third one this week
LA? Did I ever tell you what happened to me when I first went to LA? Oh, man! Well, get this.
I’m out there about a month, month and a half and I'm down to the skids already. Burned through all I had, which wasn’t much to begin with, so things are getting pretty tight.
Luckily, I score a job driving a truck, delivering---I dunno’, what the hell was it again? Oh yeah! Peanuts! Yeah, I was delivering boxes of those styrofoam things they pack boxes with!
So it’s like my fourth day on the job and I’m down to nothing. I got like, three dollars to my name, maybe three cigarettes left and I just spent two of the three on lunch; a fuckin' hot dog!! So really, I got like a buck and change left. But lucky for me, the boss says he’s gonna’ pay me for the week on Friday and I’m on my last drop of the day.
I was at- you know LA, right? You know where the one-oh-one drops you off and you go into Van Nuys on Van Nuys Boulevard? Well not two, or three blocks at the most; off the freeway, I’m making my last drop and all I’m thinkin’ is, great!
Now back to the shop and we’re in business again!
So I’m closing up the truck, you know?--locking up the back doors when I see this black chick drive up in a Toyota or something, but I’m not really watching ‘cuz I wanna’ close up and get back on the road.
Just as I’m about to close up the door I feel this thing, like a pipe or something at the side of my head. I'm like, what the fuck-?.
It’s the black chick from the car; only now, she’s got a gun to my head saying, "don’t move motherfucker or your dead!" I fucking freeze up, just about shitting in my pants, you know? All the blood just like, drains out of your body and your heart just drops to the floor.
I'm tellin' you, that's just what it was like!
Now, this fuckin' bitch, she’s asking me, “where’s the fuckin’ money?” with this big fucking gun at my head, all happening in broad daylight, right on the street! People walking by like nothing’s going on.
So I go, “here, this is all I got to my name, you can have it, it’s yours, here!” and I’m giving her my wallet and my last few dollars. Then she goes, "OK, where’s the rest?" I tell her that’s all there is, my hearts going at; like a hundred miles an hour and I’m telling her, “ h-here...here’s my wallet” and that this my last stop, that I’d just started this week and how I was down to almost nothing; you know, my life story!
And all the time she’s got this gun, this fuckin' tac nine glock or whatever the fuck it's called, pointed right at my head. Then, just as I was about to give her my wallet; as if things weren’t fucked up enough as it is, I stop short and remember what a nightmare it was trying to get my license back after I’d lost it. I’d just gotten the fuckin' thing back!! So just before she's about to snatch it, I pull back a second and level with her.
Me! I'm trying to appeal to this cold psycho gun carryin’ nigga' chick! Can you believe the balls on this guy or what?
So I say, “l-look,,, here... You can have my wallet, the keys to the truck, here's my last few dollars, the truck, it's yours, here take it! But please, please, there’s just one thing, please, of what little I have, just let me keep my license. I just got it back and I need it most of all of what little I have. Here, here’s my wallet, all the money I have, (which was like a crumpled dollar bill and some change) the keys to the truck, it’s yours, all yours! Just let me keep my license, I beg of you. You don’t know what I went through to get it back!!
Then another car; a station wagon, comes screeching up right next to us and I’m like, now what? What am I gonna' get kidnapped now on top of everything else?
This time, some big fat white hillbilly broad gets out and she’s carrying a fucking shotgun!!! I’m sweating my ass off and my heart, did I ever tell you I had a heart attack?
Well, not this time but some time after this shit, I'm getting like these massive chest pains- Ah, I'll tellya' another time-
So anyway, the little nigga' chick's still got her gun at my head. My heart is doing one of those techno track drum beats and this big, fat, ugly broad gets out waving a fuckin' machine gun around and this is all in broad daylight, no less!!!
People walkin’, drivin’ by, just another sunny day; pay no mind to the big fuckin' hold up happenin’ right in front of your eyes-
Now the fat broad, she goes to the black chick, “ ok, what’s he got?” So the black chick who, I swear, was gonna to kill me not a minute ago, tells her that this “bitch got nothing! All he got is some change.” So the fat broad goes, “ what’s he got up front, in the cab?” The black chick tells her she didn’t check it out yet, "I been too busy with his ass back here".
So they both go check out the front in the cab and you know when you’re in one of those life or death situations and you’re on like, hyper-alert status waiting for that one chance, that slight opening of opportunity where you see that ever so faint glimmer of hope to kick in on that fight or flight instinct? Well, that was it! For like a split second, I saw my chance.
