The Last Day of The Year

H A P P Y
N E W
Y E A R S
E V E

To Everyone.

Good Night 2014

It might snow.

Hot City Diary: Sheriff Letter + 55

It's hot again.

I'm running out of options.

I haven't had anything substantial to eat for a couple days.

I'm fading in between Alaska and the here and now.  Wandering thru the woods.

Far, Far in the woods I hear my name being called.

Somebody who knows me is out there.  Somebody that can save me.  I charge into the woods to find a woman with a baby.  She's calling my name.  She tells me this is my baby.  It's our baby.  There's going to be some great future now.  Then she slaps me hard.

I wake up to find my previous hotel colleague standing there with a baby.

"I'm here to save you."  She says, "Let's get out of here."

I grab her hand and follow her out of the house and into her car and we'll keep driving far, far, far.

The End.

Hot City Diary: Sheriff Letter + 43 Days

It's a new moon, which means no moon, which means the night I've been waiting for.  To steal the dune buggy and make my way out of this desert graveyard for good.

I put a few things in a back pack and grab the gas can full of gas and head up to the empty house.  The night feels good on my face.  This feeling of liberty.  Tonight will last forever in my heart, but this feeling is fleeting now as I think of all I've lost.  Forever lost.

I hop the fence.

 All the gas kindly fills the tank and I push the dune buggy out of the side yard and onto the street.  I push it down a couple of houses and get in, buckle my seat belt and turn it on.

It purrs and I put it into gear and tear off down the street.  Blowing stop signs, my mind and my hair as I light up a cigarette from a pack I've been saving, I think to myself that this is it.  I can leave all these bad experiences behind me.  Divorce.  Hunger.  Madness.  I'm gonna drive all the fucking way to Alaska.

The Dune buggy breaks down at the bottom of the hill.  I don't even get a mile out of it.  I'm sitting on the side of the road; a sitting duck.  I take a long drag on my cigarette and get out.  The cops will for sure stop and question me if they drive by.  Who takes out their dune buggy at 3 am?  I guess I could just ditch it.

Just then a dozen people emerge from under the bridge I've almost made it across.  They laugh and laugh.  I don't know if it's that funny.  I hope it's as funny as they think it is.  They say we can help each other out.  I'm surrounded in flash so I agree to their idea.  The atmosphere starts to buzz as the group pushes the dune buggy under the bridge.  They break it down, taking the seats to somebodies house, the tires become a table for others.  Whatever can't be used is taken out and buried in the wash.

I lie about everything and make all kinds of promises I can't keep and excuse myself after we finish burying the last bit.  Feels like home?  Certainly not, those are little white lies and goals at home.

I try to leave a couple times, but they tail me.

I can't go home right now, so I wander down to Dennys and waste some time with a cup of coffee and the $2 menu.  They're still outside when I come out at 7am.  Great.  I go to the bus stop and get on the next bus and watch them disappear in the distance.  I'll ride this one down to Indio and back and just disappear for half a day.  They certainly won't think I'm coming back any time soon.  So eager to know where I came from and where I'm going.  I sit on the bus and think of where I came from and where I'm going.  Riding this train wreck of a life around the desert isn't easy.

Hot City Diary: Sheriff Letter + 50 Days

I push the window open and make my way inside the house.  Nobody is home.  There's a better way to finding empty houses now and I'm using the internet rental house websites with a stolen phone & stolen energy and can actually see the days it's available to be rented or robbed.  Always rob on non-occupied nights.

The house is nice.  The fridge is stocked.  I gorge myself on the perishables and make my way to the bedrooms and locked doors and kick them open.  Making noise once you're inside is definitely liberating.  Just don't turn on that flash light and shut the fuck up until we're inside.

I've taken a few of the bridge people along tonight on my burglary.  Some new strange bedfellows.  Chance has a nice 2 bedroom pad under the bridge and he helped me dispose of the dune buggy when it broke down on my ride to freedom about a week ago.  Chance appeared out of nowhere, both in my life and that night, and helped me push it under the bridge and then he took it apart and buried the parts in the wash.  He's brought his girlfriend named "Hard Time" with him, tonight.  I owe him a couple of these burglary runs for disposing of the stolen goods.

It's dark out.  Too dark to see.  The moon is a sliver of itself.  It's hot out.  Boy, look where that dune buggy got me.  Lurking around in the dark with bridge people.  I'll have to buy a bus ticket back to the city as soon as I put together $20.  Maybe take the train.  I don't even know where the train station is around here.  This robbing and stealing is getting old, too.  I've gotten good at finding open windows and not leaving a trace, but it just doesn't seem right, anymore.  To make matters worse my new bedfellows are redefining derelict.  Chance shits in the corner.  He wants a painting to put on his bridge wall.  I honestly think it's a good idea.  Certainly brighten up his place.  I plug in my stolen phone.

