A Long Walk in My Smoking Jacket

2004-08-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

by Cory Dale Huttenga

I was beginning to go mad in my apartment. There were gangs hunting on the sidewalk. Late model cars sputtered under my window. I sat for days. Thursday. Friday. Saturday. On Sunday, I had enough. My restlessness consumed me. I grabbed my guitar and greeted the mellow setting sun.

I walked until I came to Berkeley. Telegraph Avenue was blocked off. A mile-long flea market crowded the street. Table after table of junk. I wandered onto campus and found a bench in the sun and played guitar for a while. Soon marijuana arrived. Then a drum circle. Then the sun was gone and a violent wind tore through the pillars and the beats and melodies. Leaves like lettuce, but brown and crisp, danced in circles over cool pavement. I ran out of ideas and walked on.

Before a gargantuan bell tower, glowing under the moon, I leaned against a tree. Couples frolicked and paraded, hand in hand. They sat against other trees and nuzzled in one another’s crevices. Time stood still and I took a photograph with my mind.

Then I was under a bridge, dancing with my ego, speaking to the stone, tunneled walls that spoke to me. The stream was steady though hardly flowing, and I was still stoned, howling, groaning. So lost, I was, so loud and gone. Then I was discovered. “Some nice acoustics in there,” said he from afar.

Why can’t the troll be left on his own?

I dove into the trees, into a green-black layer of disguise. My guitar would sing no longer. My books stirred me little, leaving my imagination stagnant. The television was channel after channel of misery taunting. I smoked cigarettes and looked at nothing. I thought of nothing. I was nothing. I felt the chilly hours before dawn licking my skin and I sunk into my sleeping bag and smoked. Smoking only. Nothing but smoke. Meanwhile, program after program, nothing spoke. Not even my mind. I struggled for release. To hide from the grind. Soon daylight captured the room and I covered my head with my pillow. Traffic thickened, and I heard garbage trucks beeping in reverse. I threw my head into the sink and walked to the train station.

San Francisco was sunny. I sipped coffee at a sidewalk café and smoked a cigarette. The grey clouds of smoke hurt my throat. They ached in my lungs. I inhaled nonetheless, one drag after another until it was hot in my chest and against my fingers and I threw the butt on the ground and rolled it with circular motions under my shoe. I walked back to the subway and opened my guitar case. An hour later it was full of money. Green bills scattered and folded and crumpled. And coins. I put them in my pocket. Coins so numerous their weight pulled my belt over my hips. The bulk slapped against my leg as I walked to the library. “Spare change?” asked someone, then someone else, another, then another. I kept it for myself.

I read my email at the public library and rushed to the Tenderloin -- to my place of employment -- where I was paid to guard the door.

The hours passed. I read a story by Tennessee Williams. One by Hemmingway. I wrote a summary of my experiences with pets, and took out the garbage. At 10 p.m., I went on break.

As I roamed the Tenderloin, I saw addicts roaming, too. They shook violently, sometimes dancing. “Do you want me baby? Do you want it?” asks one.

“Hey man, you got a cigarette?” asks another.

The crack pipes glowed in the alleys, on the corners, on the steps. A cigarette seemed like a good idea. I walked into a bar and bummed one from a blonde. I watched a guitar player on stage. Then I went back to the crack and the whores, and to work -- right on time.

A resident of the apartment complex gave me a thick, hardcover copy of a recent novel, written by a friend of his. “You can keep it,” he said.

I read until 2:30 a.m., put the book in my desk, and walked to the Fisherman’s Wharf. I lay on Pier 29 for a couple hours. My guitar under my head as a pillow. Alcatraz blinking in the Bay and the full moon fat and reflecting on the waves that broke against the dock. The wind grew cold and I rose. I caught a bus to the MIssion and, at 6 am, settled down with a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich at a fast food restuarant. The drug addicts and prostitutes were there, too. Me and them. Them and me. The people of the night.