I had just enough time to get as much of the truck between me and the guns as they were walking toward the cab and about a split second to think; fight? Fahgeddaboutit', too many guns. I had to split and go for broke. Otherwise, I swear, they woulda' killed me, without a doubt.
So I fuckin’ ran like a lunatic out into traffic, cars screeching, people cursing me out, the two broads yelling they're gonna’ come back and kill me…. All sorts of shit. I got across the street to some like, five and dime, ninety-nine cent store, you know, the ones where the clerk is safely situated behind bullet proof glass and you put the money in the slot like you’re doing a drug deal? Something like that.
Now I get buzzed in by the guy at the counter; some Arab dude who, thank god, saw what went down and he’s on the phone to the cops. He tells me to sit tight, stay here, the cops are on the way and,
I’m just happy to be alive!! I’m sittin’ down in one of the aisles having one of my last three cigarettes and just trying calm down a little, amazed that I’m still breathing and all in one piece!
Five minutes go by and the guy tells me to go look out the window. Now I see a couple of cop cars and a crowd of people around the truck. So I go out across the street to talk to the cops and
tell them what happened. I cross the street to go up to them and right away they ask me if this is my truck. I tell them, yeah, it’s not mine but it’s what I was driving when they held me up. So they ask me, you got robbed? Like they don’t know anything about it. I tell them, yeah; didn’t you get called to a robbery? I was standing here not ten minutes ago opening the doors for them…. What? They say, “you” were opening the doors for “them”?
It was obvious the cops weren’t gonna’ do anything. All they’re good for, I’m tellin’ ya’, is writing tickets and that’s it! Anything else and they’re useless. The one cop, this typical baywatch guy, he’s starts acting like I was part of the robbery. They were ready to take me in! On and on they goin’ about me opening the doors for those two cunts when finally I had enough.
I’d had it and I say to the one cop, “of course I was opening the doors for them, what'd you want me to do? They had a fucking Uzi cocked at my head but oh, that’s right, that wouldn’t have been a problem for someone like you, how much damage could a bullet do to a head of cement, like yours!!!!!"
Now, I'm pissed and all the people around started to get on the cops, “ the man ain’t even gonna’ do anything” and shit like that. So the cops; they just pack up and leave! Useless.
Then I remembered that those bitches took the keys to the truck, so I couldn’t just get back in and drive the hell outta’ there. I gotta’ find a phone to call my boss and also--- shit!!!-----
I stopped right in my tracks! What if they come back? They yelled as I was running that if I called anyone they’d come back and kill me! --FUCK!!!---
I hightailed it back across the street to a Chinese restaurant there on the corner. That way I figured I could see out the window if they drove by looking for me. So in I go. I take a seat at a table and of course by this time, I'm a wreck. Some old Chink comes up and gives me a menu as he's puttin' out a pot of tea, you know how you always get tea at Chinese places.
Now, I’m still shittin’ a brick thinkin’ those crazy bitches are out there looking for me, so I figure I’m gonna’ have to really stall for time here. I’m sittin’ there looking at the menu for like ten, fifteen minutes when the old Chink comes back to take my order. I tell him no, haven’t decided yet, can I have a few more minutes? Sure, he says and goes back to the kitchen. Now, I’m out there lookin’ at the menu, lookin’ out the window making sure I don’t see them, drinking tea and hoping the people there don’t find out I got no money on me. A few minutes go by and he comes out again to see if I’m ready.
I tell him, “sorry, I'm still looking at the menu but, uh.. can I get some more tea? I’ll do another pot while I decide, okay?". Now the old Chink is wondering, what’s going on here? The guy’s had almost a half hour to decide. He brings out another pot of tea and goes back into the kitchen. Now I can hear them talking back there; in Chinese, you know? And I see a couple of them peeking out the back and chattering away. Whatever they're saying, you know it's not good.
Finally, they send out another guy, a younger Chink, to see what the hell is up with me; and all the Zips in the back are looking out from the kitchen to see what happens.
So he says to me, look, you place order now or you go! By then I figured the jig was up and decided to come clean with the guy and hope he’s decent enough to let me stay there awhile. I tell him my story, about the broads and the guns and the cops and the truck until finally he stops me and asks, “ that truck there, that you?” pointing across the street. I say yeah, that’s me. That’s the truck. He looks back at me and goes, “hmmmmm, that your truck that got robbed," and he's stroking his chin like he's gonna solve the case.
Like he's fuckin' Charlie Chan or some shit!
"hmmmm,,,,,,,,," Then he looks out across the street, shakes his head and says "you third one this week!!!"
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