I've found the jewels and take them without Chance knowing.  He'll probably want a cut.  Then it dawns on me that I've got no way to sell it.  I've come to my senses about pawning the jewelry down the street.  They'll bust me for sure.  I'll just keep it and melt it down and make a gold brick and that should be worth some money on an island in Central America far far away.  I stuff it down my pants.

More sensible is a ticket back to the city and it's certainly worth the investment. An inexpensive ticket back to the city life.  I'll just start over again, back in the city.  I'll get my act back together again in the city.  If I can just get back to the city and not cook for another season, then things will be fine.  I certainly don't want to turn out like my friend Chance.  Living under the bridge is a bad scene. It's a bad coke party that never ends with big fat crybabies and hustling to keep your sad space.

I pull the shades down all over the house and turn on the TV and crack open a bottle of wine.  There's always wine.  You might not find cash, but you can bet on wine.  I find my favorite show of the Alaskan people.  Chance and his girl build a furniture pyramid.  They microwave food and drink wine and sit down in the kitchen to do some hard drugs.  I stick to my wine.

After a while I stuff some dry goods out of the pantry into my backpack, collect my phone, stuff the jewelry further down my pants and jump back out the window.  Chance and his girlfriend are doing disgusting things in the bedroom.  They'll figure out that I've taken off.  Fuck that future me, It's not gonna happen.

Hot City Diary: Sheriff Letter + 25 days

Getting hotter.

For the past two weeks, every morning I've been awoken by workmen banging, cutting and drilling their way through the house.  I stay in my back bedroom until the sun goes down and they pack up for the day.  That was until I destroyed all their work and hid their tools and now they'll wait for me to leave before bothering to clean up the place or fix it.

Nobody comes around anymore, they don't even bother to put up a new "For Sale" sign in the yard.

Things are nice and quiet these days.

I found a dune buggy with the keys in the ignition a few days back.  It just needs some fuel, so I've been scrounging through the couch and the change jars to find some money and I'll fill up the gas can one of these nights.  Take a shopping cart down to the gas station.

I go out at night all the time now.  It's the only time to go out without being spotted and it's easy to get away if someone does.

I've been building up my strength.  I can maybe run for a solid mile now without stopping.  It helps that I ran out of cigarettes a long time ago.

Hot City Diary: Day 320

The pool is cloudy but for the most part clear on the top levels.  It's hot today.

The sun isn't as high on the horizon.  It's not the cooker that it usually is.  I probably have another couple months to find  a way out of here or else I'm a goner.  The sun will turn me into a vegetable if I stay here another season.  I'm just starting to feel some normalcy.   I realize my house is a complete mess and to make matters worse...

There's a knock on the back door.  It's Sandy and she's with some men in suits.  She's here to finalize the divorce and the men are here to make sure there's no funny business.

The dog jumps up and down and is happy to see her.  I'm not so happy.

I sign the papers.

She leaves and takes the dog.

They put up a "For Sale" sign among the cactus in the front yard.  I laugh.  Nobody is going to buy this house.

Hot City Diary: Sheriff Letter + 5 days

The daily mark on the bedroom wall have been washed away by the maids, so I've had to make some new more permanent ones.

I'm not sure how long I've been here now, but it feels like things are heating back up...There's a letter from the sheriff that says I've got 90 days to get out or go to jail.  I'll get out, thank you very much.

I've been surviving on a few more birds and rats and when I ran out of BBs' for the BB gun I broke into some houses and stole some food and took some showers.   It's easy to know which houses are empty and I've been watching several with this binocular periscope that I taped together.

I'm running low on food and I'll probably rob another house tonight.  I've yet to find a car, but as soon as I do, I'm outta here.

Even though I've taken down the sign, the realtors have keys and they walk through the house with prospective buyers.  There's usually a security guard with them that has a stun gun.  Especially after I chased the first couple people out of here.

Stupid stun guns.

I stay in the back bathroom while they are here.

I stay in the back when the maids come to clean, also.

I stayed in the back when the movers came, too, well, after they stunned me and put me in the spare room, hogtied.

Hot City Diary: Day 311

It starts with being uncomfortably warm.

Then it starts getting hotter.

It's hot.  I've got things to do.  I just can't lay around here all day and complain how hot it is.

I get into the pool and float around.  Things are nicer in the pool.  I lay around in the pool all day.  I've got plenty of time for that.  What we don't have plenty of is food.  It looks grim in that department.  We might last another couple days and then the party is over.  We'll have to scavenge in the vacation houses.

Hot City Diary: Day 310

Colorful lights.

