna kick your ass, you fucker. You’re dead, fuckhead. Get ready for me to kick your fucking little asshole, you fuckhead!

I tried to explain to this simian skelletor the rules, the etiquette of drum circle mores. Look, man --- Dude-- I tried to explain respectfully while maintaining the dignity of my station --- We are a peaceful tribe with a long lineage of Drum Circle society, but my words were incomprehensible to this lump of charging clay. He wanted my blood on his crystal methed hands and as he reached down with one claw and lifted my 141 pounds by my tearing Guatemalan print shirt, it became clear to me that if I actually stood up to defend myself, I’d lose some teeth.

Things happened fast for the drum circle.

Remember, it’s night, the air is thick with bud smoke and Bud fumes and ocean darkness and there’s more noise and energy pulsing from this circle of 400 than all of the rest of this scrambling planet can muster. No more than a few seconds passed, I’d have to guess, before my folks scrambled to intervene in my ambush and violent kidnapping. But it felt like an hour that I dangled in this beast’s claw while Drunk Cunt managed to raise herself on one hoof, hiss and throw sand into my eyes and mouth. Ouri hobbled to my defense but was shoved back into his rocking chair by one of the creature’s hind limbs. My brain raced around for protection or a silver lining to the impending torrent of shock and awe that loomed inevitably like reconstructive bone and tissue surgery. Am I safer here, on my back, feet in the air, in the bowels of the circle, or in the open, presumably within view of the binocular-scoping cops? If I got the shit kicked out of me by this cur, would I also have the added disgrace of being issued a ticket for disturbing the peace? My brain raced as Fardin and an unknown Mexican awoke.

Words were said to the creature’s fists. “He insulted my girl,” he bellowed. His girl? Drunk cunt was his girlfriend? Unlikely. Probably didn’t even know her. Maybe he once fucked her, or raped her, but loved her? Fuck that. Not in his vocabulary. But his rage, his skin piercings and his black Cross tattoo was 100% fucking terrifyingly real. And it was all focused on my dangling body.

I never would’ve guess that olive pit juggling Fardin would be capable of negotiating such a beast away from my demise, convincing my would be assassin to let me flop to the ground and finish spitting sand from my mouth. I could give a shit about not fighting, not defending my throne to this monster. Spitting was fine for now. In fact, it was kind of cool and rude. There was dignity and honor in spitting. It gave the impression that I had been slugged a good one and was expelling some annoying blood. My people, my family came up and patted me. Eats good now… Asha koach, someone uttered as they extended a hand. My camera was handed back to me. Apparently I intended to capture the scene of my own facial reconstruction. Order was reestablished, drunk cunt rolled away a little spitting and hissing, and crystal meth-head slinked back into the night with a random threat or two.

Later, when the cops lit up the night with their surround-sound tractor beams of Toyota light, I continued drumming a minute in defiance, but secretly I was grateful for their big brother presence. Miraculously, I found all my belongings from the sand as well as a pair of drunk cunt shoes. I walked up to the fleshy mass in the center of those Toyota headlight beams and dropped her shoes at her feet. She looked up with a twinge of spiteful remorse. “I’m sorry… asshole.” She gurgled some more and I so wanted to kick her in her face. But cop light blinded me and I didn’t know how closely I was being watched from these five vehicles. So, I feigned adjusting my drum on the ground to scoop just enough sand to casually dash her eyes and gaping piehole. It was a swift movement that wasn’t noticed by the platoon of cops but there was connection and as I spun to go, I heard her react. Long, wailing sobs. A crescendo of sorrowful spew. I left, and the cops left with me. Or maybe I followed them, I don’t know. Ouri had left, unknown Mexican and Fardin had left. Just me, followed by cops whose presence facilitated my finding shoes and shit. Drunk cunt’s sobs were swallowed by wave noise and Toyota engine and human murmerings with the occasional rebellious drumming.

Along the boardwalk and on foot, Josue, a familiar face for half a decade told me in crappy Portugese English that he had “watched” me and my fight. “That guy… he wanted… fight all day.” Suddenly, my outrage was rekindled and at the same time I saw the fucking wastrel careening down the boardwalk 200 yards ahead. The cops continued to follow me and I felt emboldened. “Thank you,” I said into the open, but dark window of the cruiser. “You guys don’t realize it, but arriving when you did, you probably saved my fucking life,” I lied to them.
“Did someone threaten you, sir?,” a blond woman cop asked.
“Yeah, he said, ‘I’m gonna kill you.’”
“Do you want to press charges?” The question hung there, following me as I walked stoned and they continued driving behind me slightly. Press charges. Hmm. Have my own enemy forever at the circle. Always looking over my shoulder for a blade in my back.

“No.” And thinking of the dime bag of sandy pot in my back pocket and open bottle of Heineken in my camel pack, “I’m not entirely law-abiding, myself… But I think I respect other people.”
“You’re just having a good time, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you think everybody should have a good time, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll keep following him. We’ve been watching him all afternoon. We’ll take care of this later, when you’re not around.” And she pulled the vehicle ahead, tracking her prey.

Josue was still with me. “I feel a little bad,” I said, “you know, getting the fucking cops involved.”
“Very funny. You say, “I break laws! You very funny.”
Yeah.
“He want fight all day. Now he get fight. Fuck him.”
Yeah.

I was still thinking about how my circle experience might change now, looking over my shoulder or whatever when Fardin and his girlfriend Ann appeared on the boardwalk. I gave them hugs and told them about the cops. They gave my tired ass a ride home to Marina Del Rey. It was only half a mile, but every muscle was worn. Back at my place we smoked and unable to find Persian food, we took Luke for a beach run over to Gaby’s Lebanese for pita and yummy mush food. Fucking Fardin insisted on following the meal with some sweet puffs on the apple tobacco hooka. Passersby assumed we were openly smoking hash in the streets. A talkative old veteran from WW2 and the Korean War welcomed “you Persians” to his country. We thanked him and called it a night.

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