Another Corner
by
Jim Marquez

Another night in Babylon.

And the latest joint to start the pecking at my liver if not my soul is Bar 107 over on 4th & Main St. They do it right: pure madness; gleeful unadulterated lunacy.

The way a bar's supposed to be. The way bars used to be.

Way too goddamn many bars around the downtown scene of late have become engorged on themselves. Too fuckin' serious for my taste. Let the people have fun for the love of god. When a fight breaks out then its time to step in. Other than that let the drunks prance and chant and bounce off the motherfuckin' walls. There's not enough random inebriated bellowing happening in bars anymore. It's nice to see that here.

This old, at one time tranny-shack has the idea.

My heart was absolutely taken this night when an especially stirring rendition of 'Ole, Ole, Ole!'� was belted out as a tribute to the impending world cup and Mexico's national team's place in it. This was accompanied by jump-on-the-furniture-and-dance-joy, closely followed by a releasing of the hound in me to join in and holler like a buffoon and pump my fist and slam back Jameson-rocks after Jameson-rocks.

One young hot white chick, puzzled, asked me, 'What the fuck with all this Mexican shit?'�

And I laughed and said, 'Honey, don't you know that the hottest new bar in town is partially Mexican-owned?'�

Ha! That warmed my heart.

Then it was time to go, to run the gauntlet past the walking dead, push my way through, slap off the pocket-prying hands, brush off the far away and accusing stares trying to make me feel guilty for dropping a hundred dollars at a bar. Fuck off!

Godwheresmycar?

Oh, right.

A true drunk always parks strategically to lessen exposure on the road. The older I get the 'smarter'� I get with this shit. And the closest to the next destination and a freeway is very fucking important. So it's over to Bedlam on 6th Street a few rungs further down the circle.

My buddy, July, was following me and the lucky bastard managed to park right out front. I'm the one who leads him there and I gotta go fishing for suck parking elsewhere. I'm lazy and a drunk and so this is not good.

But I find a quick spot, blind luck, across Alameda, right at the corner. Beautiful! I call July, say, 'Dude I'm parking across the intersection, I'm crossing the street right now!'�

I get out of the car, sweating, vision a little blurry, but pumped, ready for a dawn crawl home. Been a good boy all week, sold a major piece on Emmeric Konrad to a London art magazine, had a good show earlier over at 'Antigua Coffee'� in El Sereno, and I hit the corner, think about darting across, but no, it's after 2am, bad fucking time to be out on the road. Pigs, between 1am-3am are the true fear out here though, and God help you if you're brown or black.

And so I see this fucker, might have been a Honda Accord; lowered, tinted, spinners, and he comes barreling through the red light.

There's nothing I can do. I know exactly what's going to happen. It's only a matter of how bad. I don't flinch.

This dumb bastard, maybe racing, fucked up, a man who is not a man because he cannot handle his booze or coke or crank or ice, plows into the SUV first, and as much as I hate those earth-killing abominations it hurt like hell to witness, Jesus Christ: BAM! The Honda rips open the side of the SUV in a hail of glass and fluids and metal shredding and quite literally bounces off the fucker and, well, at least the back half of the Honda, takes flight and launches into oncoming traffic. OH FUCK!

From there two cars coming down Alameda can't avoid the fuck-head and slam into him going god knows how fast. Glass explodes, steel crunches and shoots out and I hear pieces of something go whizzing by my head to my right and I drop to my knees and stagger for balance, mind blank, just dumbfounded as steam and sparks belch out from the vehicles while they spin in the shadows and groan and leave the surface and also take flight and land HARD, scattered across the pavement, the sidewalk, the streets of downtown L.A.

And then silence. Nothing. My heart's slamming. My head's pounding. Oh dear God tell me I did not see that. Tell me I'm hallucinating. Then, the screaming begins. I'm crossing the street now, somebody running slams into me, cries, 'Come man, we gotta help!'� and my first instinct is to check my back pocket for my wallet.

I don't know why, but, I'm pissed suddenly. I'm not overtly concerned about the well-being of the people, for there must be multiple & severe injuries, if not deaths. I'm angry at the asshole that started all this, angry that those other poor bastards were just trying to get home and off the fucking streets, trying their best to get to safety after their all night drunks, and I scream out as I'm strolling to the other side, 'GOOD! I HOPE YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD ASSHOLE! YOU DESERVE IT! YOU COCKSUCKER! DIE MOTHERFUCKER DIE!'�

I hear from somewhere, 'Hey, man be cool, what the fuck?'� There are men, women, party goers, homeless crawling outta the woodwork, all converging on the scene, running in slow motion, people's faces are contorted, in shock, pleading with bystanders for help, mercy, somebody do something, what the fuck do we do? They turn their bodies and heads back and wave people on, to join in on this chaos and I see a body hanging out of the window of the passenger side of the asshole's car, think he was in a white T-shirt, can't recall, I've seen people die before, my dad in my own arms, and so that didn't bother me.

And then somebody practically tackles me, throws his arm around me, 'JIM! JIM! FUCK DUDE I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!'� It's July, surprised to see me standing at the corner now.

'Gonna take a lot more than that to put me down, pal.'� I light a smoke, a bit shaky.

'You said you were crossing the street, I thought that fucker took you with him.'�

'Did you see it?'� I ask, and then I hear the sirens. Dammit!

'Naw, I heard it though, turned, saw everybody running. That sounded bad, dude!'�

'It was.'�

'You wanna go see?'�

'Sirens. We gotta get outta here. We've had enough to kill an elephant. Let's get inside.'�

'Yeah, yeah. Oh, hey I saw Emmeric.'�

'Good, I need to talk with him.'�

I hear the sirens getting closer as we shamble off, more people run past, garbled, panicky voices all around, burnt oil and brakes in the air, my considerable buzz wearing off.

'Are you all right, man?'� July asks.

'I don't think so,'� I say.

'Well, let's get a drink. Try to relax.'�

'Yeah, relax.'�

That morning the nightmares are worse than usual.

I wake up crying.

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