Hot City Diary: Day 300

Trapped.

Hot City Diaries: Day 278

We've let a couple other strays off the street in the house.  It's too hot out for them to be wandering the street and it's easy to lure them in with the smell of BBQ coming from the kitchen.

My dog and two others are living pretty high on the hog.  It's just what I need.  Re-hydrate and build up some more body fat.  I cook whatever I can get my hands on.  I drink a liter of filtered water per hour.  They've got all kinds of frozen meat, and I soon feel like one of those side walk vendors, except my only customers are these mangy dogs and myself.

So we stuff ourselves on the food and they shit all over the back yard and my dog has to make a point and shit in the house, and pee all over the house, and ok, we get it, it's your house.

Later there's a fight and we have to throw out one of the other dogs.  The small little burrito doggie can stay, but Mr. Chompers with the attitude has got to go.  He looks a little bit sad when I scurry him out the front door.  We look outside to see if he's there 10 minutes later and he's gone.  Good 'ol Mr. Chompers.

We all settle down and watch some TV.  I remember that I need to refill my pool and in the middle of a Downton Abbey marathon.  I run the neighbors hose into my yard and turn it on.  The dogs stay put on the mattress kingdom in the living room and I'm back in a flash.

I go take a shower for no reason.

The air conditioner has to be on constantly, but it's a nice 76 inside.  I can finally plot my escape, but the old bourbon that I've found in the bar is making it hard to focus.  I pull a stack of paper out of the computer printer and grab a couple pencils.  It's time to write this plan down.  I'll die if I don't get it together in time and the heat comes back.

Step One:  Find the keys to a car

Step Two:  Get out of here

That's all I really get down before I pass out with the dogs in front of the TV.  I kinda draw a map of the back road out to the mountains and a portrait of the burrito doggie and my dog sitting together.

Hot City Diary: Day 277

It's so nice in here.

Me and my dog have brought the mattress out to the living room so we can watch TV in bed.

I must have taken 5 showers.  I've washed all the gunk out of my eyes and my sight is returning.  My neighbors have the nicest selection of silk robes, so I feel sexy.  The food is phenomenal.  I'm going to have to write my neighbors a thank you note.  Never met them, but I love 'em already.  I wonder if they'll like me?  Probably not after they see what my dog did to the library.  Hmmmm, and the door.  Whatever, it's not like they brought over cookies when I moved in.

So things are great and I've had 3 microwave burritos and so has my dog in our last sitting and now we split a big bowl of bottled water.  Life is easy.

They get all the Alaskan TV shows and we're in heaven.  Simply heaven.

We fall asleep watching the episode where Sue breaks her ankle and tries to make some tea and then realizes she's all fucked up.  We drift off to sleep in the snow fields with her, searching for the magic bushes with the mild pain killer in the bark.

My dog is chasing a moose and then the moose stops and starts chasing my dog.

Sue and I laugh and laugh and laugh.

Hot City Diary: Day 280

I've cut a hole in the fence between the two yards so that it's easier to get back and forth between the houses.  It's hot out and scaling that stupid fence every time I want something to eat or some fresh cool water is too much.

You'll never guess who I found in the house next door.  My dog had gone in thru the doggy door and was eating all kinds food and drinking from the toilets. Between the both of us, we've almost eaten everything, but the rice and pasta will last us a couple more weeks.

I've managed to somehow get it together.  Although if my neighbors came home right now, they would totally disagree with me.  There's fresh water and a climate that I can control, although I've had to hang a blanket over the glass door that I broke, or else all the cool air just goes outside.  The neighbors house doesn't smell funny or have mold growing on the walls.

I've been watching TV again.

One day around 3 in the afternoon, while I'm watching re-runs of my favorite Alaskan TV show, the neighbors come home.

I see a car pull up into the driveway.

"Oh Shit!"

I grab my glass of water and the sarong I've found in the closet and run for it.  The piece of fence is easy to put back into place and it almost looks like it was never cut in the first place.

I run into my house and hunker down in one of the back bedrooms but I can still hear the screams and the police sirens.  I wait a day and then go outside to find my hole in the fence seems to have gone unnoticed and they've had the glass door repaired.

It wasn't much use anymore anyways.  It did have ice and ice cold water.  I will miss that.

I wonder if the neighbors on the other side of my house are home?  After a quick scouting mission, I find that they are not home but they own some pretty big dogs and seem to make it their full time residence.

I'll have to go out in the early evening and scope out some of the houses.  That should be the first step in my budding burglary career.  What the hell is going on around here?  What's next?  Maybe I'll find a gun and start robbing people.  I need a car.  Maybe I'll find a gun and car jack somebody and get the hell out of here.

That sounds like a plan.