Inside the Pick-'n-Pull off of Monterey Road in Southside San Jose I carry bits of plastic car parts and 2 rather sizeable metal pieces and filet them on to the entry counter-top. As you can easily tell I'm not a "car guy" myself and will wholesomely admit I do NOT like driving. I prefer to enjoy the view on the passenger side. Driving through life to get from Point A to Point B
straight just isn't as fun as staring out the window at the white giant (really frickin' GIANT)
windmills at Altamont Pass. I bet my kite could kick their spinning asses.
With my bare birchwood hook cane hanging from the inside of my left arm I pick up the two metal parts and start pumping one in each hand as if they were barbells. They're shaped similarly to barbells. Really jacked-up barbells. Avant-Garde barbells. They've got some good weight to them but with the amount of mass (a.k.a. fat) I carry in me gut hung-over belt line and man-tittied self, I lift each one with little effort. One! Two! One! Two! . . . and on I go curling the makeshift fugged-up gym weights to my own amusement. By the forth rep they suddenly have the heft of Jupiter. My forearms shake trying to lift the planet-heavy bastardos clutched in my failing grip. "Gaaaaaajuuuuuh!!!! Ughgaa!!" The surrounding pick-'n-pullers pay no mind to the cane-accessoried, brown/tan island floral print shorts-wearing, ridiculous big face expression shirt-donned, long-haired, prescription tortoiseshell Wayfarered Lackman. That's a goddamn mouthful. No wonder they chose not to notice my Schwarzenegger-KO'ing workout routine.
I'm fuckin' awesome.
=P
Oops, I forget. I'm Lacking. Leonard Lacking.
That's right, bitches! James Bond style!
=P
Inside I go to the yard-proper where people might pick and might pull. I thragash the pieces off to the left onto a makeshift dump-spot that is the bed of a top-chopped dark-blue pick-up. My hands are already dirty from playing 24 Hour Fitness with the just-junked pieces. I am hesitant to blow grease black onto my hook cane upon first touch so out comes the spare paper towels from my right butt-pocket. In lieu of gloves (which I have, nice black leather ones used to start duals with various gentlemen) the paper towels are used to grip onto the hook of me cane. Walk, walk down the long outdoor aisle, flanked on either end by junked cars propped up on ghastly industrial jacks. The wheel wells are empty. The wheels themselves were taken from them because they forfeited the right to keep their feet when they fucked up on the road. It's kind of like a diabetic getting his shit chopped off because he couldn't go on living life without Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia.
The zombie cars sit there on either side prim and proper. Or at least as prim and proper as you can get with dents and broken everything. Some of the paint is still nice but people don't come here to pick paint and pull paint. They want something more substantial. Like a foot pedal. A foot pedal. Personally I'd rather spend a dollar giving it to one of the many uninhibited hoochies at the
Pink Poodle. I like to be entertained. So down I walk the grey gravel-floored aisle. The one-man dance routine is: cane and left foot - right foot - repeat. The words to Eraserheads' Harana is sung-flung out of my mouth to anybody who won't listen. "Tumutunog ang kampana!" sings the two black-ringed Lacking One. The silver rings pair were left at home because I didn't want to blow grease black all over the carnelian. As for the spoon ring, yeah shit there's no way I'm greasing that piece. It's from
1920'sumbitch. I look towards the sky-massive again tempted to throw a kite into the big blue. Since there sits no trees to catch the line, this wide-open field of dead automobiles is prime for airtime. But cane is all I have.
Into a row of cars I venture, jaunting my way through shards of glass and the occasional thought-wanted but now unwanted foot pedal. Foot pedal. On grey gravel bottom is seen an unfolded map. Somebody must've thought there was a foot pedal inside like it was a surprise in a cereal box. Disappointed, this person tossed the ravaged map, left to rot in the sun but soon picked by some bird who's looking to have the illest house on the tree in a nearby park. I like listening to bird calls but they can go fuck themselves - this map is mine. Go do another mating call you flight-capable assholes, soaring through the sky like winged pricks who believe themselves to be better than those below. And they are. This map is mine, Polly. Leave it me and my walking cane. Upon closer inspection I see the map is of areas north of San Francisco. "Cool" I think. Plastered across in bold white letters in another section are the words North Bay Counties. "I like Sausalito" says I, picking up the map, quickly folding it and sticking it into the left side of my shorts waistband, contact left buttcheek to lands of the North Bay. You're welcome, ladies. This is me, Leonard Lacking and I rule all of the North Bay Counties with the left side of my ass. King Lack of the North. Who wants to go to Sausalito? There shall be a grand night feast in my name. Where the food is the best and the ladies bare their . . .
I'm fuckin' awes . . . oh . . . nevermind.
=P
There are enough heads there to take notice of people scanning cars. They tug, they tap, they check, they pry. Wonder, do I, if it is allowed to tap these cars myself. With cane in hand, I smirk a mischievous smirk. I start the party with a sideways smack to the left-side front-end of a white late 90's BMW, the rubber tip of the birchwood hook creating a good "kah-thunk" noise with each strike.
Kah-thunk!
I look around suspiciously, eye left to right and left again. There are 3 or 4 people within eyeshot but they're busy searching for replacements. I smile kiddishly and now play pretend; pretend like I'm looking for something very, very important on or in that BMW front end.
Kah-thunk!
I chuckle.
Moving on down to the end of the row the attack is continued. Now beside the boundaried wall that marks the end of the lot, the opportunity is seen to fence with the auto-zombies. Spotting the victim, I take the en-garde position. Kah-chuck! Score one for Lackman!! The sound is different for now it is a driver's side door being stabbed to post-death death. Who kills the Living Dead-Car? The L-A-C-K does, son!! If Ash needs help boomsticking zombie 70's muscle cars just call 1-800-LACKING. This birchwood hook cane is my BOOMSTICK!!!
Kah-chuck-Boom!!
From where I stand in dominant position it is now seen that each flack leaves a rubber-tip mark on the dry-dirt door. "Alright, who wants some?!"
Kah-chuck!!!
Kah-chuck!!
Kah-chuck!!!
The 80's sporty black hatchback Volkswagon Who-gives-a-shit (the model emblem on the rear-end was ganked) is left destroyed by the Mark of Cane. The Lackman's Cane. The Volkswagon is fortunate that I didn't have to cut a muthalover, for in my right pocket were the CL Pimp Switchblade and the Benchmade Barrage. Two pocket knives carried for one man? Halt, fiend!! It is two pocket knives for
one Lack!! Since its headlights are its eyes, I would've
Corinthianed the
evil car dead and taken its pearly brights as souvenirs along with my rumpa-rump domination of the North Bay Counties.
"Hail to the king, baby."
I leave the Pick-'n-Pull lot to the noise of another paint-stained shirt customer handsawing away at the left front end of another car. Skreee-skree-skreee. Skree-skree-skree. Skree. If robots were having sex that would be the sound - the back and forth skreee-ing of titanium pipe pounding hyper-alloy coochie. Ahh shoot. At least robots have mates. Leonard Lacking in - true Lacking form - has no one.
I, Lack, has never had anyone.
Before you enter the Pick-'n-Pull automo-deadite lot, there's a $2 entry free and a sign-in sheet.
2 dollars were paid.
On the yellow sign-in sheet were cursive names filled all the way to the middle of the 3rd (and last) column of the page. Look closely and you will see. Is it signed Justin Fernandez? No. Another name was handwritten cursive across the line. The name of someone who figured himself out in a world too large, a world too much. Nobody has everything. Neither does Justin Leonard Fernandez.
Look closely and you will see . . .
it was the first time I've ever signed as . . .
Leonard Lacking
